Published by the PSUV and edited by Marta Harnecker, this text includes selections from speeches given by Hugo Chávez on the 12th and 13th of November, 2004 to an assembly of Venezuelan governors, mayors, deputies, leaders of political parties, Military High Command, social leaders, and ministers. Chávez links what he is talking about now as president to the conspiracies by his comrades in the military that had attempted to overthrow the Venezuelan government in February and November of 1992. Some of the Strategies, Alliances, and Goals Chávez describes at the event are as follows:
Context:
In Latin America, we live in a very interesting time. In Latin America there is a great struggle, it is a historical struggle of at least two centuries. Let's look at the map of Latin America and the Caribbean. Let's look at South America. Two opposing axes have been defined, Caracas, Brasilia, Buenos Aires. That is the axis on which strong winds of change blow with great force. The empire will always try to weaken it or even break it... There is the other axis, Bogotá-Quito-Lima-La Paz-Santiago de Chile, that axis is dominated by the Pentagon, it is the Monrroista axis...Of course, our strategy must be to break that axis and form South American unity and I believe that it is not a dream, I believe that a situation like this has never occurred before in America. Three years ago we were Cuba and Venezuela, at the government level, and now how the situation has changed..."
Strategies:
"We will use all possible strategies, from a mobile defense strategy against the giant to the attack. The invasion of the United States is not planned, so don't write it down at this time."
Alliances:
"Even within the United States there are, as I said a while ago, support groups; sometimes they are individualities; sometimes they are stronger groups and currents, such as the indigenous currents of Ecuador; In Peru, in Bolivia, all these currents are Bolivarian, the peasant movements of Central America, of Brazil. There are also international support groups in the field of intellectuals."
Goals:
"Continue promoting the new multipolar and international system."
After Chávez gave his orations, the members present broke up into groups in order to develop plans how they could achieve the historical context and goals described by Chávez.
The First "Plan de la Patria" - Líneas Generales del Plan de Desarrollo Económico y Social de la Nación 2001-2007 - was published in June 2008 under the direction of Andrés Izarra, then director of the Ministry of Popular Power for Communication and Information.
Here Hugo Chávez
(1) Provides an assessment of what has transpired since his first election and the present:
"In the last seven years, the Bolivarian Revolution has implemented an intense foreign policy, breaking with the historical passivity that characterized Venezuela's relationship with the world, in which the fundamental element was mediatization and subordination to the geopolitical interests of North American imperialism.
Currently, Venezuela recovered its independence and sovereignty in the formulation of its international agenda. The new present circumstances determine that Venezuela advances towards a new stage in world geopolitics, based on a strategic relationship of greater clarity in the search for objectives of greater global leadership."
(2) Gives descriptions of geopolitical goals:
"New International Geopolitics: The construction of a multipolar world implies the creation of new poles of power that represent the break of unipolar hegemony, in the search for social justice, solidarity and guarantees of peace, under the deepening of fraternal dialogue between peoples, their self-determination and respect for freedom of thought."
(3) Gives descriptions of social goals:
"The Bolivarian Socialist Ethical Project's mission is to overcome the ethics of capital and focuses on the configuration of a revolutionary consciousness of the need for a new collective morality, which can only be achieved through the dialectic of the struggle for the material transformation of society and the development of the spirituality of those of us who live in this beautiful space of land that is Venezuela. Such dialectics should lead us to establish the conviction that if we do not change ourselves, it would be of no use to change external reality."
(4) Gives descriptions of objectives and and strategies:
"I-3.1. Transform society materially and spiritually
I-3.1.1. Rescuing values, such as solidarity.
I-3.1.2. Mainstream the teaching of ethics.
I-3.1.3. Collective realization of individuality.
I-3.1.4. New ethics of public events: the citizen as part of the State and co-responsible for public life.
I-3.1.5. Justice and equity without undermining the bases of law.
I-3.2. Develop revolutionary consciousness
I-3.2.1. New collective morality.
I-3.2.2. Civic awareness.
I-3.2.3. Militant active tolerance.
I-3.2.4. Pluralistic society.
I-3.2.5. Development of volunteering.
This document published on September 28, 2013 - prepared by Nicolas Maduro - describes the PSUV's macroeconomic and macrosocial goals; their reasons for action; their historical, national, strategic and general objectives; and policies and programs.
These include:
5.1.2., the promotion, nationally and internationally, of an ecosocialist ethic that promotes the transformation of unsustainable production and consumption patterns of the capitalist system and their stated commitment to contribute to the preservation of life on the planet and the salvation of the human species.
