Upstream - Venezuela Ep. 7: On Ascending a High Mountain w/ Cira Pascual Marquina and Chris Gilbert

Episode Date: September 8, 2026

In this conversation, episode 7 in our ongoing series on Venezuela, we're joined by Cira Pascual Marquina and Chris Gilbert for an on-the-ground assessment of how Venezuela is navigating the latest phase of US imperialism. Chris Gilbert is a professor at Venezuela's Bolivarian University and a writer based in Caracas. He's the author of Commune or Nothing! Venezuela's Communal Movement and its Socialist Project. Cira Pascual Marquina is a researcher and popular educator at El Panal commune in Venezuela. She's the author, along with Chris, of The Present as Struggle: Voices from the Bolivarian Revolution and co-host, also along with Chris, of the Marxist educational project Escuela de Cuadros.  The conversation opens by discussing the new oil agreement imposed on Venezuela by the US regime and examining how it compares to other oil agreements in Latin America, how it compares to past agreements under Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro, and what the most problematic components of it are. We dicuss some of the other blows that Venezuela has experienced since January 3rd, including the shifts in Venezuela's relationship to US-aligned states such as Israel.  We then bring back the lens to discuss the larger picture in terms of the impacts of the US regime's interference in Venezuela and the Bolivarian revolution. We look at how the communes have responded to this interference, contextualizing the concessions within the broader assaults on Venezuelan sovereignty over the past several years. We also discuss the various allegations and rumors surrounding Delcy Rodriguez and her loyatly to Chavismo and why these narratives are harmful to the revolution. We are now on Youtube! You can find us and subscribe to our channel at youtube.com/@upstream_podcast Further resources: Commune or Nothing! Venezuela's Communal Movement and its Socialist Project The Present as Struggle: Voices from the Bolivarian Revolution A Great Leap into Reality, by Chris Gilbert and Cira Pascual Marquina Imperialism-Induced Fault Lines, by Chris Gilbert and Cira Pascual Marquina Against Amnesia, by Chris Gilbert and Cira Pascual Marquina Communal Responses in the Aftermath of the Earthquake, by Cira Pascual Marquina and Chris Gilbert  The Hour of the Furnaces, by Cira Pascual Marquina Defending Venezuela, by Chris Gilbert Hyper-Imperialism: A Dangerous Decadent New Stage On Ascending a High Mountain Related episodes: Listen to our ongoing series on Venezuela Listen to our ongoing series on Cuba Listen to our ongoing series on Iran Listen to our ongoing series on China Intermission music: "Don Samuel" by Ali Primera  Although the episodes in our series build on each other in certain ways, all of our series are designed so that each episode can be listened to as a standalone. Upstream is entirely listener funded. No ads, no promotions, no grants—just Patreon subscriptions and listener donations. We couldn't keep this project going without your support. Subscribe to our Patreon for bi-weekly bonus episodes, access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, and for Upstream stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. Through your support you'll be helping us keep Upstream sustainable and helping to keep this whole project going—socialist political education podcasts are not easy to fund so thank you in advance for the crucial support. patreon.com/upstreampodcast For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

Many people, they've followed into the trap, I think set up by U.S. imperialism, to focus on the spectacular and cruel military operation of January 3rd. That is not the key issue. The key issue is the blockade. Part of the trap of January 3rd is that if you think about January 3rd, you think, okay, Delci Rodriguez signed the agreement because she's a coward, and she doesn't want to die. But if you think about the real problem being the military blockade,

which Venezuela has no capacity to get around to, Delcio Rodriguez and Diostato Cabellio could all sacrifice themselves in the most heroic way they want to, and that's not going to solve the problem of the oil blockade. You're listening to Upstream. Upstream. Upstream. Upstream.

