Statement On 23rd Anniversary Of The Triumph Of Democracy In Venezuela

13th April, 2025

Solidarity (HCIF-PFS) joins with all those voices for freedom and dignity to extend solidarity to the people of Venezuela as they observed twenty-three (23) years of the failed imperialist coup against the late Hugo Chavez. On April 11, 2002, Venezuela’s constitutional and democratically elected government of the late President Hugo Chavez was ousted briefly in a violent military coup d’état, which was backed by the United States and its allies.

The coup was short-lived when two days later was reversed by mobilisation of Venezuelans from all corners of the country, who demanded the restoration of their elected President and other members of his government. Chavez was reinstated in April 13, two days after being kidnapped by elements of traitors in the military and replaced by a Fascist Junta led by the Chief of Venezuela’s big business association, Pedro Carmona Estanga. These events led to the emergence of the conscious awakening movement in the world today, including Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa.

The April 2002 coup against Hugo Chavez was not a new attempt by imperialist forces to subjugate the people of Venezuela. Rather it stood to be the first violent attempt to change government in the twenty-first century. The coup failed due to the fiercest resistance put forward by the Venezuelan people.

Since then the US has accelerated its destabilisation efforts by supporting the destruction of progressive governments and leaders in the Americas, including the coup in Haiti (2004), Honduras (2009), Paraguay (2012), Brazil (2016), and Bolivia (2019). It lend it support also for the attempted coups in Bolivia (2008), Ecuador (2010), and Venezuela (2019).

In Africa for instance, we have witnessed the brutal aggression and genocide campaign in Libya in 2011 that led to the assassination of Libyan leader, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi and deaths of over one and half million Africans in the North African nation. As if that one was not enough to cleanse their offices with the blood of innocent Africans, they now turned to the Sahel region, where remnants of the Libyan terrorist outfits have been transported to bid the imperialist assaults on peace, human rights and freedom. Unfortunately, countries bordering the Sahel region are being used as cheap pawns to promote terrorism in Africa.

Following immediately the April 2002 coup in Venezuela, the then Bush administration in Washington quickly hailed the action. As a matter of fact, the White House spokesman then, Ari Fleisher had earlier predicted the coup which he said would be peaceful and shall be followed by a transition to democracy. Washington’s support for the coup was at variance with the position adopted by countries such as Mexico, Cuba, Russia, Islamic Iran, Libya and South Africa, which denounced the action as an act of aggression against a members-state of the United Nations and against also, a constitutional and democratically-elected government in Latin America.

The Bush Administration’s White House, together with the corporate media and the Venezuelan fascist oligarchy’s attempts to justify the coup failed to distract public attention as the Venezuelan people were only interested in the unconditional reinstatement of their loved and authentic leader. 16 people were reported killed on the first day of the failed coup, while others killed on the other two days before President Chavez was released by his kidnappers and escorted to Caracas, to be reinstated as the constitutional and democratically-elected President and Commander-Chief of the Armed forces of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

Among those reinstated to their posts alongside President Hugo Chavez was General Guaicaipuro Lameda, who publicly denounced Chavez. Edgar Paredes, who was restored as Manager of Supply, Refining and Commercialisation of the PDVSA, told the media that: “Not one barrel of petroleum will go to Cuba.” He was referring to the Chavez government’s agreement to supply Havana with 53,000 barrels of crude oil daily under a favorable payment plan.

Venezuela’s oil lies at the heart of these tumultuous events. Washington was desperate to punish Cuba through cutting-off the supply of petroleum and tightening of the US economic blockade against the Caribbean Island nation. Washington wanted also to dictate who should be member of OPEC, by creating a staunch opposition to the membership of Iraq, Iran and Libya to the oil block. All these amounted to heinous crimes and crime against humanity.

The coup against Hugo Chavez had long been on Washington destabilisation agenda in Latin America. US-based instruments like the State Department, National Security Agency, USAID, the Pentagon and the corporate media were all bidding the US destabilisation project for removing Hugo Chavez out of the scene.

The World Bank, IMF and other major banking institutions were recruited also to help ease the US destabilisation agenda in Venezuela. These institutions wasted no time to launch a malicious propaganda through employing the tactics of economic sabotage and making false narrative about Venezuela’s economy moving towards abysmal collapse. The IMF for instance announced that it was ready and willing to provide new loans to what it referred to at the time as ‘transitional government’, virtually calling for the overthrow of Chavez.

