In the context of the 30th anniversary of the military rebellion of 4F, the 20th anniversary of the return of Commander Chávez to power after the coup d’état in April 13th, 2002 and the 9th anniversary of the passing of Commander Hugo Chávez Frías, I write this article in the urgent need to preserve, make known and defend the living legacy of Hugo Chávez Frías, one of the most important and resonant leaders in the world. In the memory of our peoples it is necessary today more than ever, in a world of pandemics, political and economic crises, to make visible the emancipatory and socialist ideology of Chávez, the heart of the people, as the Venezuelan people defined him. The epistemological change of route that our America needs must be that of decolonial voices and rebellious critical thought, towards new horizons in a post-pandemic world (COVID-19), which demands the radical transformation of thought, paraphrasing José Martí when he referred to Simón Bolívar, in which Chávez still has much to do.
The transcendence of the emancipatory thought exposed by the “arañero” (spider) of Sabaneta in the different political and social scenarios has to be studied from the epistemological, political and philosophical perspective that allows to validate in the scientific-humanistic plane, the emancipatory ideology of the 2nd Liberator of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela; the legal-political basis of the conception of Bolivarian Socialism is stated in the law Plan of the Homeland 2013-2019, in its Great Historical Objective 2: To continue building the Bolivarian Socialism of the 21st century in Venezuela, as an alternative to the destructive and savage system of capitalism and thereby ensure “the greatest possible happiness, the greatest possible social security and the greatest possible political stability” for our people.
- First heartbeats
For 30 years, Venezuela has initiated a revolutionary process that has gone through several phases, starting with the formation of the Bolivarian Revolutionary Movement 200 (MBR 200), whose main proponent was Commander Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías. The MBR200 sought coherence between the democratic verb and the practice of the political game, transforming the capitalist structures that were legitimised at the time and are still in force. This reality made visible the more than forty years of a liberal and Fixed-Point system based on poverty, the exclusion of the poorest, corruption and the loss of patriotic values and the dignity of a people.
The ideological-cultural and political sphere of Hugo Chávez Frías begins with a process of historical revision; the Revolutionary Movement MBR-200 has its germ in the tree of the 3 roots, which he called the EBR system: Ezequiel Zamora, Bolívar and Robinson as a philosophical doctrine:
This project has been reborn from the rubble and now stands, at the end of the 20th century, supported by a theoretical-political model that condenses the conceptual elements of the thinking of those three preeminent Venezuelans.
These references show a close relationship between the class character of the systems of oppression imposed by foreign powers and the cultural alienation to which the neo-colonised people have been subjected, as expressed by Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto: “The history of all societies up to the present day is the history of the class struggle”; Therefore, the historically known antagonistic class relations and processes of social struggles constitute the basis for the analysis and subsequent understanding of social processes, in which Chavez was premonitory, visionary and avant-garde.
It was dawn on February 4th, 1992, when the Venezuelan people heard on the radio and saw on television that Lieutenant Colonel Hugo Chávez Frías had commanded a group of young military revolutionaries to plot the attempted coup against then President Carlos Andrés Pérez, who from the beginning of his mandate had bowed to the liberal policies dictated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, organisations that directed the economies of the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean with the aim of generating pressure to control and dominate their policies. In the early hours of the morning of February 4th, the Venezuelan people echoed that Por Ahora (For Now) of the Comandante when, with his characteristic ethics, he said to the media:
First of all, I want to say good morning to all the people of Venezuela, and this Bolivarian message is addressed to the brave soldiers in the Aragua Parachute Regiment and the Valencia Brigade: Comrades, unfortunately, for now, the objectives we set ourselves have not been achieved in the capital city. That is to say, here in Caracas, we did not manage to control power (…) It is time to reflect and new situations will come and the country has to definitively set itself on the road to a better destiny. So listen to my words (…) Comrades, listen to this message of solidarity. I thank you for your loyalty, I thank you for your courage, your detachment, and I, before the country and before you, assume the responsibility of this Bolivarian Military Movement. Thank you very much
Chávez became the hope of the Venezuelan people, and a social bond was born between the Comandante and his people. In 1994, Chávez was pardoned by the Venezuelan government and began his campaign to position himself as one of the possible candidates for the Presidency of the Republic. Prior to the 1998 presidential elections, Chávez proposed the creation of a national movement that would call for the revision and in-depth study of the 1961 Constitution that was in force; he initiated the Constituent Assembly in each state of the country. Millions of Venezuelan men and women actively participated in the drafting of the articles of the new Bolivarian Constitution. Once the constituent proposal was approved, a number of Social Missions emerged within the state policies, whose main objective is to give more power to the people through health, education and work. This reality translates into a deepening of efforts by intensifying social programmes to end poverty and all forms of exclusion present in the daily life and consciousness of Venezuelans.