A show about political economy and society that invites you to unlearn everything you thought you knew about the world around you. I'm Della Duncan. And I'm Robert Raymond. As many of us in the global north grow more and more anxious, even hopeless about what we hear is happening in Venezuela. It's important to bring back the lens.

and take in a sober analysis that includes history, context, and dialectical analysis. Is Delci Rodriguez a traitor? Is this new oil deal the end of the Bolivarian Revolution? Is Venezuela lost to Marco Rubio and condemn to neoliberal purgatory? Are these even helpful questions to be asking? In this conversation, episode 7 in our Venezuela series, we're joined by Sierra Pasqual Marquina and Chris Gilbert for an on-the-ground assessment of how Venezuela is navigating the latest phase of U.S. imperialism. Chris Gilbert is a professor at Venezuela's Bolivarian University and a writer

based in Caracas. He's the author of Commune or Nothing, Venezuela's communal movement and its socialist project. Sierra Pasqual Marquena is a researcher and popular educator at El Panal Commune in Venezuela. She's the author, along with Chris, of The Present as Struggle, Voices from the Bolivarian Revolution, and co-host, along with Chris, of the Marxist Educational Project, Escuela de Quedros. And before we get started, Upstream is entirely listener-funded. No ads, no promotions, no grants, just Patreon subscriptions and listener donations. We couldn't keep this project going without your support. Subscribe to our Patreon for Bye Week.

weekly bonus episodes, access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, and for stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. Through your support, you'll be helping us keep upstream sustainable and helping keep this whole project going. Post-capitalist political education podcasts are not easy to fund, so thank you in advance for the crucial support. And now, here's Robert in conversation with Sierra Pasquale Marquina and Chris Gilbert. All right, Sierra and Chris, it is great to have you both back on the show and together this time. It's great to be here, Robbie. Thanks so much.

It's important to be talking about Venezuela in this time when so much of the left is pretty confused about how to take the current situation in Venezuela. Yeah, I agree. I hope we can clear up some things. So I don't think it's entirely confusion. I think it's partly ill will, but that's something we can get into later on. Yeah, yeah. Definitely. And just to recap real quick, because you have both been on this show specifically for our Venezuela series separately. And so for episode three, Sira, we invited you on to talk about sanctions. And then for episode two, I believe we had you on Chris to talk about communes. But there's definitely some overlap there with the communes. Sera, you gave us a lot of really important and fascinating information about the communes in our episode. episode as well. So just want to remind people to go back and listen to those episodes if you want to

hear more from Sierra and Chris. But yeah, today we're going to be talking about Venezuela more broadly in terms of what is happening right now, which I'm sure many of our listeners, if not all of our listeners have some sense of depending on where the sources of the information are coming from one sense or another, right? But just to start, maybe we can begin with introductions. Cira, maybe we can start with you if you'd like to introduce yourself and just tell us a little bit about the work that you do. Sure. I am a popular educator at El Panal Commune. El Panal is a commune in Caracas in the working class barrio of 23 De Nedo. And I am also a writer for a monthly review online where I have a column actually really is a column with Chris.

And the truth is that we do a lot of work together. Chris and I, we have been doing in-depth work on communes, visiting dozens of communes, and publishing a series of books which are called communal resistance, Resistencia Comunal, in Spanish, but basically getting to hear systematizing the voices of people who are building new social relations

from the ground up, and that's an important work that we've been doing. So important in terms of getting the people hurt. These people who are building communes are not only working very hard and participating in assemblies and imagining a new world and actually building it, even though the situation is very difficult, but they, of course, also theorize. So that's one of our objectives to hear the people who are building new social relations theorize about this extraordinary experiment that we are seeing here in Venezuela,

of course, as I just said, with tremendous difficulties because of U.S. imperialism. But even though the current situation is truly difficult, and there have been no doubt some retreats in terms of the revolution since January 3rd, the communal project has not had to take steps back. So we'll talk more about that probably soon. Yeah, thank you so much. And yeah, Chris, over to you. So I'm Chris Gilbert.

I'm a professor of political studies at the Bolivarian University in Caracas. I've been here in Venezuela for 20 years. Most of my political education comes from Chavez, comes from the Latin American context, in addition to studying Marxism. People who want to know of, see my writing most of it, or the most solid parts of it, the most recent parts of it are found in months. can be found a month to review. Of course, like Cedar, I write about Venezuela, which I participate in, too, the revolution. I consider myself part of the revolution here. And I also recently looking

at Latin American Marxism, Global South Marxism, as a theme of study. Amazing. Yeah, thank you both so much for that introduction. And so I asked you on both originally because I wanted to get more of a concrete sense of the oil agreement, which has been hitting headlines recently. And I think that we're going to discuss that to some degree. But I do think that I know that both of you have a lot of context in which you want to provide us to make more sense of what's happening right now. So I'm going to ask you about the oil deal and then feel free to sort of if you need to go back in time as much as you need to or any context that you need to provide to help us make more sense of it, please feel free to do so.

