3 Counter Summits Called on Public to Stand Against Biden Administration’s ‘Failed’ Summit of the Americas

Editor’s Note: The following represents the writer’s opinion and was first published in Black Agenda Report.

From April 11 to 13, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela hosted the “International Summit Against Fascism ” in Caracas. Two hundred journalists and activists from five continents attended the summit, where the 20th anniversary of the short-lived coup d’état against Hugo Chávez was commemorated, in the context of the importance of media in movements and as a milestone in the continued fight against the global consolidation of right-wing political forces and rising fascism.

The three-day event featured panel discussions about the right-wing forces the people of Venezuela defeated in 2002 compared to the fascist elements operating in countries across the Global South, and now in Ukraine, as well as the relevant emergence of fascism in the United States that emanates from both political parties to support dictators and police states.

Popular communication and the role of media were extensively discussed, as the complicity of the Venezuelan media was recalled in several panel discussions. The coordination of all major Venezuelan media outlets to disseminate the lie that former President Hugo Chávez had relinquished his presidency in 2002 was not only recounted as part of the timeline of events of the overturned coup but also compared to the present consolidation of US media and those of its allies regarding the proxy war in Ukraine. The willingness of media CEOs and news anchors to lie to the people of Venezuela in 2002 seemed to be an omen for what was described as the media dictatorship that is spinning an equally false narrative about Ukraine right now.

The Venezuelan media was not the sole topic in the examination of the 2002 coup attempt. The United States government’s support of the violent and undemocratic right-wing in the country was also a common theme raised by many presenters. The role of members of the US foreign policy team such as then Secretary of State Colin Powell and CIA Director George Tenet whose demonization of Chávez in hearings before Congress set the stage for US intervention in Venezuela. Chávez – who had been president for just two years at the time of the coup – had committed two unforgivable offenses:

1. He held meetings with the leaders of the sworn enemies of the US: Cuba, Iran, and Libya, and
2. He criticized the U.S. response to 9/11 in Afghanistan

Kidnapped by the fascist plotters in the government and facilitated by the media, Chávez was secreted away and held captive for two days while the Venezuelan people were told that there was a new president in town. But if that were the end of the story, there would have been no need for this conference.

While the play-by-play of the coup revealed details that most Americans had surely never heard before – such as how all the media outlets declared there was a new government in place on the morning, but played nothing but cartoons on every station for the rest of the day while the coup government was hastily being legitimized. The most fascinating and important aspects of this important historical event was the role of communication among the people in returning Chávez to power and restoring the constitutional democracy that the people shaped under him.

During the panel on Popular Resistance and Response, Yesenia Fuentes , president of the Association of Victims of April 11, recounted how she – a poor single mother – heard from neighbors that the media had lied, that Chávez had not resigned and was still president. Having not been particularly political before Chávez, Fuentes said she joined her neighbors and countrymen who took to the streets marching toward Miraflores – the presidential palace – to demand the whereabouts of the president they elected in a landslide just two years earlier.

It is important that Fuentes survived being shot in the face by Venezuelan soldiers ordered to open fire on the people. But what might be more important in a purely political sense is that Fuentes and tens of thousands of Venezuelans took to the streets in defiance of the intense media propaganda, in defense of deadly fascist violence, to demand that the constitution the people helped shape after the landslide election of Hugo Chávez be restored. Yes, the people wanted their president back, but they were fighting for the democracy they shaped even more.

And this was the context in which the people appealed to the military to join them in demanding the release of President Chávez two days after he was kidnapped. Media images from the people flooding the streets, pressing against the gates of Miraflores, the Presidential palace, with signs demanding to know, “Dondé está Chávez? Que hablas! – Where is Chavez? What do you say?”

These details and others about how popular resistance among the people overturned the first-ever media-led US-backed fascist coup in 2002 were shared during the panel, which also connected that history with the need to commit to and expand popular communication today.

The challenges facing popular communication were raised in panels involving current Venezuelan journalists who talked about World War 2.0: Digital Political Communication In Globalization. They focused on the power of social media and independent media in the struggle against global fascism and its rapid consolidation. The coup in 2002 was an example of how media consolidation was used to subvert the will of the people then, and how media consolidation does the same thing today.

