#HandsOffVenezuela:

A Reader on Capitalism, Imperialism,

Revolution, and Crisis
Compiled by
the Organization for a Free Society

February 2019

On January 23 the right-wing Venezuelan politician Juan Guaidó anointed himself

President of Venezuela, based on the flimsiest of legal justifications: he cited Article
233 of the Venezuelan Constitution, which allows for the replacement of an elected
president who has “abandoned” the post – which the elected president, Nicolás
Maduro, has not done. This scheme would be laughable if not for the recognition
of the unelected Guaidó by the Trump administration and a host of other major
governments, from the neofascist Bolsonaro government in Brazil to the liberal
Trudeau administration in Canada. This strategy aims to precipitate a military coup
and perhaps furnish a pretext for direct U.S. military intervention. Trump and others
are now openly promoting the military overthrow of President Maduro and are openly
threatening U.S. military aggression. The result of either would likely be a long and
bloody period of repression, with revolutionaries and progressives the main victims.

U.S. intervention has involved a circus of Orwellian absurdities. Trump has appointed
Reagan-era war criminal Elliott Abrams – who actively abetted terror and genocide
in Central America in the 1980s – as special envoy to Venezuela. While illegal U.S.
sanctions intentionally punish the Venezuelan people, the U.S. military has begun
flying “humanitarian” aid to the Venezuelan border, in a spectacle condemned
as transparently political by even the United Nations and the Red Cross. Though
corporate media and Democratic politicians lambast some of Trump’s policies and
lies, they have embraced most of his policies and lies around Venezuela. And while
U.S. politicians claim to be acting on behalf of the Venezuelan people, polls suggest
that Venezuelans strongly oppose U.S. military intervention and U.S. sanctions, and
support negotiations between the Venezuelan government and opposition – a fact
that passes without mention in the U.S. media. As one analyst notes, for U.S. media,
“the ‘Venezuelan people’ are whoever agrees with Donald Trump”; the rest don’t count.

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Stripped of the humanitarian rhetoric, the goals of the U.S. government and the
Venezuelan right are very clear. As U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton openly
proclaimed on January 24, he wants to “have American oil companies really invest in
and produce the oil capabilities in Venezuela.” This agenda aligns with that of Juan
Guaidó and his so-called Popular Will party, which, despite casting itself as social
democratic, seeks to reopen Venezuela’s oil sector to private companies and cut
the social programs that have benefited working-class Venezuelans since Maduro’s
predecessor, Hugo Chávez, was elected in 1998. The Venezuelan right seeks to restore
what the U.S. business press calls the “wonderful Venezuela of old”: a plutocracy that
caters to the demands of corporations and U.S. foreign policy interests.1 The right’s
strategy has involved a range of extralegal means, including fascistic street violence
and lobbying foreign powers to strangle the Venezuelan economy.

How did we reach this point? The answer lies in several places: in the historic U.S. hostility
toward independent governments in the Global South, in the power and intransigence
of the Venezuelan capitalist class, and in the progressive but contradictory policies
of the Hugo Chávez (1999-2013) and Nicolás Maduro (2013-present) administrations
in Venezuela. Following a short intro to recent Venezuelan history, we offer a list of
reading and multimedia suggestions for interested readers.

Empire, Neoliberalism, Chavismo, and

the Backlash up to 2013

In 1952 U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson wrote that “Venezuela is an outstanding
example to the rest of the world of cooperation between foreign investors and the
government for their mutual benefit.” Oil had been discovered thirty years earlier,
making the country of supreme interest to Washington. By 1952 Venezuela was
the world’s leading oil exporter. At a time when other oil-producing countries were
pursuing nationalization, the Venezuelan government remained a “citadel” of the
“free enterprise system,” which was “invaluable not only to our interests here but in
support [of] US economic relations with other nations,” in the words of a 1950 State
Department memo. The government proved a faithful servant to foreign investors and
the U.S. government, whose goal was “[r]etention of foreign oil production in the hands
of private American companies to the fullest possible extent,” in Acheson’s words.
The brutal U.S.-backed dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez (1948-1958) kept Venezuelans’
anti-imperialist and redistributive demands in check through imprisonment, torture,

1. “Surveillance: Roger Stone, Russia, & Venezuela,” Bloomberg Surveillance (podcast), January 25, 2019,
at 22:40 mark.
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and murder. Acheson reported that “the danger of nationalization of the oil industry
in Venezuela is not critical. However,” he warned, “popular sentiment for such action
is present in Venezuela” and could pose a future threat. 2