But yeah, just give us a sense of the oil agreement, which has just occurred in Venezuela. I know that a lot of the details are still sort of not yet revealed, and there's a lot of fluidity. So just as much as you think is necessary in order to paint a picture of what's going on here, but then also give us any information that you think is necessary. in the larger sense in order to contextualize everything. Yes.

So I'm good to share some aspects about what we know of the oil deal, but also a little bit of context. And actually, I will try to compare a little bit the current one, the current deal. I will put a little bit of context into the historical framework for the Polyvium Revolution in terms of oil and then compare a little bit to other, deals, we could say, with other countries between the United States and other countries, such as Brazil

and Colombia. The basics about it, I mean, it came to light on August 28th, right? And basically, it's been negotiated between the Venezuelan government and Marco Rubio. And the counterpart, the U.S. counterpart is a relatively small oil company, which is called NABP, which is actually linked to a Venezuelan opposition person who lives in the United States and is actually a friend, apparently, of Trump. So that kind of like gives you a varying of the kind of like usual deals of the Trump administration, right? there is a whole debate about whether the deal is 25 years or 100 years. But actually, while the Trump administration has said it's 100 years,

and Delzi Rodriguez has said 25 years, all the actual specs information that the Trump administration has given are actually based on 25 years. So it would seem to be that the actual part of the agreement, is 25 years, but we cannot know that. So then in terms of what Venezuela gets, and this is projected on a $65 barrel, what Venezuela would be getting is actually between royalties and taxes,

would be around $19 per $65 barrel. Now, that sounds pretty awful. it is, of course, a capitalist deal made in very disfavorable conditions. But when you compare it, for instance, to the kind of trade agreements with Brazil and with Colombia, so Venezuela will be getting $19. Brazil with better oil for the kind of fields that are being explored would get between $20 and $25, and Colombia would get between $15 and $25.5. dollars with slightly better oil. So in general terms, on those terms, it's pretty conventional.

Now, if we compare it to history, to our historical situation, it's pretty different. Now, one thing that I should add to this is that this $19 per barrel actually comes supposedly, according to the deal. It's not that we expect the U.S. to do as it says, but according to the deal, this means that there's no reduction for operational or investment costs. This is something that had happened historically with Venezuela's oil deals with Chavez, which is that certainly the royalties and the tax was much, much higher, but there was a deduction of investment and operative costs. So I cannot say that balances is out.

It would be false. But you cannot compare the current deals with those earlier deals, I'm not taking into account that both investment and operational costs would be deducted from the earlier deals, and in here they are already kind of like built in, we could say. So this is the technical part, the important stuff to know and contextualize, but it is important to understand why this is actually a deal that people should understand that Venezuela had to sign it.

it was necessary for Venezuela to have to sign this deal, but that doesn't mean that it is in abstract terms of beneficial deal. And the main problem is, of course, that all the revenue is going to be directly going to OFAC, and it is going to be the State Department, the one that's going to be deciding, the U.S. State Department, the one that's going to be deciding how, when, and for what the funds are being released. And this is what is the highly problematic aspect of the deal. And it is, of course, because on January 3rd, we had a defeat, and that defeat actually had been built up over months of naval blockade

against Venezuela, during which already Venezuela had lost its capacity to take out oil. but also after more than 10 years of a blockade, well really right now 12 years of a blockade that, by the way, persists, the U.S. has not lifted it, and that's why they are able to extract this deal. And as I say, not because the deal itself in percentages is particularly good or bad. It's rather conventional, but because it is the United States, the one that's actually holding the, I don't know how you say it, holding the purse. It is not Venezuelan. So there's a definite loss of sovereignty in terms of oil resources, and that is something that the people of Venezuela will eventually have to revert. There's been both within the left, there's been both people who have said, this is a win-win deal that is wrong.

This is not a win-win deal. You cannot have a win-win deal with imperialism, and especially you cannot have a win-win deal with imperialism, after defeat as we had it. But it's also not in terms of the conventions of a treaty, it's not a bad one in capitalist terms. But in terms of the actual fact that it is the United States, the one that's holding the purse, it's actually one that nobody could be happy about. Just real quick before you move on, just to clarify, so the $19 that you're talking about, right, for a $65 barrel is roughly 30%, which sounds absolutely fucking awful.