Epistemic bases of Hugo Chávez’s thinking
In January 2007, President Chávez rescued the epistemological bases on which Venezuelan men and women should build in order to achieve socialism, with the particularities of our people. He then puts forward the validity of the thinking of Simón Rodríguez, Simón Bolívar, Ezequiel Zamora, Francisco de Miranda and Antonio José de Sucre, and then delves deeper into the ideas of José Martí, Carlos Marx, José Carlos Mariátegui, Guaicaipuro, among other thinkers and leaders of all times. He assumes them as the political, ideological, epistemological, historical, cultural and educational foundations of socialism, whose theoretical contributions substantially nourish the libertarian, anti-imperialist and revolutionary thinking of the peoples of America.
In this sense, Chávez (2006) highlights Simón Rodríguez as he deepened the original socialist project for the South American nations. Each man for himself, and God for all”, was, according to him, the most perverse maxim that selfishness could have invented “(…) God for all, the social being, is not each one doing his own business, and he who is not alert loses, but each one thinking of all, so that all think of him (……)” In this respect, Simón Rodríguez maintains that “every member of a society is obliged to look after it, because in it he sees himself; and he is eminently sociable who sees a brother in each one of his fellows (…)”. In Chávez, the principle of brotherhood and solidarity between Venezuelans and the peoples of the world always prevailed, respecting the differences and social, political and cultural particularities that define peoples. Chávez, a student of the thought of José Carlos Mariátegui, the 20th century Peruvian thinker, who, like Martí, defended the idea that social models are specific to each nation and that socialism should not be copied from other countries, emphasises the Peruvian intellectual’s idea when he states that “(…) We certainly do not want socialism in America to be an imitation and copy. It must be a heroic creation. We have to give life, with our own reality, in our own language, to Indo-American socialism .
Original Socialism and Agrarian Socialism
One of the ethical values of socialism is to vindicate the work of the peasant brothers and sisters of the lands of Venezuela. The Revolution has been nourished and nurtured by the experiences of the workers of the land. It is not possible to speak of socialist morality without exercising true commitment in social action. This process involves transforming the capitalist economic model that exists in the country from its roots, “we must socialise the economy, the productive model, create a truly new model that privileges labour over capital, that places the emphasis on social property, that generates new relations of production, that directs the productive effort towards satisfying the needs of all the people (…)”. In this context, Chávez insists on the need to exterminate the vices of capitalism that are still rooted in the idiosyncrasy of Venezuelans, generating a historic crisis that must disappear in order to build a new homeland. Venezuela is in the eye of the hurricane, as Chávez (2007) affirms, based on Gramsci’s ideas, “when it is dying and does not finish dying, and at the same time something is being born and does not finish being born”.
Bolívar, ethical and political roots
So stands Bolivar in the skies above America, vigilant and frowning.
Sitting still on his rock of creation, with the Inca at his side and a bundle of flags at his feet.
