Venezuela

The radical writer and author of 2013’s We Created Chavez could be describing the entire Venezuelan Revolution as well. Indeed, his latest book does just that — discussing the complexities of commune building, as well as the past and current forces at battle more broadly in Venezuela.

Like the Russian president, Mr. Erdogan did not shrink from challenging the existing status-quo, claiming for Ankara the status of leader of the Muslim world. From the point of view of the Western elite, both of these politicians have signed their own death warrants with such declarations.

Current events in Venezuela and the political opposition’s call for global protests against President Maduro conjure memories of the 2002 coup d’état - a moment marked by violence all too familiar for most Venezuelans. The opposition’s public call for national and international protests slated for September 1st accompanied by transportation strikes in

Journalists generally aren’t supposed to print their own imaginary stories as established fact, but that’s exactly what seems to happen on a regular basis when covering Venezuela. The latest example of this was the viral story of a mob of half starved Venezuelans descending on a zoo to consume a prized show horse. At the time of writing, the latest incarnation of the

Theotonio Dos Santos is one of the pillars of the Dependency Theory and the term “World-systems”. Now, on his trip to Buenos Aires, where he was invited by the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO), which he co-founded, he explains the reasons why Dilma Rousseff’s government is agonizing and, parallelly, the region is experiencing a return to neoliberalism, even though it seemed to be in the past history of the continent.

A local leader of Venezuela’s United Socialist Party (PSUV) was gunned down in south-central Caracas Monday by alleged members of an armed criminal group. Elizabeth Aguilera, 43, was the head of the local PSUV chapter– known as Bolívar-Chávez Battle Units– in the working class neighborhood of Cota 905 in the Caracas municipality of El Libertador.

Washington has caused enormous damage to Venezuela in its relentless pursuit of “regime change” for the last 15 years. In March, President Obama once again absurdly declared Venezuela to be an "unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States,” and extended economic sanctions against the country.

Is Venezuela descending into a nightmarish scenario, as these stories suggest? To answer this question I’ve spent the last three weeks talking to dozens of people—rich and poor, Chavista and opposition, urban and rural—across Venezuela.

The Bolivarian Revolution faces determined attacks led by Venezuelan elites. But the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) shares blame for the current situation. The party’s relationship with its mass base had deteriorated; corruption and economic turmoil impact ordinary Venezuelans; and the bid to democratize the state was largely abandoned. These all left an opening for the opposition.

By Mark Weisbrot It is clear that the executive branch of the U.S. government favors the coup underway in Brazil, even though they have been...