But in the context of other oil deals, like in Brazil and Colombia, for example, you're saying that that seems to be sort of the standard level of exploitation, right? So they're not screwing Venezuela, especially more than, say, any other Latin American states in that regard. So that remaining 71% goes towards corporate profits and production costs. which is a little bit different than how it used to be is what you're saying. And so it is kind of difficult to compare directly to what the situation was like before all of this and during the hydrocarbons law era under Chavez and Maduro where the state imposed deals that were like much

more favorable to Venezuela, right? Like I think at the height of all of this when oil was at its most expensive, it was like $30 or $40 per barrel. And of course, it's important to note that that all changed, right, after U.S. sanctions and when Venezuela was and continued to be up until very recently forced to like steeply, steeply discount its oil. So yeah, in the crudest analysis, you could say that this is an improvement of terms economically, right, just in terms of the revenue that that is coming in now versus during the blockade, which was very minimal in the past. Of course, that had control over the money in that situation. So very different.

But yeah, just giving us a sense, I think a little bit of that difference is helpful. And the second part I wanted to clarify is that the United States' control of all of this oil revenue is going through OFAC, which you just mentioned a few minutes ago, which is the Office of Foreign Assets Control. So maybe actually just give us a little bit more of a sense of how that all works. Basically, it goes, yes, Department of Treasury, OFAC, and then that's where it ends up, let's say, in some bank account or something, I don't know the details. It goes into some bank account that's held by the Treasury Department, and then it's the State Department, the one that releases the funds back to Venezuela. For instance, we can project that there has to be a large investment in the electricity electrical system.

There's major problems with electrical system because of the US blockade in Venezuela. And obviously, to extract more oil, the projection is that they will be extracting 1.5 million barrels per day once the whole system is set up through this deal. But you need to have a good electrical infrastructure to be able to do this. So there will have to be investment in the electrical system. It will be the State Department that will say, yes, you can't release. X amount of millions or thousands of millions to Venezuela for this specific thing. So there is situation of tutelage in terms of how the money is going to be invested.

Now, Delsi Rodriguez did say that it would be focused on social investment, and it is up to us collectively to make sure that it is centered on social investment. So as I was saying, some people are saying that this is kind of like, a win-win situation. That's not possible. Other people are saying it's the worst deal in history. Here, even some sectors here in Venezuela, they are saying that's the worst deal in history. When you compare it, it's not the worst deal in history in abstract numerical terms. But then when you bring in the issue of the United States controlling the purse, that is a pretty important blow.

Chris, was there anything that you wanted to add or anything else that you wanted to share about that? Sure. I think in these things, as you were saying in the beginning, I think it's very important to bring in context and history and talk about what's at stake. I'm very disappointed, which is an understatement, disappointed, bothered. I have moral indignation for the way people who claim to be left as an anti-imperialist common on these matters. Sometimes I have a hard time seeing clearly through this partly because of the noise that's being made here. and the absurd and ill-intention claims that actually emanate from the left often. So I think the best way to respond to that is pointing out such things as context.

I feel those people overlook history. They overlook what a revolution is. They often think a revolution is something that's, I don't know, ethereal. Perhaps it's the only armist, a very narrow conception of the truth. A few facts here and there are the most central thing. And when they can bring a few facts or even speculation to the table, they feel like the revolution should disappear or commit suicide because they've discovered a few facts or contradictions.

So that's why I think we need to look at what's actually at stake here. In this context, it's very difficult to keep one's eyes on what the key things are. And that's why it's important to remember this is a revolution with a long history that has achieved high levels of organization. And that organization is not only in the communes. Some people in the situation turn to the communes and say, oh, well, at least there's the communes. And that's true, but the state hasn't been defeated either. So I think it's always important to look at the whole context and the way the revolution's

developed and all of its achievements, especially on organizational, theoretical levels. You know, Marx says that an idea becomes a material force when it takes hold of the masses, or I would say also when the masses take hold of it. And that has been achieved here through the whole formation of Chavezmo, of the Bolivarian imaginary and the Bolivarian theory and the notion and the strategic vision of the revolution here, and is not to be wiped away with a stroke of the pen. So going back to the oil agreement, I want to put it forward as a riddle, like a riddle. How could a bad oil agreement be a desirable thing to sign?