So is he, still wearing his campaign boots, because what he did not do, he has not done today;
because Bolívar still has to do in America
José Martí
In the ideology of Simón Bolívar are the foundations of the Bolivarian Revolution and with it the socialist ethic “let us see and feel how valid it is, how alive Bolívar is in the heart of Venezuela, in the project, in the essence of the Bolivarian project, which is why it is called Bolivarian”. For our revolutionary process, according to Comandante Chávez, Bolívar is the key to socialism, when the Liberator stated on February 15th, in the Orinoco, in his great Angostura Speech “My opinion is, legislators, that the foundation of our system depends immediately and exclusively on the equality established and practised in Venezuela (…)” The priority shown by Bolívar to promote the principles of equality and equity that clearly define socialist thought is evident. It is about burying deep down and deconfiguring the capitalist elements.
Chávez argues from Bolivarian thought that men and women are born with the same rights on earth, but it is the elites who make men unequal. It is necessary to deepen the study of Bolivarian ideology and overcome the years of ignorance in which the Patria Grande has been submerged, “through ignorance they have dominated us more than by force”.
President Chávez created the five socialist engines of the revolution, essential roots of the great transforming lines of the Simón Bolívar Project in the political, social, economic, military, territorial, international and ethical spheres: 1) Enabling Law; 2) Constitutional Reform; 3) Morals and Lights; 4) The New Geometry of Power; and 5) Explosion of Communal Power. In this order of ideas, for the construction of socialist ethics based on Chávez’s ideology, it is necessary to understand the importance of what he proposes in the third engine, which is education with socialist values.
The Third Moral and Enlightenment Engine, framed within a revolutionary ethic, which promotes the impulse of popular and emancipatory education, with the aim of exterminating the anti-humanist values of capitalism, which are incorporated in the patterns of domination that still cover us. Chávez stresses the importance of forming in the Venezuelan population the socialist ethic whose basis is sustained in and from morality.
Moral Power, today more than ever, requires Venezuela a true, authentic and solid Moral Power that is born from here, from the conscience… to fight against corruption, against vices, against the characters and customs that have plagued us for so many years… Everything could be transformed, but if values and culture are not transformed, we would have lost everything, everything would collapse.
The Commander points out that socialism is based on the transformation of consciousness, of values, that is the revolutionary essence. To achieve this great mission, the national education system must be based on Robinsonian thinking, on education for the masses, for the people and on popular knowledge. Chávez constantly called on the Venezuelan people and the peoples of the world to deepen individual and collective awareness, hand in hand with the construction of the new man and the new woman – the epistemic category of Ernesto Che Guevara, and a great reference point of the Bolivarian Revolution -, which involves the knowledge and study of our history, of our America, so that we learn to recognise ourselves and defend our history, our roots. Men and women become the protagonists of their own processes, giving priority to collective well-being over individual satisfaction. The most important thing in socialism is to assume ourselves as beings with a social conscience, which generates the possibility of developing as individuals capable of breaking the chains of alienation and oppression.
Popular Participation. Explosion of Communal Power
Socialism has a lot to do with humanism, love and solidarity;
socialism is social inclusion
Hugo Chávez Frías, 2006
Chávez insisted that the freedom of the Venezuelan people stems from two objectives: the increase of productive capacities and the improvement of the living standards of the population. Both directions underlie the protagonistic participation of Venezuelan men and women through the impulse of the People’s Power. In the early years, Chávez proposed the activation of the Fifth Engine as the social element that generates inclusion, equity and social justice from the grassroots. It is from the constitution of popular power that the forms of participation and organisation required at this time of change are created.
In the almost 24 years of the revolutionary government, the people have participated in 29 elections, ratifying with forcefulness and firmness the leadership of Hugo Chávez Frías and President Nicolás Maduro Moros. Of these 29 elections, the Bolivarian forces have not been victorious in two of them (Constitutional Reform, December, where2007 the “no” option won by a very narrow margin, 50.7% against 49.2% in favour of Hugo Chávez’s proposal to reform the Constitution, and the elections of deputies to the National Assembly in 2015); Nevertheless, in every non-victory of the Bolivarian revolution and every time it has been necessary to deepen the process of transformation that is developing in Venezuela, the 3Rs (Revision, Rectification and Re-boosting of the Revolution) have been applied and now recently President Nicolás Maduro has called for the 3Rs2, which has permanently generated in the Venezuelan people the elevation of their political consciousness. We understand that grassroots structures, communal councils, communes and grassroots social organisations are the possible way to deepen the Revolution and Bolivarian Socialism, and in this respect Chávez affirms that “popular power is the soul, nerve, bone, flesh and essence of Bolivarian democracy, of revolutionary democracy, of true democracy”.
