Debate over Venezuelan Protests
Do they reflect Popular Discontent, or the Old Qualms of a Divided Elite?
HAVANA TIMES – The ongoing protests in Venezuela have left at least 20 people dead since breaking out last month. Both sides have staged massive rallies, with opponents accusing President Nicolas Maduro of authoritarianism and mishandling the economy and supporters backing his continuation of Hugo Chavez’s legacy of social welfare. Maduro has bristled at outside attempts to intervene.
We host a debate on who is protesting in Venezuela, and why, with two guests: Margarita López Maya, a Venezuelan historian and political analyst with the Center for Development Studies at the Central University of Venezuela; and Roberto Lovato, a writer with New American Media who recently returned from reporting in Caracas.
Against imperialist intervention and in defence of the Bolivarian revolution
This statement was adopted unanimously by the International Committee
of the Fourth International on 25 February 2014.
Faced with the offensive of the
rightwing opposition against the government and the Bolivarian people,
that, using fascist methods of political pressure, is seeking to
dismantle the political, economic and social conquests won during the
process of the Bolivarian revolution. The organizations and figures who
have signed below maintain: Our internationalist solidarity with the
Bolivarian people and conviction that only the mobilization and the
self-organization. Of the people can consolidate and deepen the
Bolivarian revolutionary process.
(Apparently they are seeking signatures. None are reported so far.)