You know, when would a bad agreement be a good thing to sign? Well, the answer to that is when the overall situation is much worse than the agreement. And the overall situation is a tremendous imperialist attack on the global south, a tremendous imperialist, U.S. imperialist attack on Latin America, of which Venezuela is part of that. And the key thing about Venezuela is not specifically January 3rd. Many people, they've followed into the trap, I think set up by U.S. imperialism to focus on the spectacular and cruel military operation of January 3rd.

That is not the key issue. The key issue is the blockade. Part of the trap of January 3rd is that if you think about January 3rd, you think, okay, Elsie Rodriguez signed the agreement because she's a coward. and she doesn't want to die. But if you think about the real problem being the military blockade, of which Venezuela has no capacity to get around to, Delci Rodriguez and Diastato Cabellio could all sacrifice themselves

in the most heroic way they want to, and that's not going to solve the problem of the oil blockade. So if we think about the oil blockade, it's the main problem that needs to be solved. That's where this bad agreement can be seen as a desirable step on the part of the Bolivarian process, because it does allow Venezuela to get some revenue on oil that it wasn't getting before.

In addition to whatever coercion there might be exercised on it. So I think when people fail to look at context, that's how they fail to see how something that's not a good agreement, could be a good agreement to sign in a given context. So there's just a real myopia that people have in approaching these issues. I mean, myopia and some people who claim to be revolutionaries, I feel like they need to take a course in what organization is, you know, especially the question of unity,

and what it is to defend a revolution because certainly a revolution is not helped by having people who self-appointed sharpshooters on the internet looking at every detail and failing to take into account the whole context. And so we've been talking about this oil agreement specifically because it's sort of hitting headlines most prominently and it is a big blow, right?

But there are some other issues as well that I think it would be helpful for us to kind of present and then kind of like analyze or unpack for our listeners. And so one of those, a big one, is this sort of normalization of the relationship with Israel and other U.S. aligned states and the moving away from some of the relationships with states like Iran, for example.

So that's something that I think that we should explain what's going on with that and what's behind that. I've also come across some criticisms around like the opening up of certain mining concessions or there's even talk about like the bypassing of elections. And I know that the oil agreement, I think that the oil agreement, at least at the time of this recording, hasn't gone through the National Assembly process and things like that. So maybe just give us a broader scope of some of these things that are taking place and then if you want to respond to them.

So sure, the most painful, and of course, I think the majority of the, of Venezuelans, at least organized Venezuelans Chavista, Venezuelans are against the normalization of relations with Israel. And this has happened after the earthquake on June 24th, when Venezuela requested all countries to come help with the post-earthquake situation. And the problem is that it wasn't civil, I mean, first, First of all, we are not, I'm not in agreement with Israel coming here to take people out

of ruins when they actually kill people under ruins in Gaza, in Palestine. But then you could make some sort of, you could bracket it and say, well, they are just there for that, et cetera, et cetera. The problem too is that it was IDF people and it was clearly a propaganda effort from Israel. So that's not good. I'm against it and I think most Venezuelans are against it. At least most Chavista Venezuelans are against it. Why was it done? I actually don't know. I imagine there was pressure from the United States because the United States has been really pushing for more presence of Israel around the continent. What's going on in in Argentina, basically in terms of big

slats of land being passed over to Israel potentially, and there's a large advance of Israel interests throughout the continent. So I think that this must have been done with tremendous force exercise from the United States, because it's not only that the idea of soldiers came, but there are consular relations already established between Venezuela and Israel. I don't have the details, and I'm against it. Chris is against it. We, most people are against it. Then in relation to realignment, in terms of countries, realignment, you know,

you have to understand that after January 3rd, and this would be actually January 3rd, in January 3rd, there was tremendous sense of loneliness because nobody really came to help Venezuela. I don't think anybody would have thought that China was going to overly. engaged itself in the war against the U.S., but there were more expectations with Russia, certainly. But in general, Venezuela had been left in a situation of loneliness in the continent, even after 2024, when we had the elections, the presidential elections, and already the progressive governments, such as Brazil and Colombia at that time, had already kind of like turned their back to Venezuela.

