THREE ANTI-CHAVEZ SOCIALIST UNION LEADERS KILLED BY A HITMAN IN ARAGUA STATE, VENEZUELA [View All]

[Omaha Steve]

http://gangbox.wordpress.com/2008/12/19/three-anti-chavez-socialist-union-leaders-killed-by-a-hitman-in-aragua-state-venezuela/

Organize Workers Self-Defense Guards! For Workers Control of Production!

Leftist Union Leaders Assassinated in Venezuela

On the afternoon of November 27, some 400 workers at the Alpina milk plant in the Venezuelan state of Aragua occupied their plant demanding full payment of money owed them by the Colombian-owned company. At first, the bosses tried to get the workers to abandon their leaders in the UNT (National Workers Union). When that failed, state police swarmed onto the grounds, brutally beating the workers and seriously injuring four. But the union alerted workers in the industrial area, and according to a report by UNT state leader Luis Hernández, “within minutes, the plant was surrounded by workers of the Unión Nacional de Trabajadores. Thanks to this act of solidarity, it was possible to retake the plant, and the workers reoccupied it.”

Yet a few hours later, as they were heading home, Hernández and two other UNT leaders who had led the Alpina workers’ struggle that day, Richard Gallardo and Carlos Requena, were gunned down at a shopping center in the nearby town of Cagua by an assassin on a motorbike. The three were also cadres of the Unidad Socialista de Izquierda (USI, Left Socialist Unity), which has opposed the bourgeois populist government of Hugo Chávez and its attempts to impose state domination of labor. Whatever sinister force ordered the assassination, the blow was aimed at one of the most combative sectors of the Venezuelan workers movement. Despite Chávez’ socialist rhetoric, this is the reality of the Bolivarian “revolution” in Venezuela today: leftist unionists are murdered while the forces of bourgeois state repression back up the bosses.


Venezuelan workers shut down highways across state of
Aragua, December 2 to protest murder of leftist labor leaders. (Photos: El Siglo )


For the last year, Venezuela has been stuck in a stand-off between the leftist nationalist Chávez regime and the right-wing pro-imperialist opposition. In the November 23 regional elections, a pro-government “patriotic coalition” won back about 1.5 million votes Chávez lost in the constitutional referendum last year, while the opposition vote was lower this year. Yet the right elected several key governors and mayors, including the mayor of metropolitan Caracas. Significantly, the PSUV lost Petare, a working-class suburb of the capital which was long a chavista stronghold, as former Chávez supporters stayed home massively. In recent years, the government financed extensive social programs with superprofits from the high price of oil. But as oil prices plummet, Venezuela’s bourgeois “petrosocialism” is running into trouble. Still, Chávez has relaunched a drive for a constitutional amendment to allow him to be reelected.

Internationally, U.S. imperialism has kept the heat on the Venezuelan regime, reviled in Washington because of Chávez’ support for Cuba. This pressure will probably be more intense under Obama than under the widely hated Bush administration, as many in Latin America have illusions in a “kinder, gentler” Yankee imperialism, just as they had in John F. Kennedy. But then came JFK’s Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba while “Alliance for Progress” counterinsurgency programs killed hundreds of leftist insurgents. Earlier this year, the U.S. announced the revival of the Fourth Fleet (which hasn’t existed since 1950) to patrol the Caribbean. (During the 2002 coup, U.S. Navy ships stood offshore to aid the plotters.) Chávez effectively countered by inviting the Russian Navy to hold joint maneuvers this past week, to Washington’s great consternation. Trotskyists defend nationalist Venezuela and the Cuban deformed workers state against imperialism.


Richard Gallardo (left) and Luis Hernández, leaders of the UNT union federation in the state of Aragua and candidates of the Left Socialist Unity in recent elections, were gunned down November 27. (Photos: Aporrea)


This standoff cannot last indefinitely. Either Chávez will submit to “the empire,” or it will come to a showdown in which the alternative will ultimately be between workers revolution or bloody counterrevolution. Whether the murder of three leftist union leaders is part of a rightist plan for destabilization or another government attack on workers, it indicates that the day of reckoning is approaching sooner rather than later. The key question then will be, as it already is today, that of proletarian revolutionary leadership.

FULL story at link.