And indeed it did. In 1958 a popular movement overthrew Pérez Jiménez. Fortunately
for Washington and capitalists, though, the system that would reign for the next
four decades was a democracy in name only. Although the Venezuelan oil industry
was nominally nationalized in 1976, successive governments failed to promote any
significant redistribution of wealth within the country, which remained extremely
unequal and dominated by a small oligarchy of Venezuelan elites and foreign capitalists.
In fact, government officials did just the opposite: they implemented neoliberal
economic policies – austerity, privatization of public resources, and deregulation of
business – that funneled wealth upwards even more. Often presidential candidates
would campaign on anti-neoliberal platforms, only to betray those promises upon
taking office. Such was the case with the president elected in 1988, Carlos Andrés
Pérez, who upon taking office abandoned his progressive rhetoric and imposed
drastic austerity measures in line with International Monetary Fund (IMF) demands.
An immediate effect was to increase transportation fares, which sparked a massive
urban rebellion by the working class in February 1989. The protests spread quickly
throughout the country, and the government cracked down by declaring martial law
and killing hundreds of protesters. In the poor Caracas neighborhood of Petare, for
instance, the army opened fire on a crowd and killed at least twenty people. The total
number of deaths is unknown because many were buried in unmarked graves (for
more on this history, see Readings 33-34 below).

The 1989 rebellion and repression was a landmark event, known in Venezuela and
throughout Latin America as the Caracazo. Yet the government’s savage response
failed to extinguish popular aspirations. During the 1990s movements against
neoliberalism gained steam. The 1998 election of Hugo Chávez came on the heels
of these movements and gave them further encouragement. Once in office, Chávez
moved further left in response to diehard right-wing intransigence, on the one
hand, and progressive demands from his base, on the other. Following a failed U.S.-
backed military coup in 2002, and then an oil industry shutdown spearheaded by the
opposition, the Chávez government wrested control of the state oil company from its

2. Dean Acheson, “Memorandum by the Secretary of State to the Executive Secretary of the National
Security Council (Lay),” February 29, 1952 (Document 725), in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952-
1954 (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1983), 4: 1602; Walter J. Donnelly to Secretary of State, January
5, 1950, in U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 59, Central Decimal File,
1950-54, Box 4646.
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unelected right-wing administrators and began financing major new social programs
in sectors like healthcare, education, and housing, eventually under the slogan “21st-
Century Socialism.” By 2012, the poverty rate had been cut in half. These policies
won a strong majority of Venezuelans to Chavismo. Venezuelans also came to see
their country as more democratic than before, and more democratic than other Latin
American countries (On Chavista policies, see Readings 19-24 below).

The rage of the right-wing opposition and its bipartisan backers in Washington only
increased during Chávez’s time in office. Economically, they responded by trying
to handcuff the Venezuelan economy: through the oil industry shutdown, through
businesses’ withholding of consumer goods from the market, and various other
measures. In response, the Chávez administration accelerated its leftward shift. In the
mid-2000s it responded to capitalist hoarding by nationalizing certain manufacturing
industries. Around the same time, it began supporting a new revolutionary formation
known as “communal councils” (see below).

Politically, the opposition has also sought to destabilize the country at every turn.
Neither the Venezuelan right nor the U.S. government – Republicans nor Democrats –
have ever fully recognized the legitimacy of the Chávez government or of his elected
successor Maduro. Washington has funneled tens of millions of dollars to opposition
groups over the past two decades, grooming obscure fringe figures like Juan Guaidó
into civil society “leaders” who are ready and willing to work hand-in-hand with
the United States (Readings 10-11). At times the opposition parties have boycotted
elections that they weren’t sure they could win – as in the May 2018 presidential
contest – and then claimed that the results were illegitimate. Right-wing forces have
also made consistent efforts to overthrow or undermine the government through
various means, both military and non-military (see Readings 5-13). The Trump
administration represents the most extreme version of this policy to date, evident in
its open support for the unconstitutional overthrow of Maduro, its repeated threats
of military aggression, the devastating U.S. sanctions that have cost Venezuela
billions of dollars and harmed tens of millions of Venezuelans, and Trump officials’
unabashed admission that they are acting in unison with U.S. oil companies.