Then Washington moved to appoint a new US ambassador to Colombia, called Charles S. Shapiro, who had served as the political officer at the US Embassy in El Salvador at the height of the US-backed dirty war in that Central American country. This post is frequently used as a diplomatic cover for the chief local operative of the CIA. At that time the CIA was coordinating the activities of right-wing death squads that killed thousands of Salvadorans during the country’s civil war. Interestingly, also, Shapiro had been the director of the Office of Cuban Affairs, coordinating US economic sanctions as well as political and military provocations against the Castro.

The April 2002 coup against Hugo Chavez was only a part of the many counter-offensive strategies employed by the US to destroy the Bolivarian Revolution. It is currently used by local traitors and the fascist oligarchies to reverse the gains of the Bolivarian Revolution, to undermine the vision and mission of regional bodies such as ALBA-TCP, UNASUR or CELAC, and to isolate and defeat the processes of social transformation that confront the hegemony of US imperialism in the sub-continent.

Without any iota of doubt, the poor and impoverished population was Chavez’s primary constituency. Chavez was re-elected three terms under a process regarded as one of the most transparent and secure voting systems in the world. He was elected in 1998 with 56% of votes to become the President. He was reelected in the 2000 Venezuelan general election with 59.8% of the vote and again in the 2006 Venezuelan presidential election, with 62.8% of the vote. He won his fourth term as president in the 2012 election with 55.1% of the vote.

Chavez’s all-time election victory in Venezuela had been a manifestation of universal disgust with the corrupt parties of the fascist oligarchies. For over eight (8) decades the ruling elite’s dynasty parties, including the Democratic Action and the Christian Democratic COPEI, had impoverished the Venezuelan population. Chavez used wisely the proceeds from the country’s oil wealth to implement social transformation programmes that helped to reduce poverty and increase literacy in Venezuela. His anti-imperialist, anti-racist, anti-neo-colonialist policies set him at collision with the United States government. His "Chavismo" ideology, which combined elements of democratic socialism and populism, remained influential even after his death.

Chavez’s progressive foreign policy and bond of friendship with Cuba’s revolutionary icon, the late Fidel Castro earned him great respect in the world. He was seen as a symbol of liberation and hope in Latin America; and as leader with a difference compared to rulers like General J.J. Torres in Bolivia, General Velasco Alvarado in Peru, General Rodriguez Lara in Ecuador, or General Omar Torrijos in Panama, who failed their people.

Venezuela is situated in Latin America and borders Colombia to the West, Brazil to the South and Guyana to the South East. It’s officially referred to as the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and has a population of about 28 million. Caracas is the capital and seat of government.

Venezuela achieved independence from Spain on 5th May 1811 after a great struggle led by Simone Bolivar. The country ceded from Gran Colombia in 1830 and ushered in Páez as the first president of post- independence Venezuela. Oil, which today is the top export earner of the country accounting to 84.3% of the total export, was discovered in the early 1910s. Vicente Gomez who was the president from the 1910s to the 1930s, steered the country in discovering new oil deposits and rewarding the imperialists with granting oil concessions to their companies in exchange for a personal cut of the royalties.

The reason the imperialists are determined to crush the Bolivarian revolution is because Venezuela is showing an alternative way of governance that helps the majority of its people and offers help to poor and oppressed countries. The imperialist countries know that the inevitable success of Venezuela would mean stability, freedom and dignity most poor countries of the world. This would deny imperialists control over their resources which would be channelled to uplift the status of peoples. It is for this reason that the imperialists are hell-bent on destabilising the Bolivarian Revolution and to make Venezuela not able to help others obtain their freedom and restore sovereign dignity.

The imperialists also know that Africa has a younger population which seeks revolutionary changes in the continent. It is the mission of imperialism to keep the youth ignorant about Africa’s history and the real reasons for its poverty. Many young people are sponsored by USA to attend international conferences which are really meant to reinforce the message of capitalism. They are made to believe that it is due to inefficiency of the Africans that the continent is lagging and not of the capitalist system that allows imperialists to exploit the continent. This leads to ideological ignorance. It is therefore not surprising that many young people post messages that reflect their ignorance of the real geo-political situation in the world today.

On 14th April 2014, the Venezuelan people elected Nicolas Maduro as their President who continued with Chavez’s policies. This infuriated the imperialists who were hoping Maduro would open the market and allow them to milk Venezuela as had been done before Chavez. The imperialists have continued to use their media (CNN, BBC, VOA etc.) to demonise Maduro’s government. They have continued to fund NGOs in the name of fighting human rights in Venezuela while their real motive is to undermine the government.

