Urban gardens in Venezuela
According to the world’s commercial press, Venezuela now lives in unprecedented chaos. According to this matrix of opinion, globally widespread, the country is collapsing, nothing works here, we live under a dictatorship, and the only way out is the removal of the government of current President Nicolas Maduro, for which a recall referendum is being driven.
All this is part of a war that is taken against the Bolivarian process, which has been trying to build a new society in this last 17 years. You cannot stop to consider that these changes are being made within the framework of a democratic system, where the vast majority of the population chose that path through a vote. The Bolivarian process is held genuinely through the popular vote.
Since President Hugo Chavez won in 1998, it has continually been holding open, fair and transparent elections and it is the people itself that have elected what we have. There is no imposition here. The government that was opened since then has brought a number of improvements to the population; that is unquestionable. Therefore it is impossible to speak of chaos.
The international right-wing hoped that with the death of Hugo Chavez and the arrival of Nicolas Maduro, everything built up over all this years, the progress of the revolution, would fail. But it was not like that. Maduro democratically won the presidency. The Bolivarian process went ahead, albeit with great difficulty, due to the continued harassment to which it was subjected, by the pressures and repeated attacks in all areas.
As a result of all that pressure was created a situation where there are problems. It is true that there is a very complicated difficult economic situation for the population. The declining oil prices internationally represented a blow to the national economy. Unfortunately, like before 1998, we remain a rentier country without our own production, and rely on imports for almost everything, even food.
The price of a barrel of oil fell to $20 as a result of manipulation of the stock exchanges trying to ruin Venezuela [as well as Russia and Iran, all major oil producers], having come to be about $200 at another time. This very largely dismantled the economy.
The big problem is that there is little domestic production, and most parts of it are bought out, so the state is at the mercy of these private companies, speculating at ease.
This shows a basic structural problem of the country that is still living off oil revenues and that leaves aside our own production.
Therefore, at this moment the government is promoting urban gardens as a way to gradually introduce a new culture, to exit from the oil rentier economy and not rely on imports.
Hence a very large part of the urban population has begun to produce pulses and vegetables in small home gardens: such as lettuce, tomato, onion, paprika.
These are principle palliatives to address the current crisis.
What the right-wing care least about is the people. All they want is to get rid of the Bolivarian government; therefore they implement all this policy of aggression against the revolution, food shortages, polarization, denunciations and chaos with which they inundate the entire media space. In short, if someone suffers with all of that, it is the same population they claim to defend and for whom they are supposedly worried. What drives the right-wing is the removal of president Maduro through a referendum; for it serves to the economic chaos that is occurring.
Shortages and inflation bring discomfort, no doubt. And indeed there have been protests from people, because shortages and long lines bother, that's clear. But what circulates through the mass media is false, it is an exaggeration.
Much of that discomfort is due to the provocateurs who incite the population, when they reach to the queues and shout against the government protesting against hunger as alleged proceeds of inefficiency of Maduro and this "Castro-communist dictatorship” that has subjugated us. Of course all these manipulations try to lead to despair; and somehow they succeed.
Then the press comes and speaks of chaos. There have been dead, it is true, but that is the result of those clashes that the provocateurs encourage. It is not true that there is an open repression against the population.
We are quite far from a repressive state that shoots against a population.
It can be seen that there is an intention of the international right-wing to stop any process of popular democracy or social progress that give prominence to the workers, so anything is done to stop these changes, such as those being carried out in Nicaragua, Bolivia, and Ecuador.
The idea is to get out of the way any process of change. We know that none of these are socialist governments in the strict sense of the word, but they drive improvements for the large popular majorities.
They are not governments that came through a socialist revolution, but they are against imperial policies.
This hurts the right-wing, and here in Venezuela, although the large companies maintain their business, they have gone out of the political leadership of the country.
That's something they do not forgive, and that is why the empire also reacts. In summary, this let us see that the economic right-wing want to handle everything, including the political sphere.
What they do not forgive is the intention of sovereignty.
SEE ALSO
http://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/the-clap-as-ultimate-expression-of.html
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