The Communes

Just as important as Chavismo’s antipoverty and nationalization measures was

Chávez’s support for participatory democracy. Starting in 2006, he lent his support
to the formation of tens of thousands of “communal councils” around the country
(Readings 25-32). The councils are participatory decision-making bodies that produce

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food and other goods, oversee local construction, transport, and infrastructure
projects, and resolve intra-community conflicts. They seek to move beyond traditional
structures of “representative” democracy to allow people to gather, debate, and make
decisions directly, without the mediation of professional politicians and bureaucrats.
In 2010 Chávez signed a “Communes Law” lending official support to the “commune”
structures that would link the local councils to each other in federated structures.
This process has continued long after Chávez’s death, despite the profound economic
crisis of the last several years. The Red Nacional de Comuneras (National Network
of Communers), for instance, has grown to include around 500 communes and 100
social movement organizations throughout Venezuela.

These experiments in socialism or communism “from below” are ultimately what

make the Venezuelan process so interesting. The comuneras advocate a participatory-
democratic version of revolution in which ever larger numbers of people develop the
capacity and freedom to make the decisions that affect their lives. The communes are
the most revolutionary actors in Venezuela, and are well to the left of most officials
in the ruling Socialist (PSUV) Party. Although they strongly prefer Chavismo over
right-wing alternatives, and while they insist that the existing state has obligations
to the people, they are also deeply skeptical of the state itself for its bureaucracy,
centralization, corruption, and structural tendency to favor capitalists. They
recognize that despite Chávez’s support for the communes, both the state and the
PSUV party remain rife with internal bureaucracy and class contradictions.

As our recommended sources suggest, the further expansion and empowerment of

the communes represents the most revolutionary – and also the most practical –
solution to Venezuela’s intertwined economic and political crises. The most pressing
manifestations of those crises are the shortage of domestic food production and
essential public services, the unaffordability of existing goods and services due to
hyperinflation, the capitalist strikes and U.S. sanctions that deny financial resources
to the country, and the often violent opposition of the extreme right, actively aided by
U.S. intervention. A less immediate but still urgent aspect of the crisis is Venezuela’s
ecologically unsustainable dependence on oil and mineral extraction, which Chavismo
has done little to confront (despite some interesting proposals for reducing fossil
fuels production made by Chávez and some other PSUV officials in years past) (see
Readings 41-44). While the Maduro government can take certain immediate steps
to mitigate these contradictions, the only real solution is to vest more power in the
hands of the people themselves, by greatly expanding the communes’ capacity to
produce and to govern.

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 Crisis under Maduro

The impressive social and economic gains of the Chávez era have not been maintained
under Maduro, who was elected in 2013 after Chávez died, and reelected in May 2018
in an election that most of the right-wing candidates chose to boycott. Although the
social programs have remained in place, the country has suffered a deep economic
crisis, with the currency (bolívar) losing value against the dollar, prices rising rapidly,
and goods becoming more and more scarce. In the last two years the economy has
seen an almost unprecedented rate of hyperinflation.

There are multiple causes of the crisis. Although Donald Trump and capitalist
ideologues blame “socialism,” the biggest part of the problem has little to do with
ideology. It’s the result of a chaotic monetary policy in which the government has
maintained a fixed exchange rate while limiting the access to dollars, causing the
dollar’s price on the black market to rise drastically against the bolívar. In this
context Venezuelans have sought to trade in their local currency for dollars, which
has reduced the bolívar’s value even more. Imports have gotten more expensive and
more scarce, exacerbating inflation, and importing companies have increased the
price of goods further on the Venezuelan market, basing their prices on the dollar’s
black market price.

The Maduro government shares a significant portion of the blame. Faced with
the crisis, it has been indecisive, incompetent, and erratic. It’s also true that some
powerful figures in the government benefit from the crisis, making money off
contraband, speculation, and corruption. The profiteers include not only capitalists
but also many corrupt PSUV officials (See Readings 20-21).

The economic crisis also has roots that are not the government’s fault. The most
important structural cause is the historic problem of dependence on oil exports, coupled
with extreme dependence on imports of food, medicine, and other goods to supply the
domestic market. When the global price of oil drops, as it did in 2008 and again in
2014, it causes a dramatic loss of revenue and reduces the ability to import needed
goods. Venezuela’s longtime status as an oil economy – irrespective of the various
policies adopted by its governments – is vital for understanding its vulnerability to
market forces. Both Chávez and Maduro can be faulted for not doing more to break the
country’s dependence on oil, but the problem is nearly a century old.
 