The support that the Venezuelan government is getting from its people has also not pleased the imperialists, and are doing everything to incite hatred against Maduro. The imperialists know that the masses are rebelling against their governments in Latin America due to hardship and it is on this basis the sanctions are imposed to create internal rebellion in the targeted countries. The current sanctions regime against the Maduro led government was first initiated and executed by former US President Barack Obama in 2015, who claimed that Venezuela was a threat to US national security.

After taking power in 2017 to 2021, President Donald Trump opted to continue the diabolic policy against Venezuela by ordering a freeze on all Venezuelan government assets in the United States and barring transactions with US citizens and companies. Washington also banned the refinancing of its debt and the repatriation of revenue from abroad. The other imperialist countries in Europe also joined the bandwagon and in July 2020 the Bank of England refused to release two billion ($2bn) of gold bullion that Venezuela deposited in London for safekeeping. The Venezuelan government had intended to use the gold to deal with the coronavirus pandemic in 2022.

The sanctions, though bringing hardship, have failed to achieve stated goals, as the Venezuelan people have stood firm behind their elected President. The imperialists seem to be running out of ideas and have exposed themselves by now wildly claiming that Maduro together with his government officials are trafficking drugs to the USA. The USA has even indicted them and offered a $15m reward for information leading to their arrest and prosecution. Former US president Joe Biden continued the sanctions regime, and even made them worse and painful for the ordinary Venezuelan citizen.

In May 2018 Venezuela held presidential elections and Maduro won with 68 percent. The United States failed to respect the wishes of Venezuelan by condemning the election results as unfair and anti-democratic and threatened stricter sanctions. The US continued its pressure by sponsoring anti-Venezuelan government opponents in every way it could. It incited the defeated candidates into rejecting the results over allegations of irregularities, and demanding the repeat of elections and the nullification of Maduro’s victory.

The rejection did not deter Maduro from executing his constitutional duty and on 10th January 2019, he was inaugurated into office thus assuming his second presidential term. The imperialists together with their lackeys hatched a scheme to appoint Juan Guaidó as an interim president. Juan Guaidó by then was the president of the National Assembly, a role he assumed on 8th January 2019.

With the backing of the imperialists, Guaido declared himself as interim president on 23rd January 2019 arguing that Article 233 of the Venezuelan Constitution gave him power to assume presidency. According to the article, the National Assembly has the power to declare a national president in case the office is vacant – “abandonment of the office”. In that case, the president of the National Assembly can serve as an interim national president until presidential elections are held.

But Guaido’s argument according to the constitution didn’t make sense as President Maduro has never abandoned the presidency. The only time that the presidency was vacant and in which the said article could apply is when president Chavez passed on in which Maduro took over the presidency on an interim basis until he called for an election a few months later.

Since Juan Guaidó declared himself president, the USA, UK, France, Germany, Spain and other European countries officially recognised him as the interim president of Venezuela. The USA also pressured its lackey states in Latin America into recognizing Guaido, but failed also to hit the targeted goal.

However, Cuba, Bolivia and Nicaragua have refused to bow to the imperialists’ pressure and stood with the truth thus recognizing the Maduro government. Beyond the continent, China, Russia, Iran and Turkey have also been in solidarity with the people of Venezuela with their justly elected president, comrade Nicolas Maduro.

On July 28th, 2024 President Nicolas Maduro was re-elected again with 52 percent of the vote, over Edmundo González, the candidate of the opposition, who received 43 percent of the vote. As it happened in the previous elections in 2018, the opposition candidate rejected the July 28, 2024 election results as instructed by Washington.

Given the lack of details about the electoral outcome, countries and institutions across the Americas, towed the Washington line to demand for transparency surrounding the vote counts. The United States and a few Latin American countries have even recognized González as the winner. The US rubber-stamp OAS proposed the release of verifiable results, but this also fell short of the 18 votes needed to pass. Seventeen countries belonging to Washington’s satellites states backed the resolution. Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, and Honduras abstained, along with a number of Caribbean countries. Mexico, Venezuela, and three Caribbean nations were absent. Case closed.

For two decades now, despite known for having one of the world’s most transparent elections process in the 21st century, the Bolivarian Socialist Revolutionary Governments under the late Hugo Chávez, who died on 5th March, 2013 and then his elected successor Nicolas Maduro have been smeared as dictatorships. No one in the Western media is ever held accountable for telling outright lies about the country. And these lies have deadly consequences: as a result, the Western public has accepted sanctions that have killed tens of thousands of Venezuelans since 2017. If a military attack on Venezuela occurs at some point by the United States or its allies, the way will have been prepared by the stories that have been told about Venezuela over the past twenty years.

