Venezuela Has Chosen its Future

Elio Delgado Legón

HAVANA TIMES — As a kid, I would follow the presidential elections and their avalanche of promises. Afterwards, I would notice that absolutely nothing had changed: the elected leaders would forget all they had promised and we, the poor, would see no improvements in our lives.

Later, when I became a teenager, I remember I would do the math and conclude that all of our lives could be much better, if only the world’s riches were distributed more fairly.

At both these points in my life, I could not understand why the poor, who were the majority in most parts of the world, did not elect leaders who represented and defended their interests.

As an adult, after studying about politics and the mass media, I was able to understand how that vast mass of workers and other humble sectors of society were deceived with false promises and filled with fear of left-wing parties through lies, so that they would always vote for the candidates of the Right, who sought to profit from their government posts and had no real interest in improving the lives of the majority.

This situation has been slowly changing in Latin America. The peoples of this continent are no longer illiterate, they have had access to truthful information and have come to the awareness that choosing their future means choosing between the neo-liberal Right, which proposes a failed and decadent system, and the Left, which has long demonstrated it is the answer to the world’s problems.

For more than fifty years, the reactionary forces of capitalism have sought to crush the Cuban Revolution, for it constitutes an example for other Latin American countries. They have failed in their efforts, and Cuba continues to move forward and to develop, in spite of the many hurdles thrown its way.

Other peaceful revolutions and progressive governments have sprung up across Latin America and they have roused the people from the complacent sleep they’d been lulled into for over two centuries.

This is the stage on which Venezuela’s presidential elections were held this past Sunday, on April 14th, where the main candidates were Henrique Capriles, a representative of the country’s oligarchies and a proponent of a return to savage capitalism, and Nicolás Maduro, entrusted with the continuation of the socialist project designed by the late former President Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías.

The people of Venezuela were given the choice of going back to their past or moving forward towards their future. The people, however, are no longer uneducated. They are informed and know how to distinguish between truth and lies, between socialist progress for all and capitalist regression for the benefit of the few.

And so, the Venezuelan people, securing a tight electoral victory of 50.66 % against 49.07 %, chose the socialist candidate Nicolás Maduro Moros, just as President Hugo Chávez had asked them to in his political will, before his passing.

Socialism has secured yet another victory and continues to consolidate itself across Latin America, for the people can no longer be deceived, as they were when I was still a child, and could not understood how they, the majority, were unable to elect presidents who represented their interests.

Those who thought the path traced by former President Hugo Chávez had ended with his physical demise have been defeated. Although the man, his charisma and smile, are no longer with us, his ideas remain and are as relevant to us as ever. His Party will continue his project, as the people defend his ideas and have chosen Nicolás Maduro as their president, aware that they have chosen their future.