The Venezuelan right wing and its U.S. allies have taken full advantage of this situation,
intentionally making it worse. Among the other causes of the crisis are capitalist strikes
– in the form of capital flight and the hoarding of goods – and the hostile intervention

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of the U.S. government, which is designed to accentuate economic misery. Even right-
wing economist Francisco Rodríguez, a fierce critic of the government, notes that
U.S. sanctions are making a bad situation far worse. He suggests that the sanctions
that Trump put in place in August 2017 have prevented the state oil company from
accessing credit, leading to a precipitous drop in Venezuelan oil production, even as
world oil prices have rebounded. After one year the sanctions had cost Venezuela about
$6 billion, and the Trump administration recently ratcheted up sanctions targeting the
state oil company. It’s the height of hypocrisy for Trump or anyone else to blame the
Venezuelan government for the crisis while supporting sanctions, coups, capital flight,
hoarding, violent protesters, and other factors that intensify it.

Punishing Defiance
It’s hypocritical, but not illogical. It’s exactly the point of U.S. policy: to make
ordinary Venezuelans as miserable as possible, so that they’ll acquiesce to a right-
wing takeover by representatives of the old oligarchy, who will then Make Venezuela
Great Again (with help from U.S. oil companies).

U.S. policymakers aren’t upset about economic mismanagement, incompetence,

corruption, or undemocratic impulses – though all of those things are present
within the Venezuelan government. Rather, the cardinal sin is defiance of imperial
orders. U.S. intelligence reports from the past two decades, under both Republican
and Democratic administrations, have included Venezuela among a group of “radical
populist governments” that “emphasize economic nationalism at the expense of
market-based approaches.” Anti-imperialist and redistributive policies “directly
clash with US initiatives” and jeopardize vital U.S. “interests in the region.”3 By
questioning the logic of the market – and by forging links to alternate markets like
Russia and China in response to the hostility of Western capitalists – the Venezuelan
government has clashed with U.S. goals. Consequently, the Venezuelan people who
support or condone that behavior must be punished.

Other instances of defiance have met with the same response (Readings 14-18).
Soon after the 1959 Cuban Revolution, a State Department official wrote that
“every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life

3. J. Michael McConnell, “Annual Threat Assessment of the Intelligence Community for the House
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence,” February 7, 2008, p. 33; Dennis C. Blair, “Annual Threat
Assessment of the US Intelligence Community for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence,”
February 3, 2010, p. 30.
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of Cuba,” through an embargo and other policies designed to “make the greatest
inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real
wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.”4 As the
State Department Policy Planning Council noted a few years later, “The simple fact
is that Castro represents a successful defiance of the US, a negation of our whole
hemispheric policy of almost a century and a half.”5 To ensure that Cuba’s defiant
path was unsuccessful, Cubans had to be made hungry and desperate so that they
would attack their government. The goal was to crush the Cuban Revolution while
also sending a clear message to would-be imitators in the Global South. It was only
partly successful: Cuba’s defiance continues today, against enormous odds, and thus
it remains in the sights of Washington Republicans and Democrats alike.

The same logic guided the Nixon administration’s response to the elected socialist
government of Salvador Allende in Chile (1970-1973). In Henry Kissinger’s words,
Allende’s Chile was “most likely to appear as an ‘independent’ socialist country rather
than a Soviet satellite,” and therefore “its ‘model’ effect [could] be insidious,” inspiring
other oppressed peoples to pursue a similar path. Kissinger’s concern was “the prospect
that [Allende] can consolidate himself and the picture projected to the world will be his
success.”6 Hence Nixon’s famous instruction to “make [the] economy scream.”

Even without U.S. sanctions, Venezuela’s oil-dependent economy would have many
problems. But as commune organizer Atenea Jiménez notes, U.S. sanctions “produce
even more problems for our people.” They do so intentionally, to guarantee that the
Venezuelan people don’t furnish a model that could inspire others to defy empire
and capitalism. For Jiménez the real motive behind U.S. policy is clear: the suffering
of Venezuelans “doesn’t worry the Colossus of the North in the slightest – it’s just
an excuse for more global plundering, just like the weapons of mass destruction that
never turned up in Iraq…We’re faced with another disingenuous imperialist narrative,
to take control of our resource wealth and impose a government at the service of the
interests of big global businesses, as the government of Juan Guaidó proposes.”7

4. “Memorandum from the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs (Mallory) to
the Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs (Rubottom),” April 6, 1960 (Document 499), in
Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958-1960 (USGPO, 1991), 6: 887.