To accentuate that point, Ukrainian journalist Liubov Alexandriana Korsakov presented details about the 8-year civil war that has been raging in the Donbas region. She spoke of media silence on that war, including complicity in crafting a false narrative about the Russian military action in Ukraine. At the end of her presentation, she held up a flag of the Donbas militia, emblazoned with the letter Z – and urged continued support and journalistic attention on the fight against fascists in the Kiev army who were armed and legitimized by the US. A flag and a letter, incidentally, that have been banned in Kiev by the so-called democratic government of Volodymyr Zelensky.

Attending Militia Day celebrations was a disconcerting experience since in the US citizens’ relationship with the police and military is not an amicable one, even though many of them come from the working class and poor masses. However, the legacy of April 11-13 as well as the Bolivarian Revolution reshaped the relationship between the people and the military. Carlos Ron, Venezuela’s Vice Minister of North America, shared the story of how the famous letter from President Chávez was delivered to the people. A young soldier heard from the media that Chávez had resigned. Tasked with guarding the kidnapped president, the soldier asked Chávez if it was true, if he had really resigned. Chávez answered that he had not and he never would do such a thing. The soldier convinced Chávez to write a letter, sign it, and put it in a nearby trashcan because no one would look for anything there. He would retrieve the letter and get it to whomever Chávez told him to. Letter in hand, the soldier delivered it to the former Attorney General, but then went on to tell his fellow servicemen that the news about Chávez resigning was a lie, and he had proof.

Meanwhile, the Attorney General took the letter to the media and uttered one sentence, “President Chávez has not renounced,” and that was enough to send the people into the streets to defend their constitution and demand the return of Chávez. But on the way, they were met by soldiers and pleaded with them to adhere to the constitution they also participated in shaping, and many did.

Therefore, Militia Day does not present the contradictions of the military being agents of the state who are against the people as they operate in the US. Despite whatever internal struggles and contradictions they experience, the military largely supported and continues to support the Bolivarian Revolution that they were key in restoring on April 13.

President Nicolas Maduro commemorated April 11 with a press conference to honor the people’s popular resistance to the coup, with the attendees of the summit as his special guests. President Maduro sat behind a remarkably simple long desk with a portrait of Simon Bolivar and the Venezuelan flags adorning the podium as he recounted the deep history of April 11-13, complete with showing relevant newsreels and providing several well-timed and sharply pointed jabs at the coup-plotters and their backers in the US. But even as he recounted the steps leading up to the coup and how it was overturned by popular resistance and communication, he took the opportunity to not just focus on Venezuela’s struggle, but to offer solidarity to Chilean victims of fascist police violence in the city of Renato, and offered the same assistance to Colombians suffering the same fate.

The current struggles in Venezuela against ongoing U.S. repression are not disconnected from Hugo Chavez; he is not in the past, but he is very present in the consciousness of the people he focused on the most – the Indigenous, Afro-Venezuelans, peasants in the mountains, and the poor in the barrios in the hills above Caracas and those throughout the country.

The Cuartel 4F and museum – the final resting place and museum for President Chávez – is located among the people in the mostly poor barrio of the Monte Piedad sector where he tried to wage his armed struggle against the fascist government of Carlos Andrés Pérez in 1992. After being pardoned from prison in 1994, Chavez started the Fifth Republic Movement which was more centrist than revolutionary, but was focused on lifting those Venezuelans who had been left out of the political process and society up and bringing them into participating in a new kind of government.

Visiting the museum at the Cuartel de 4F where his body lies in a marble-encased tomb surrounded by ceremonial guards and reflective pools of water, Chavez’s grassroots political education in the speeches he gave in those neighborhoods on flatbed trucks, speaking to people in forgotten villages in the mountains, and in the middle of the most impoverished barrios in the cities is showcased. Inspired by his desire to free all Venezuelans from poverty, inequality, oppression, and political isolation, the people voted in record numbers to put Chávez in the presidential office in 2000, and as a result one of his first acts was to immediately begin the process of including the people who voted for him in rewriting the country’s constitution. This was the beginning of the Bolivarian Revolution, and the coup in 2002 was designed to stop a true people-powered and focused state from taking shape.