Chávez and multipolar integration
In the multipolar scenario, President Chávez promoted mechanisms towards emancipatory Latin American unity in the Bolivarian Alternative for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA, 2004), and ALBA-TCP (2006), the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR, 2008), the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC, 2010); Among other forms of integration for liberation that have emerged in Latin America and the Caribbean; at the World Social Forum in Brazil (2005), Comandante Chávez proposed overcoming socio-political experiences as a reference point for founding the socialism of the 21st century.
Creole-style Socialism, as the Comandante called the first ideas about thinking our America, declared publicly in Sao Paulo at the World Social Forum which at that time brought together Latin American social movements with a long anti-imperialist struggle, as a response to the Free Trade Area of the Americas, FTAA.
Chávez takes up progressive and insurgent thinking to propose the socialist model; to do so, he combines different cultural and intellectual expressions from theoretical approaches to the praxis of the historical struggles in the Great Homeland. It is a pending task, the promise of a Grand National project, which brings together South America, its resources, its potential; it is Simón Bolívar’s vision of becoming a pole of world equilibrium. It is the Security, Defence and Integral Development of the Great American Nation. The continuation of the struggle for independence against colonialism and colonialism continues; it is no longer about the Spanish crown and the vestiges they left in our America. Now it is a power based on the large financial-industrial-military-military-communication transnational corporations.
From this conception of integration of our America and the Caribbean promoted through integration mechanisms, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines has been one of the sister countries allied to Venezuela. Under the government of Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves, St. Vincent and the Grenadines joined Petrocaribe from its foundation in 2005 and was the first Eastern Caribbean country to join the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA-TCP) on 23 February 2007. With St. Vincent and the Grenadines, progress has been made on a series of agreements and projects, among which the following stand out:
Argyle Airport: Through reimbursable financing of USD 30 million from the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela through the ALBA Bank, the Argyle Airport Construction Project was developed in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, in order to promote tourism in that country. Currently, this construction is one of the most important projects for the people of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, as it allows the connection of the Vincentian country with other continental latitudes.
Miracle Mission: within the framework of the Petrocaribe Regional Integration Agreement, 345 operations were carried out between 2015 and 2017 by the Venezuelan medical brigade of Miracle Mission in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. Between February 9 and 14, 2020; a first phase of the mission was carried out; during this day of visual diagnosis the medical team attended to a total of 855 patients from the communities of Kingstown, Georgetown, Buccament, Mesopotamia, Chateaubelair and the Grenadine island of Bequia. The second phase has been postponed due to the pandemic.
Fundayacucho: The International Student Programme run by the Gran Mariscal de Ayacucho Foundation, through which Vincentian students have studied at universities in various Venezuelan educational institutions in areas such as tourism, sports, integrated community medicine, education, engineering, computer science, among others.
Hugo Chávez” Fuel Storage and Distribution Plant: The Plant was inaugurated on April 7th, 2015, operating only the Diesel system. On October 27th, 2017, 100% of the adaptations and improvements were completed for the operation of the Gasoline and Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) systems, the fundamental milestone being the first dispatch of a 40-foot ISO LPG tank equivalent to 250 barrels. The plant has a storage capacity of 20,000 barrels of diesel, 10,000 barrels of gasoline, 2,000 barrels of Jet A1 and 2,000 barrels of LPG. It should be noted that, as a result of the blockade and unilateral coercive sanctions imposed by the US government, this project has not been able to continue its development because it is not possible to hire ships to transport fuel from Venezuela to Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.