5. Quoted in Piero Gleijeses, Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959-1976 (UNC Press,
2002), 26.

6. Kissinger, Memo for the President, November 5, 1970, and National Security Council transcript,
November 6, 1970, National Security Archive.

7. Personal communication, February 21, 2019.

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 A Revolutionary Way Forward

The war for Venezuela is multifaceted. The United States and other right-wing
governments have allied with the far-right, antidemocratic opposition within
Venezuela to overthrow the Maduro government. Progressive people in Venezuela
uniformly oppose this agenda, and have rallied behind the Maduro government in
response. At the same time, however, most of Maduro’s own supporters have criticisms
of his government. Many of them seek to replace the state’s bureaucracy, corruption,
and authoritarian structures with participatory democratic alternatives. They want
an economy that is diverse, equitable, democratic, and ecologically sustainable.
The councils and communes have come to constitute a sort of dual power within
the country, signifying a revolutionary alternative to both the right and the PSUV
leadership. As such, they have received only partial and grudging support (at best)
from Chavista state officials. Yet it is they who hold the only real answers in this
time of profound crisis.

The same spirit is apparent in recent statements from diverse Venezuelan

revolutionaries, who unequivocally condemn the coup attempt and U.S. imperialism
while also urging the Maduro government to change course. For example, on January 27
the Revolutionary Sex-Gender Diverse Alliance condemned “imperialist interference,”
but also called on Maduro “to radicalize the processes of true empowerment of the
grassroots and not to delay further the advance towards a productive economy that
surpasses the economic behavior centered on the extraction of oil and our position
as a mining enclave in the international division of labor.” The Alliance characterized
the Maduro administration as “the expression of a multitude of contradictions that
are still in the process of being resolved,” and demanded an end to “practices such as
corruption, bureaucracy, political patronage, waste, ecocide and police brutality that
are privileged instruments by which the order of capitalist plundering over common
goods and Nature is imposed. If these measures are not assumed, the nation-state
will only be weakened definitively as a trench against the advance of global capital.”

For those of us who live in the imperial centers, our primary duty is to oppose U.S.
intervention in Venezuelan affairs – through street protests, civil disobedience,
education, social media campaigns that elevate the voices of Venezuelan
revolutionaries, and the various other means at our disposal. Supporting “the
Venezuelan people’s need for free self-determination,” in Atenea Jiménez’s words,
should be our focus. Doing so does not mean defending all the actions of the Maduro
government. Those who want to stand in solidarity with Venezuelans should take their
cues from the grassroots forces of liberation who are seeking to build an egalitarian,
democratic, and sustainable society in Venezuela – not from the Venezuelan state,

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and certainly not from the capitalist and imperialist forces that are behind the
current coup attempt. Some solidarity activists argue that we should never criticize
governments that oppose U.S. imperialism. But true solidarity involves siding with
the most oppressed and most revolutionary forces in other societies (Readings 45-
53). In Venezuela, those forces have uniformly condemned U.S. imperialism and the
right-wing opposition and have united in defense of Venezuelan sovereignty, even as
they continue to express their criticisms of the Maduro government.

Solidarity also means making revolution here at home. If we truly want to end U.S.
imperialism – rather than just protesting its most grotesque manifestations as they’re
happening – we must abolish the system that produces imperialist policies. That
means creating new, democratic institutions that can replace capitalist enterprises,
the market, the Pentagon, and the other tyrannical institutions that dominate our
society. It means taking a page from the playbook of the Venezuelan comuneras, by
constructing councils and communes in our workplaces, neighborhoods, cities, and
beyond. Unlike our current government and economic system, those bodies would
be directly accountable to the people whose lives are affected by their policies. They
would incentivize cooperation, solidarity, and negotiation rather than selfishness and
domination. Then, and only then, can we put an end to imperialism and to the parasitic
forces of capitalism, patriarchy, racism, and authoritarianism that undergird it.

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 Recommended Sources:

Note: The best English-language source for updates on Venezuela is the Venezuela
Analysis website. A variety of other sources also feature regular reports and analysis.
See particularly Democracy Now, the Real News Network, and the North American
Congress on Latin America.