Walking through the new exhibit commemorating April 11-13, the sights, sounds, and lessons of that time illuminate how Chávez’s revolution spurred the people to defend their new democracy against the most powerful fascist state in the world. The inspiration he drew upon – from his own upbringing as one of the forgotten poor in a small village to his faith in Jesus Christ as a force for social equality and liberation, his commitment to protecting the people and environment they live in – was on full display to erase any confusion about the ability for those concepts of faith and revolution to co-exist successfully. They did in Chávez and they still do in many Venezuelans who will openly weep if asked how they feel about their Comandante.

At the end of the summit, the phrase, “The people, united, will never be defeated” takes on a whole new and relevant life, and the word democracy has a legitimate meaning.

Because Venezuela continues to prove that statement to be true.

Jacqueline Luqman is a radical activist based in Washington, D.C.; as well as co-founder of Luqman Nation, an independent Black media outlet that can be found on YouTube (here and here) and on Facebook; co-host of Radio Sputnik’s “By Any Means Necessary;” and a Toward Freedom board member.

Cuba, like every other country on the planet, is struggling with the impact of COVID-19. This small island of 11 million people has created five vaccine candidates and sent its medical workers through the Henry Reeve International Medical Brigade to heal people around the world. Meanwhile, the United States hardens a cruel and illegal blockade of the island, a medieval siege that has been in place for six decades. In April 2020, seven United Nations special rapporteurs wrote an open letter to the United States government about the blockade. “In the pandemic emergency,” they wrote, “the lack of will of the U.S. government to suspend sanctions may lead to a higher risk of such suffering in Cuba and other countries targeted by its sanctions.” The special rapporteurs noted the “risks to the right to life, health and other critical rights of the most vulnerable sections of the Cuban population.”

On July 12, 2021, Cuba’s President Miguel Díaz-Canel told a press conference that Cuba is facing serious shortages of food and medicine. “What is the origin of all these issues?” he asked. The answer, he said, “is the blockade.” If the U.S.-imposed blockade ended, many of the great challenges facing Cuba would lift. Of course, there are other challenges, such as the collapse of the crucial tourism sector due to the pandemic. Both problems—the pandemic and the blockade—have increased the challenges for the Cuban people. The pandemic is a problem that people all over the world now face; the U.S.-imposed blockade is a problem unique to Cuba (as well as about 30 other countries struck by unilateral U.S. sanctions).

Origin of the Protests

On July 11, people in several parts of Cuba—such as San Antonio de los Baños—took to the streets to protest the social crisis. Frustration about the lack of goods in shops and an uptick in COVID-19 infections seemed to motivate the protests. President Díaz-Canel said of the people that most of them are “dissatisfied,” but that their dissatisfaction is fueled by “confusion, misunderstandings, lack of information and the desire to express a particular situation.”

On the morning of July 12, U.S. President Joe Biden hastily put out a statement that reeked of hypocrisy. “We stand with the Cuban people,” Biden said, “and their clarion call for freedom.” If the U.S. government actually cared about the Cuban people, then the Biden administration would at the very least withdraw the 243 unilateral coercive measures implemented by the presidency of Donald Trump before he left office in January 2021; Biden—contrary to his own campaign promises—has not started the process to reverse Trump’s designation of Cuba as a “state sponsor of terrorism.” On March 9, 2021, Biden’s spokesperson Jen Psaki said, “A Cuba policy shift is not currently among President Biden’s top priorities.” Rather, the Trump “maximum pressure” policy intended to overthrow the Cuban government remains intact.

The United States has a six-decade history of trying to overthrow the Cuban government, including using assassinations and invasions as policy. In recent years, the U.S. government has increased its financial support of people inside Cuba and in the Cuban émigré community in Miami, Florida; some of this money comes directly from the National Endowment for Democracy and from USAID. Their mandate is to accelerate any dissatisfaction inside Cuba into a political challenge to the Cuban Revolution.

