Imperialism vs. Democracy in Latin America
Recent victories for the left in the region are cause for optimism.
"¡No te rindas, muchacho!”
There’s a story Hugo Chávez used to tell about the strength he found from being in contact with the Venezuelan people. The year was 2002, having survived a coup attempt in April, the bosses were not content to let him govern the country despite having their coup defeated by the organized masses, and conspired to destroy his government by other means. In December, the bourgeoisie organized a bosses’ lockout, crippling the Venezuelan economy. Chávez said this actually scared him more than the coup since he knew that it would severely affect the livelihood of his political base, especially the working poor in the barrios. So—doing as he often did—he set out to talk with Venezuelan people directly, leaving the presidential palace with only a a guard and two comrades.
Soon enough he came across a woman who was eager to show him something. She took him to her modest home where her family was cooking a meal. Absent any cooking gas as a result of the lockout that had paralyzed the hydrocarbon industry, she asked him to look at what they were using for firewood, eventually telling him it was a piece of her bed, then telling him that she would continue to dismantle every piece of furniture in her house to use as firewood before she let the bosses win. The way Chávez told it, she then grabbed him forcefully by the shoulders and yelled at him:
"¡No te rindas, muchacho!”
“You cannot give in, young man!”
That experience gave him the strength not to give in. Chávez used to say heading into the streets and being in contact with the masses cured whatever ailed him.
I had the honor of hearing Chávez tell this story in person at the Anti-Imperialist Tribunal in the Poliedro de Caracas in 2005 as part of the World Festival of Youth and Students.
That experience at the World Festival of Youth and Students turned out to be a life changing event for me. Although I had arrived in Venezuela in 2005 with progressive ideas, it was my experience in Venezuela that convinced me that the solutions to the problems plaguing the working class and campesinos of Latin America did not lie in parliamentary struggle but in the construction of popular power and building of political forces that understood that socialism was not only necessary but possible, if we placed our faith in the masses.
I remember promising the Venezuelans I met that I would do all I could to defend their revolution and struggle against imperialism however I could.
Venezuela’s Mega Elections
Fast forward to 2021 and I once again found myself in Caracas, Venezuela to accompany the regional elections. I made a point of visiting the Cuartel de la Montaña, where Chávez now rests, having died in 2013. As I approached his tomb, I couldn’t help but feel compelled to have a conversation with him. Much like the experience so many years ago in the Poliedro, his larger-than-life presence could be felt, despite him no longer being physically with us.
As I placed my hand on his tomb, I told him that I hoped I had kept my promise to him and Venezuelan people to resist imperialism.
I now work as a writer and podcast producer at Venezuela Analysis, having previously worked at teleSUR English, thus I have been working full time as an anti-imperialist journalist since 2015. Having spent more than a decade organizing in solidarity with Latin American political transformations since my first visit to Venezuela in 2005, I like to think that I have indeed kept my promise.
The need to confront the machinations of imperialism has not abated, in fact, efforts to oust the democratically elected government in Caracas and put an end to the Bolivarian Revolution have only increased.
As part of my work in Venezuela this past November, I covered the regional elections, which were defined by the return of obstinate far right political parties to Venezuela’s democratic process after years of United States-backed destabilization efforts and violent regime-change plots.
The United Socialist Party of Venezuela ended up winning a resounding victory. The expectation is that, with the return of the hardline political parties to the democratic fold, that political differences will be solved through the political system; and not through violent political schemes, coup plots, assassination attempts and support for brutal US-led sanctions regime on the country.
“The people of Venezuela have said ‘no’ to that violence and have come out in massive numbers to vote,” said Venezuelan Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López. “They have said ‘no’ to interventionism, ‘no’ to political violence, ‘yes’ to democracy, ‘yes’ to harmony, ‘yes’ to coexistence, and this is another example of what the Venezuelan people want.”
For Venezuelans, the number one priority is to end the unilateral coercive measures, led by the United States, on Venezuela . I have covered the effects of US sanctions on the country for the Venezuelan Analysis podcast, where I spoke with UN human rights expert Alena Douhan.
One very concrete way anti-imperialists can aid the Venezuelan workers and campesinos is by pushing for an end to sanctions.
As usual, both the US and Canada have worked to try to discredit the elections, despite the presence of international observers, it is important to push back against this narrative, which is driven not by some concern for “democracy” but by the interests of the ruling class in North America.
Defeating the Narco-Dictatorship in Honduras
Immediately after concluding my work in Venezuela, I boarded a plane straight for Honduras to also accompany their electoral process. I first visited the country in 2009, shortly after the US-backed military coup that ousted the democratically elected government of Manuel Zelaya. I was terrified at the prospect of a new era of coups in the region and thought the duty of every internationalist was to do everything possible to stop the putschists from consolidating their undemocratic power grab and establish a new precedent for the region.
