The Revolutionary Abolitionist Movement (RAM) lays out why anarchists and autonomous anti-capitalists should oppose the attempted US coup in Venezuela.
During the Chavista period, residents of Venezuela organized consumer cooperatives, communes and wide-ranging regional organization from working-class neighborhoods. As usual, the state power at the time — the Chavista government — attempted to create programs to meet people’s needs from the top down, resulting in a process replete with contradictions. Nevertheless, these communes and cooperatives worked tirelessly to create the necessary conditions for people to live autonomously. In 2013, these councils numbered over 31,000, and they are still active today; on February 10, 2019, for instance, members of the José Ramón Rodriguez, Cuna de Artesanos, and 1ro de Mayo communes in Guadalupe took over abandoned agricultural facilities at the Instituto de Desarrollo Rural (Institute of Rural Development).
The successes — and even the mere existence of — these efforts have been suppressed in the U.S. by the prevailing state narrative of depravation and helplessness, once again evoking white saviorism in an effort to justify U.S. imperialism. The prevailing narrative is that, under the leadership of Maduro, the people of Venezuela are starving and lack basic necessities, such as medical care and shelter. Such deprivation is in fact prevalent throughout the U.S. empire, including at its nexus, the continental United States. The notion, therefore, that the U.S. should interfere elsewhere on such grounds, and that such interference should benefit the people in any way, is outrageous. The U.S. continues to engage in its usual ideological struggle against communism, socialism, and, of course, anti-statehood; the hardships faced by the people of Venezuela serve as a convenient foil against which the state narrative attempts, unsuccessfully, to uphold the superiority of what it calls “democracy.”
It is worth noting that the humanitarian crisis currently being used as an excuse for U.S. interference in Venezuela was in fact manufactured by the U.S. — through the CIA and right-wing Venezuelan oligarchs — over the past twenty years. The groundwork for the current predicament has been laid carefully, with CIA operatives and Venezuelan elites conspiring against the Chavista government and having already attempted a coup in 2002. (Chavez was removed from office for roughly fourty-seven hours before being reinstated.)