On June 23, Cuba’s Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez said that the Trump “measures remain very much in place.” They shape the “conduct of the current U.S. administration precisely during the months in which Cuba has experienced the highest infection rates, the highest death toll and a higher economic cost associated with the COVID-19 pandemic.”

 

Costs of the Pandemic

On July 12, Alejandro Gil Fernández, Cuba’s minister of economy and planning, told the press about the expenses of the pandemic. In 2020, he said, the government spent $102 million on reagents, medical equipment, protective equipment and other material; in the first half of 2021, the government spent $82 million on these kinds of materials. This is money that Cuba did not anticipate spending—money that it does not have as a consequence of the collapsed tourism sector.

“We have not spared resources to face COVID-19,” Fernández said. Those with COVID-19 are put in hospitals, where their treatment costs the country $180 per day; if the patient needs intensive care, the cost per day is $550. “No one is charged a penny for their treatment,” Fernández reported.

The socialist government in Cuba shoulders the responsibility of medical care and of social insurance. Despite the severe challenges to the economy, the government guarantees salaries, purchases medicines and distributes food as well as electricity and piped water. That is the reason why the government added $2.4 billion to its already considerable debt overhang. In June, Cuba’s Deputy Prime Minister Ricardo Cabrisas Ruíz met with French Minister of Economy and Finance Bruno Le Maire to discuss the economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. France, which manages Cuba’s debt to the public creditors in the Paris Club, led the effort to ameliorate the debt servicing demands on Havana.

Costs of the Blockade

On June 23, 184 countries in the UN General Assembly voted to end the U.S.-imposed blockade on Cuba. During the discussion over the vote, Cuba’s Foreign Minister Rodríguez reported that between April 2019 and December 2020, the government lost $9.1 billion due to the blockade ($436 million per month). “At current prices,” he said, “the accumulated damages in six decades amount to over $147.8 billion, and against the price of gold, it amounts to over $1.3 trillion.”

If the blockade were to be lifted, Cuba would be able to fix its great financial challenges and use the resources to pivot away from its reliance upon tourism. “We stand with the Cuban people,” says Biden; in Havana, the phrase is heard differently, since it sounds like Biden is saying, “We stand on the Cuban people.”

Cuba’s Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz said that those who took to the streets on July 11 “called for foreign intervention and said that the [Cuban] Revolution was falling. They will never enjoy that hope,” he said. In response to those anti-government protests, the streets of Cuba filled with tens of thousands of people who carried Cuban flags and the flags of the Cuban Revolution’s 26th of July Movement. Cruz said, “The people responded and defended the revolution.”

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

Manolo De Los Santos is a researcher and a political activist. For 10 years, he worked in the organization of solidarity and education programs to challenge the United States’ regime of illegal sanctions and blockades. Based out of Cuba for many years, Manolo has worked toward building international networks of people’s movements and organizations. In 2018, he became the founding director of the People’s Forum in New York City, a movement incubator for working-class communities to build unity across historic lines of division at home and abroad. He also collaborates as a researcher with Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and is a Globetrotter/Peoples Dispatch fellow.

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is the chief editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He is a senior non-resident fellow at Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China. He has written more than 20 books, including The Darker Nations and The Poorer Nations. His latest book is Washington Bullets, with an introduction by Evo Morales Ayma.

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by People’s Dispatch.

On August 20, the newly inaugurated left-wing government of President Gustavo Petro and Vice President Francia Márquez in Colombia launched the first Unified Command Post for Life (PMU) in the municipality of Caldono, in the Cauca department. The PMU is an initiative that aims to achieve total peace and protect the population affected by violence across the country, especially social leaders, human rights activists, environmentalists and former combatants of the demobilized FARC guerilla group.

The launch was led by Interior Minister Alfonso Prada, Environment Minister Susana Muhamad, Labor Minister Gloria Inés Ramírez, and around 30 legislators from across the political spectrum, including the president of the Senate, Roy Barreras, and the president of the Peace Commission of the Senate, Iván Cepeda.