The most bizarre lie told about Venezuela’s government was the narrative given by former US President Barack Obama in March, 2015, in an attempt to justify his diabolic sanctions against Venezuela. He issued an executive order that formally declared a “national emergency” based on the claim that Venezuela was “an extraordinary threat to the national security of the United States.” Every year the U.S. government has to repeat this outlandish claim, to keep its increasingly murderous sanctions in place.

The sanctions are designed to starve the Venezuelan government of the hard currency it needs to import food, medicine, and the parts required to maintain basic infrastructure such as its medical supplies.

A New York Times analysis in 2015, without being explicit, conceded that Obama’s “extraordinary threat” claim was absurd, but focused instead on concerns that it may have “backfired.” And the article also downplayed the importance of Obama’s lie by uncritically quoting U.S. officials saying it was “a formality required by law in order to carry out sanctions.” In fact, the article completely reverses the truth. It’s the U.S. government that posed an extraordinary threat to Venezuela. We want to ask these pertinent questions as follows: Why is it so easy to lie about Venezuela? Why is it so difficult to clarify the reality? We demand answers.

Of course, it is no more secret to state that US planners in Washington face a durable problem: the default stance of the public is anti-war. The targeted country must be thoroughly demonized before overt military threats are feasible. Trump first made them against Venezuela’s government in 2017 after the country had already been relentlessly vilified in the Western media for sixteen years.

The threats also came after Venezuela had been mired in an economic depression since 2014 that allowed the threats to be spun from a “humanitarian” angle. Panama was invaded in 1990 by the United States under George H. W. Bush, but the country effectively came pre-invaded through a U.S. military base. In 2004, Haiti’s democratically elected president was kidnapped by U.S. troops and flown off to the Central African Republic; the neighboring Dominican Republic served conveniently as a forward base for the proxy forces that helped overthrow Haiti’s president. In 1980s Nicaragua, the U.S.-backed Contra terrorists, based in Honduras, were used to attack the Sandinista government.

In 1990 this eventually produced an “electoral victory” for U.S. allies in Nicaragua that everyone in the world should have ridiculed. Nicaraguan voters were asked to choose between the Sandinistas and continued war and economic strangulation.

In Venezuela, it appears that the Trump administration and its allies are bracing for military show down in is over the Essequibo region, a massive area of 61,600 square miles with a population of 125,000 people, the large majority of whom speak English. The region is administered by Guyana, which does not augured well for Venezuela. The Essequibo is notable for two reasons: it is massive, making up roughly two-thirds of the entire land area of Guyana, even larger than the size of England; and it is rich in natural resources, primarily petroleum.

What the imperialist are doing now is establishing a false flag, akin to the Iran-Iraq destructive conflict in the 1980s. The danger here is Washington’s dictation that is making it impossible for a peaceful and negotiable settlement to the disputes. We wait and see, and where common sense is allowed to give expression, it would be wise for both Guyana and Venezuela to find a peaceful way out of the crisis.

It is grotesque that in the 21st Century one powerful country still aims at enslaving other nations in order to plunder their wealth. The truth is that, the immense oil resources of Venezuela belong to the Venezuelan people.

The United States and European imperialist powers plus their representatives in Venezuela have plundered that country for centuries. The Bolivarian Revolution reversed that plunder and redistributed the wealth to its people. This is against the logic of capitalist plunder. This is the reason why today the imperialists have not abandoned their diabolic plan to deny the Venezuelan people of their peace, freedom and sovereign dignity.

All of the current policies adopted by the United States and its allies against Venezuela, are nothing but a direct, and unwanted meddling in the Latin American nation’s internal matters. It is hard to imagine a more spurious and monstrous example of meddling mentality in the affairs of another country. They unabashedly did this against Hugo Chavez in 2002.

On this historic week of 23rd anniversary of the triumph of democracy in Venezuela, we, volunteers of the Hugo Chavez International Foundation for Peace, Friendship and Solidarity HCIF-PFS) extend our solidarity with the Bolivarian Revolutionary Government and people of Venezuela. Our total support goes to the Bolivarian Revolution, the people of Venezuela and the el-Commandante Nicholas Maduro.

Viva the Bolivarian Revolution of Venezuela!

Viva the glorious Cuban Revolution!!

Viva Caribbean-Latino-African (CALAFRIC) solidarity!!!

Signed:
Alimamy Bakarr Sankoh
President of the Governing Council and International Executive Director (IED) of the Hugo Chavez International Foundation for Peace, Friendship and Solidarity (HCIF-PFS).

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