Unfortunately, despite the valiant efforts by the anti-coup resistance, thanks to the support offered by US imperialism, the coup plotters were successful in breaking constitutional order.
What followed was a violent neoliberal regime led by the National Party, first through President Porfirio Lobo Sosa—elected in fraudulent elections held barely five months after the coup—and then by Juan Orlando Hernández, also elected through two tainted elections. The 2017 election was marked by accusations of fraud so serious that even the Organization of American States said it should be held again. When the US Ministry of Colonies is calling for a US ally to hold new elections, you can imagine just how dirty the election must have been.
Juan Orlando Hernández’s rule was marked by efforts at privatization, corruption scandals, brutal repression, the criminalization of social movements, human rights abuses, and credible accusations of links to organized crime.
Social movement leaders in the country said under Juan Orlando Hernández, or JOH as he is often called, the country wasn’t run by a government but by a criminal enterprise.
The 2021 elections in Honduras presented the best opportunity to oust the JOH regime, but Hondurans knew he would not go easy and if the country was not vigilant, the National Party would once again steal the election.
As soon as I arrived in the country, I began to talk to Hondurans. It very quickly became clear that the country was in the mood for change. It reminded me of Mexico ahead of the 2018 election, people were tired of neoliberalism and despite the relentless media campaign to discredit the left candidate, they wanted something different.
The National Party is widely seen as the most efficient political machine in Honduras, able to leverage state resources, clientalist programs, and paramilitary violence to consistently “win” elections.
But several people I talked to said that they while they had voted for the National Party their whole lives, in this election they were going to vote for Xiomara Castro, candidate of the Libre Party and the wife of ousted leader Mel Zelaya.
As one voter told me, the country was “exhausted” with the National Party.
That doesn’t mean they didn’t try to steal the election. International observers said they witnessed several irregularities on election day and undemocratic behavior by National Party candidates and activists.
But the mood for change was overwhelming, voters came out in droves, standing in long queues to vote for Castro and bring an end the “narco-dictatorship”.
There were fears that there would be a repeat of the 2017 election, where after preliminary results showed JOH losing, only to have his numbers miraculously recover after a suspicious shutdown of the vote count.
But this time, the margin was just too great, the regime was forced to accept defeat, 12 years later, the dictatorship was finally brought to an end.
Leftist governments in the region celebrated Xiomara Castro’s “historic mandate” and unsurprisingly, the US was slow to acknowledge the result, though eventually Secretary of State Antony Blinken did accept her win.
The night of the election, everywhere throughout the capital you could hear the sounds of car horns blaring and fireworks being fired off as people celebrated.
Normally a very measured man, a friend who was imprisoned by the regime in a high security prison could not contain his glee.
“We will keep fighting but in a more favorable context, a context that we hope will be less dangerous, where we will be less afraid, where we will be driven by the hope that it is possible to build a different society,” said Gustavo Irías, executive director at CESPAD, which helped organize an international delegation to Honduras.
It was an incredible honor to be with the Honduran resistance, both in 2009 and 2021, to support them from afar consistently through my work on the Honduras Now podcast and on-the-ground when possible. For me, this is what it means to put proletarian internationalism into practice.
Democracy Triumphs Over Imperialism
The ruling class in the United States and Canada often arrogantly try to lecture countries like Venezuela about their democracy, alleging that these systems are somehow deficient for not meeting the “norms” set by Western liberal representative systems.
It is capitalist democracy that is deficient. It is imperialism that attempts to limits the political debate, working to discredit those struggling to build socialism. As Joe Emersberger and Justin Podur wrote in Extraordinary Threat: The U.S Empire, the Media, and Twenty Years of Coup Attempts in Venezuela:
“A ‘capitalist democracy’ is one where crucial decisions about investments, employment, and how one spends most of one’s day are all decided by an ownership elite or the managers they appoint—not decided through democratic means. Basic economic questions—what gets produced, how, and for whom—are dominated by private business owners and wealthy investors, even though such questions are essential to everyone’s well-being.”
I’d like to end this inaugural edition of the Antiimperialista newsletter with this dispatch from the Super-Exploitation and Resistance podcast that I host. In this “Field Report” we take a look at three recent elections in the region—Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Honduras—where the left secured important victories in each country, striking important blows against imperialism in Latin America. What are the implications of these results for the left and US-LatAm relations? How will US and Canadian imperialism react?
Suffice it to say, based on recent results, I feel optimistic.
Excellent! I'm with the México Solidarity Project and we're happy to see another source of real-deal news on Latin America from a left point of view.
Buenas tardes de Ecuador. Great work. The inaugural podcast was excellent. "Why can't the leaders of Latin America meet and talk without it being an affront?" That's the question, indeed