Con las ministras de Trabajo y Ambiente, @GloriaRamirezRi y @susanamuhamad, el presidente del Senado, @RoyBarreras, y la Comisión de Paz del Congreso con su presidente @IvanCepedaCast, estamos a esta hora en Caldono, Cauca, escuchando las demandas y preocupaciones de la comunidad pic.twitter.com/e2J6BoCg7n

— Alfonso Prada (@alfonsoprada) August 20, 2022

“We have installed the PMU, which is a command post to achieve rapid security in a preventative approach, not in the approach of sadness when we receive the news of the death of social leaders,” Prada said.

Prada explained that the protection plan will cover the 65 municipalities hardest hit by violence in the country, adding that initial emphasis will be placed on “5 to 10 of them, which are in a very delicate situation and are systematically assassinating their leaders.” He said that the state would provide accompaniment and maintain a permanent presence in those 10 municipalities.

The Interior Minister said that the government is particularly committed to the Cauca department. “For us, Cauca is a huge priority… If we achieve integral and total peace in Cauca, I have no doubt that we can dream of having total peace in Colombia,” said Prada.

Prada explained that instructions had been given to the institutions that have powers related to the protection of the lives of social leaders, land defenders, environmentalists, community leaders, peace signatories, land restitution managers, and those who work in crop substitution.

Prada added that the government had already ordered the local authorities to comply with the early warnings issued by the Ombudsman’s Office, especially for the municipalities of Caldono, Buenos Aires and Santander de Quilichao, in Cauca. He also said that the government would strengthen the National Protection Unit (UNP).

For her part, Environment Minister Muhamad stressed that this plan recognizes land defenders as people who make a positive, important and legitimate contribution to the protection of nature and promotion of a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment. Muhamad assured that with the beginning of the plan, the implementation of the Escazú Agreement also begins, pending its ratification by the House of Representatives.

With regard to illegal paramilitary groups, Senator Barreras said that dialogues are the only way that allows peace. “The government and the congress have every desire to allow them to reintegrate into society and these command posts for life are spaces for dialogue and listening, the message that we are sending them is that they take advantage of the opportunity to lay down their arms so that they can join the life of Colombia,” said Barreras.

Iniciamos el Plan de Choque para salvaguardar la vida de las y los Líderes Sociales en Colombia, así como de quienes firmaron la paz .

Comisión del Gobierno Nacional, 20 congresistas y la Comunidad Internacional en defensa de la vida y la paz en los Territorio, rumbo al Cauca pic.twitter.com/sTQgD8i0rD

— Iván Cepeda Castro (@IvanCepedaCast) August 20, 2022

On August 19, the Ombudsman’s Office released a report in which it reported that between January 1 and July 31, 122 social leaders and human rights defenders had been assassinated in different departments of the country. It also reported that Cauca with 19 assassinations, Nariño with 17, Antioquia with 12, and Putumayo with 11, are the departments with the highest number of cases.

According to the Colombian human rights organization Institute of Development and Peace Studies (INDEPAZ), between January 1 and August 20, 119 environmentalists, land defenders, human rights defenders, Afro-descendent, Indigenous, peasant and social leaders had been killed by illegal armed and drug-trafficking groups operating in the country. Additionally, during this period, 32 ex-combatants of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), who were in the reincorporation process, had also been murdered.

Petro and Márquez, during their election campaign, vowed to fight drug trafficking and paramilitarism, and consolidate peace in the country. The day following their inauguration, on August 8, in the first press conference to local media, Petro confirmed the resumption of negotiations with the National Liberation Army (ELN), the largest leftist guerrilla group active in Colombia. On August 11, a delegation of the Colombian government, headed by Foreign Minister Álvaro Leyva Durán, visited Cuba to establish contact with the leadership of the ELN in order to advance towards peace negotiations. On August 20, President Petro announced that in order to further advance in the dialogue with the ELN, the arrest and extradition orders against the members of the insurgency group were suspended. At the same time, he confirmed the restitution of the negotiation protocols with the ELN that had been signed with the government of former president Juan Manuel Santos.