Construction of 50 petro-houses: as part of a pilot technology transfer scheme and support to the government of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines to ensure decent housing for people living in poverty.
Donation of 7,000 canaimitas (laptops): to primary school students who took advantage of the opportunity to strengthen their training process in the various areas of knowledge established in the Caribbean country’s curriculum.
Vincy Fresh: A project implemented through ALBA TCP. A company that manufactures hot sauces under the trade name Winfresh. In 2016, the ALBA Bank granted reimbursable financing in excess of USD 7 million to guarantee farmers the expansion of their farms, soil preparation, the purchase of inputs (seeds, fertilisers), employment of new workers and the purchase of small agricultural equipment to facilitate the mechanisation of their land. The Vincentian government has now assumed ownership of the company, which is in debt, and has asked the ALBA Bank for full condemnation of the debt.
Covid-19: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is an active member of the ALBA-TCP and is part of the group of countries that received US$1,000,000 in non-reimbursable funding and US$1,000,000 in concessional funding for access to medical supplies in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
La Soufriere” volcano: In the context of the explosion of the “La Soufriere” volcano, ALBA-TCP carried out a maritime bridge with the Venezuelan Navy Ship “AB Goajira T-63” to mobilise supplies and donations from Saint Lucia and the Republic of Cuba; from the island of Saint Lucia to Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.
The Venezuelan Institute of Culture and Cooperation (IVCC) Hugo Chávez Frías in St. Vincent and the Grenadines is today more than ever a pedagogical, political and cultural instrument for the emancipation of our peoples. Various programmes and projects have been developed which are materialised in the organisation and implementation of a series of aesthetic and recreational workshops defined by the IVCC Curricular Transformation Project for Spanish courses carried out by the Academic Coordination, such as: Cuatro, singing, music, cooking, poetry and literature workshops, Venezuelan film festivals, educational training workshops for the teaching of Spanish, articulated work with some schools in SVG to promote the learning of the Spanish language. There have also been photographic exhibitions, conferences in different cultural spaces in SVG, painting exhibitions, among others.
These initiatives turned into agreements and projects between two brotherly peoples to strengthen the cooperation and historical friendship between Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.
Likewise, Chávez’s interest in South-South relations led him to ancestral Africa, making him an enthusiastic promoter of different initiatives that brought African countries closer to Latin America, especially Venezuela, which for the first time in the history of its diplomacy established 18 embassies, with concurrent mechanisms to attend to 55 countries on that continent; also promoting the ASA (South America-Africa) integration and cooperation mechanism (Amílcar Figueroa, 2014). This means that Comandante Chávez made a great effort to create relations in and from a multicentric and pluripolar world by establishing relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran, China and Russia.
The foreign policy promoted by President Nicolás Maduro highlights the effort to develop a new conception of the Latin American and Caribbean region based on processes of integration and unity of the peoples, which has generated a new logic of identity among the Afro-Latin American and Caribbean peoples.
In this sense, and with the aim of contributing to the strengthening of the socialist ethic, based on the formation of the new man and the new woman, which contributes to the transformation of the culture of the capitalist system rooted in the idiosyncrasy of the people, it is important to promote the study and analysis of the ideas of Commander Chávez, as the theoretical basis of Venezuelan Socialism.
The history of Bolivarian diplomacy has been marked by different events that today define the new multicentric and pluripolar model. Before the triumph of Comandante Chávez in the presidency of the Republic, Venezuela lived through moments of obscurantism, imbued with neoliberal policies that, far from giving the people the possibility of dreaming and living in peace, kept them in a permanent struggle for the vindication of basic rights such as education, health and decent food. The Venezuelan people enjoyed little of the oil revenues, the elites became richer and richer and the poor became more and more excluded. Venezuela became a paradise for big investors and was conceived by the great powers as the backyard of the imperialist boot.
The Bolivarian outburst made visible in the irreverent words and actions of Comandante Chávez with the creation of the Bolivarian Agenda as the core project marks the beginning of a new political stage in Venezuela’s history.