5.4. Contribute to the formation of a great world movement to contain the causes and repair the effects of climate change that occur as consequence of the predatory capitalist model.
Published April 8, 2019 in Gaceta Oficial, a State-sponsored publisher - The Proyecto Nacional Simón Bolívar: Tercer Plan Socialista de Desarrollo Económico y Social de la Nación contains national assessments by the PSUV was well as their objectives, indicators, references, and general actions they will take during the period of 2019-2025.
Here the PSUV describes themselves their goals as "decolonial":
"We assume decolonization as a transverse process of the whole society, in each of the dimensions of it. This is, in the principles and values, the exercise of participatory and leading democracy, popular and communal state, sovereignty of the productive system, import substitution, as well as new architecture of the territory.
They describe themselves not as managers of state, but as leaders of a revolutionary process:
"We are not the exercise of government management. We are a revolutionary process. In this, the transformation of the State, the fight against bureaucracy and corruption is not simply a problem of "management." It is the popular reconfiguration of the State, making the street government, in its different systemic scales, a constituent process to build the new popular, communal, sovereign state.
They describe their political goals as being linked to foreign national groups:
"Great historical objective IV. Contribute to the development of a new international geopolitics in which the multicenter and pluripolar world takes shape that allows the balance of the universe and guaranteeing planetary peace."
Published in 2016 by ALBA Movimientos, also known as the Continental Articulation of Social and Popular Movements Towards ALBA, a political network that brings together more than 400 organizations from 25 countries whose are political projects are anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, anti-colonial, anti-racist, and Socialist.
This document contains an account of a meeting held in May of 2016, wherein 50 representatives of social movements from 21 countries affiliated with ALBA met in Bogota and agreed to follow a Continental Action Plan that would result in their increasing their influences in society.
The Five axes on which these groups agreed to proceed was via: (1) Mass Struggles and Popular Organization (2) Articulation with Other Sectors (3) Mass Agitation and Dialogue (4) Internationalist Brigades and Internships (5) Popular Communication
23-24 September 2014 Speeches of the President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela at the 69th Session of the UN General Assembly, the Climate Summit 2014, and in an encounter with social movements in the Bronx.
The speech to the UN includes the following statement by Maduro: “Many times, since the time I was the foreign minister, I was asked by reporters: “How are your relations with the United States?” I always answered: “They are in the best moment ever in history”. This puzzled journalists. And I used to say, “Of course, because if you ask me how the relations with the United States go, with the U.S. people, with its society, I must say that we never had better relations with the people, with the universities, with the intellectuals, with the unions and social and religious movements. They never before were so good. If we make a profile of the status of the social and political relations between Venezuelan social movements and people, and the U.S. social movements and people – this is the best moment ever.”
In a speech given on June 22, 1996 Hugo Chávez presented his assessment of Venezuela's history and his proposal for radical change. His speech on this topic was supplemented with graphs and published in 2014 by the Government.
In this text Chávez describes how his political thought "aims to become the bridge through which we will travel towards the territory of concrete utopia, the possible dream. That is, the AAB offers a way out and lays the foundations for the Bolivarian Transition Project."
For Chávez, this "utopia" means a transition away from capitalism, representative democracy, and the creation of something new:
"The Bolivarian strategy proposes not only the restructuring of the State, but of the entire political system, from its philosophical foundations to its components and the relationships that regulate them. For that reason, we talk about the necessary process of reconstitution or refoundation of National Power in all its facets, based on legitimacy and sovereignty. The constituted power does not have, at this point, the slightest capacity to do so, so we will necessarily have to resort to the Constituent Power, to move towards the establishment of the Fifth Republic: the Bolivarian Republic."
To accomplish this feat, systemic changes are proposed which focus on "eight strategic guidelines", described below:
1. Role of the State: owner, promoter, regulator.
2. Oil policy. Internalization.
3. Ownership and management of the productive apparatus. Economic democracy.
4. Education, culture, science and technology. Autonomous and independent project.
5. External debt. Renegotiation, negotiated moratorium.
6. Macroeconomic balances. Mixed, expansive and selective policies.
7. Macrosocial balances. Satisfaction of basic needs.
8. Dynamization of production. Intermediate Productive Model
In short, Chávez's view of his government's mandate was to completely restructure Venezuelan society, as well as that of the world, according to his own interest.
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