The Current Crisis

1. See interviews with scholars and activists featured at Democracy Now’s
Venezuela page and The Real News Network’s Latin America page
2. “What Is Going on in Venezuela? Testimonies on the Ongoing Coup,” Venezuela
Analysis, February 4, 2019
3. Steve Ellner, “Regime Change ‘Made in the U.S.A.,” NACLA, February 8, 2019
4. George Ciccariello-Maher, “Venezuela: Call It What It Is – a Coup,” Nation,
January 25, 2019

U.S. Imperialism in Venezuela

5. Noam Chomsky, et al., “An Open Letter to the United States: Stop Interfering in
Venezuela’s Internal Politics,” Common Dreams, January 24, 2019
6. Alex Main and Greg Wilpert, “The US Strategy for Regime Change in Venezuela,”
The Real News, January 25, 2019 (video/transcript)
7. Greg Grandin, “How the Right Is Using Venezuela to Reorder Politics,” Nation,
January 25, 2019
8. Greg Wilpert and Mark Weisbrot, “Trump Sanctions Against Venezuela Have
Decimated Oil Production,” The Real News, January 18, 2019
9. Alexander Main, “The United States’ Hand in Undermining Democracy in
Venezuela,” NACLA, May 17, 2018
10. Dan Beeton, Jake Johnston, and Alexander Main, “Venezuela,” in The WikiLeaks
Files: The World According to US Empire (Verso, 2015)
11. Eva Golinger, “NED Report: International Agencies Fund Venezuelan Opposition
with $40-50 Million Annually,” Venezuela Analysis, June 21, 2010
12. Andrew Fishman and Glenn Greenwald, “Overwhelmed NSA Surprised to
Discover Its Own Surveillance “Goldmine” on Venezuela’s Oil Executives,” The
Intercept, November 18, 2015
13. Eva Golinger, The Chavez Code: Cracking US Intervention in Venezuela (Olive
Branch, 2006)

U.S. Imperialism in the Rest of Latin America

14. William Blum, Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions since World War II,

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 revised edition (Zed, 2003) (full pdf)
15. Greg Grandin, Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise
of the New Imperialism (New York: Metropolitan, 2006)
16. John Dinges, The Condor Years: How Pinochet and His Allies Brought Terrorism
to Three Continents (New Press, 2004)
17. Noam Chomsky, Turning the Tide: U.S. Intervention in Central America and the
Struggle for Peace (South End, 1985)
18. Noam Chomsky, Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance
(Henry Holt, 2003)

Chavismo’s Economic and Social Policies, 1999-Present

19. Steve Ellner, “Social and Political Diversity and the Democratic Road to Change
in Venezuela,” in Latin America’s Radical Left: Challenges and Complexities of
Political Power in the Twenty-First Century, ed. Steve Ellner (Rowman and
Littlefied, 2014). Spanish version.
20. Ryan Mallett-Outtrim, “Revolutionise or Compromise? What Venezuela’s Maduro
Could Be Doing (And What Is He Actually Doing),” Venezuela Analysis,
December 20, 2016
21. Mark Weisbrot, “Venezuela’s Economic Crisis: Does It Mean That the Left Has
Failed?” Truthout, October 23, 2016
22. Daniel Finn, “Unfinished Business,” Jacobin, May 22, 2017
23. Gregory Wilpert, Changing Venezuela by Taking Power: The History and Policies
of the Chávez Government (Verso, 2006)
24. Diana L. Raby, Democracy and Revolution: Latin America and Socialism Today
(Pluto, 2006)

Communes and “Socialism from Below”

25. “Communes in Progress: An Interview with Atenea Jiménez,” NACLA Report on
the Americas 46, no. 2 (2013): 31-34
26. George Ciccariello-Maher, “Venezuela: ¡Comuna o nada!” ROAR Magazine no. 1
(2016)
27. “21st-Century Socialism: Venezuela’s Communes in Historical Perspective”
(panel featuring Atenea Jiménez and George Ciccariello-Maher), October 17,
2018. English transcript; Spanish audio
28. Dario Azzellini, Communes and Workers’ Control in Venezuela: Building 21st
Century Socialism from Below (Haymarket, 2018)
29. George Ciccariello-Maher, Building the Commune: Radical Democracy in
Venezuela (Verso, 2016)
30. Carlos Martínez, Michael Fox, and JoJo Farrell, eds., Venezuela Speaks! Voices
from the Grassroots (PM, 2010)

