The current situation requires a thorough analysis of what is behind titles, demonstrations, the manipulated dissemination of some facts, the dark concealment of others and the disguised propaganda of analysis in most mainstream media. The situation requires that superficial lies, and that they repeatedly seek to make them credible, should not be persuaded and, in the absence of serious and documented analysis, should not be dragged by the exciting response.

The elections on 28 July were not simple elections, such as those held in Venezuela in the last quarter of a century. What is decided goes far beyond the will of the Venezuelans. Defending the decision of this people is not from the cancilleras, which arouses think tanks, editorial lines and creative opinions on social networks. The “problem” is a popular process that struggles to build another model. A process that is still under way, although for more than two decades Venezuela has suffered a hybrid war (economic, financial, diplomatic, media, infrastructure sabotage, cyber attacks, attacks, paramilitaries of entry, guarimbas, psychological war…), which aims to render to the people, using as weapons hunger, diseases, shortages and, above all, despair. As with Cuba, the altruist is a blackmail disguised as an objective: “If you follow that path, this is what you have, misery and lack of a future; if you ignore that model, everything will improve.” Through all this, there are contradictions and inevitable errors characteristic of any attempt at social transformation that have intensified in the said state of siege.

The Venezuelan territory is strategic in the correlation of powers at regional and global level. Venezuela, along with Cuba and other states of the ALBA TCP, is the engine of Latin America’s integration in the face of U.S. imperialism, which will never tolerate losing its historical superiority over its “backyard”. Along with other regional experiences (MST, organized countries of origin…), Venezuela is developing popular power from collective organization through the community movement. Despite the scarcity of material and funding, despite the tensions with some positions found in the official apparatus of Chavism, but far from the concept of communal state formulated by Chávez, the community movement is consolidating, articulating throughout the territory and increasing the population. On August 25, the electoral process developed in communal circuits 4,050 is a clear example of participatory democracy and protagonist, where communities defined funding priorities among the proposed projects. Of course, none of those media that are so concerned about Venezuelan democracy has spoken about this... A model of popular democracy that has little to do with the bourgeois delegative democracy that sell us as the most developed democracy…

Venezuela is the meeting point of a large part of the regional and international left. Venezuela is oil, a lot of oil. Venezuela, moreover, has fluid relations with China, Russia or Iran in many areas, when they are not declared enemies, direct rivals of the United States to achieve global hegemony.

The goal is not Maduro. The goal is the process itself, Chavism. Without the physical presence of Chávez, but with an indelible duration in the collective subconscious, this project continues to be a source of inspiration for building a new society. That is the threat, that this historical experience will materialize, that it will prove its viability and that it will spread.

The pre-election situation on 28 July indicated that the far-right opposition and its sponsors would not recognize a result other than their victory. With their prospections they prepared the ground (while concealing the polls that gave Maduro the victory), activated the media machinery, blocked the web pages and counting systems. In those poor conditions in which the Government ' s information management might have been better (knowing what might happen), media and diplomatic pressure has called into question the results of the National Electoral Council and endorsed by the Supreme Court of Justice. In Venezuela, apparently, these institutions are not impartial but they are in other states… In any country they cannot be questioned, but in Venezuela the main reference is the website of a part of the opposition, an opposition that is far from being honest and transparent…

Although hope and energy tried to render the population for so many years in the Chavista project, despite the fact that the erosion of the economy, the devaluation of the currency, inflation and the lack of supplies are constant, Chavism continues to maintain social hegemony. Its presence, its strength and the illusion it conveys is undoubtedly lower than in other times. Some sectors have been fragmented by the Left and, despite claiming Chávez’s legacy, have not voted for official chavism in the presidential elections. Other sectors present in Chavism, larger but less ideological, have surrendered and have not voted or voted for other candidatures. Other sectors of popular origin did not exist and are not with Chavism. Among other things, feathers and unsuspecting that serve to offer the media the image of the streets in flames, often in return (the so-called commanders).

However, the sectors most aware of Chavism remain firm and, within their heterogeneity and internal criticisms, are united around the movement that protects them from the fascist revenge that would arrive in a possible scenario after Chavism, and the project that allows the continuation of the construction of popular power. They know that the solution is not to take a step back and that the best guarantee to resist and move forward is to radicalise the process of change and to continue to remove spaces of power from the oligarchy.

All these realities circulate in spiral, dynamic, in Venezuela, beyond the desires, falsehoods and shields of media propaganda.

It is an issue that goes beyond democracy. It is the question of the struggle for power, of imperialist superiority, of competition between powers, of class struggle.

Iñaki Etaio, Askapena militant