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31. Michael Lebowitz, Build it Now: Socialism for the 21st Century (Monthly Review,
2006)
33. Ana Felicien, Christina Schiavoni and Liccia Romero, “The Politics of Food in
Venezuela,” Monthly Review (June 2018)

Venezuelan Social Movements Prior to 1999

34. George Ciccariello-Maher, We Created Chávez: A People’s History of the
Venezuelan Revolution (Duke, 2013)
35. Alejandro Velasco, Barrio Rising: Urban Popular Politics and the Making of Modern
Venezuela (UC Press, 2015)
36. Sujatha Fernandes, Who Can Stop the Drums? Urban Social Movements in
Chávez’s Venezuela (Duke, 2010)

Gender, Sexuality, and Feminism

37. “Women and Chavismo: An Interview with Yanahir Reyes,” NACLA Report on the
Americas 46, no. 2 (2013): 35-39
38. Sujatha Fernandes, “Barrio Women and Popular Politics in Chávez’s Venezuela,”
Latin American Politics and Society 49, no. 3 (2007): 97-127

The Venezuelan Right

39. Miguel Tinker Salas, “What Is Happening in Venezuela?” CEPR blog, March 4,
2014
40. Lucas Koerner, “The Truth about Venezuela’s Opposition,” Jacobin, November 1,
2016
41. Gabriel Hetland, “A History of Violence,” Jacobin, September 11, 2016

Oil, Environment, and Ecology

42. Miguel Tinker Salas, The Enduring Legacy: Oil, Culture, and Society in Venezuela
(Duke, 2009)
43. Cira Pascual Marquina, “The Orinoco Mining Arc’s Impact: A Conversation with
Emiliano Teran Mantovani,” Venezuela Analysis, October 10, 2018
44. “The First Ecosocialist International: Combined Strategy and Plan of Action,”
December 19, 2017
45. Rebecca McMillan, “Greening the Venezuelan Constitution: Proposals from the
Grassroots,” Venezuela Analysis, July 21, 2017

Global Anti-Imperialist/Solidarity Movements

46. Kevin Young, “Venezuela and the Global Left: What We Might Learn from Our
Venezuelan Counterparts,” Z, February 27, 2014

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47. Emily K. Hobson and Aaron Lecklider, “Transnational Solidarity on the Gay
and Lesbian Left: An Interview With Emily Hobson,” Viewpoint Magazine,
February 1, 2018
48. Héctor Perla, Jr., “Si Nicaragua venció, El Salvador vencerá: Central American
Agency in the Creation of the U.S.-Central American Peace and Solidarity
Movement,” Latin American Research Review 43, no. 2 (2008): 136-58
49. Van Gosse, “‘The North American Front’: Central American Solidarity in the
Reagan Era,” in Reshaping the US Left: Popular Struggles in the 1980s, ed. Mike
Davis and Michael Sprinker (Verso, 1988), 11-49
50. Emily K. Hobson, Lavender and Red: Liberation and Solidarity in the Gay and
Lesbian Left (UC Press, 2016)
51. Renny Golden and Michael McConnell, Sanctuary: The New Underground
Railroad (Orbis, 1986)
52. Roger Peace, A Call to Conscience: The Anti-Contra War Campaign (UMass, 2012)
53. Christian Smith, Resisting Reagan: The U.S. Central America Peace Movement
(Chicago, 1996)
54. Kim Scipes, ed., Building Global Labor Solidarity in a Time of Accelerating
Globalization (Haymarket, 2016)

Critical Analysis of Media Coverage

55. For regular critiques, see Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting’s Venezuela page
56. Alan MacLeod, Bad News from Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and
Misreporting (Routledge, 2018)
57. Kevin Young, “The Good, the Bad, and the Benevolent Interventionist: U.S. Press
and Intellectual Distortions of the Latin American Left,” in Latin America’s
Radical Left: Challenges and Complexities of Political Power in the Twenty-
First Century, ed. Steve Ellner (Rowman & Littlefield, 2014), 249-69
58. Kevin Young, “Colombia and Venezuela: Testing the Propaganda Model,” NACLA
Report on the Americas (November-December 2008): 50-52
59. For a classic analysis of U.S. press coverage of foreign affairs, see Edward S.
Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy
of the Mass Media (Pantheon, 2002)

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