So we had the situation of isolation. The situation of isolation actually leads to the events after January 3rd. I would not see that there's a real alignment with the United... I mean, I would say there's a reorganization of relations, no doubt, but I would not say that Venezuela has realigned itself with the United States, which is oftentimes how it is represented. Venezuela has realigned itself with the United States.

No, Venezuela has been forced to make concessions to the United States, which is a different thing as realigning with the United States. With Iran, well, there were certain things that were said from high spokespeople in the government of Iran, which were, from our perspective, a little bit out of touch, kind of like one person specifically pointing out to possible treason. and then Venezuela called Iran the embassy for conversation, and that was cleared out. So there was a kind of apology from Iran towards Venezuela, but also Venezuela apologized for something that it did after the attack on Iran, when Venezuela, this was just a few

days after January 3rd, Venezuela put out a very unpleasant communique. So very recently we can say about the months ago, there was the time. this meeting between the two parts, the Iranian ambassador and representatives from the Venezuelan government, and there was a double apology for both having done something possibly incorrect at different times. I would not say that there's this engagement with Iran. Actually, oftentimes this meeting that was done about a month ago is presented as a moment of breaking, and actually it was a moment of re-encountering.

after some tensions that had emerged more recently. So I think we continue to be aligned with the people of the global south. The Bolivarian Revolution continues to be aligned with the people of the global south, but the material conditions to, for instance, promote things like Petro-Caribbe, which was important at one point. And what is that? Petro Cal-Dive was an initiative promoted by Alba, but specifically by Venezuela, where Venezuela sold at very good conditions oil to Caribbean countries.

So Caribbean countries were able to buy Venezuelan oil at about half the price, and the other half would be paid eventually at 0% in very good conditions, or sometimes they could even invest the other half into infrastructure in their own country. So all those projects, which were already, shrunk a long time before because of the blockade, but we're still active. Those projects will actually, for now, be totally inactive. And so there's been, again, I would say no realignment, but certainly another very good condition to build strong alliances with Global South countries in the current situation

because of the economic tutelage imposed from the United States. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, Chris. Sure, I wanted to, I completely agree to see that. It's worth pointing out that in both the cases of Israel, the presence of Israel and specifically the so-called IDF, which, as we know, the defense thing doesn't belong there. Yeah, I-OF, right?

Yeah, both the presence of that and the early, very bad communique that came out of the Cancadilla concerning Iran. the Kansiyadhya is a foreign affairs ministry. Both those events in Venezuela produced pushback from the basis. There were demonstrations in support of the Iranian government immediately after the Foreign Affairs Ministry put out these communiques. The nature of the communique against Iran was saying that it was kind of like presenting both sides as wrong, both the U.S. and Iran, or both the U.S. and Israel and Iran. Two sides of the same scissors or whatever the analogy is, right? Yeah. In the face of that, obviously false symmetry and obviously failure of

solidarity with the Iranian Revolution, which had been a historic relationship with that Chavez developed and had been maintained throughout the course of the Bolivarian Revolution, people went out, including us. We went to the Iranian consulate. We showed our solidarity. Everybody talked to the ambassador. And curiously, the Venezuelan government responded by partly retracting the communique. And the same thing with the presence of the IDF. There was a first demonstration in Barcimeto, which is not the capital. And then the same organizers moved the demonstration to, to the capital, and we all went to it, including people from album Mubimitos, including Chavista, parliamentarians,

the most notable was Eris Varela, and we all said we thought this was the wrong thing to do. So I think it's important to point out that there is room to disagree with decisions, and we disagree with those two decisions, but that doesn't mean we're going to break with the government over these decisions. In that sense, I think we're in a very difficult, contradictory situation and novel situation in Venezuela. No one knows how much force we have on our side, but we do have force on our side.

So when I say that we sometimes have a contradictory discourse, I'm aware that some people on our side say, well, we have no responsibility for decisions we take because we have a gun to our head. On the other hand, we also admit that we have force on our side. We still have the army. We still have the party. We still have the communes on our side. So it is true that we're under pressure, but no one knows exactly how much pressure there is. But it's not really in good faith to always just brush off.

any decision that was made because allegedly we have a gun to our heads. That's to say, we're not pure victims. We're partly defeated. We were partly defeated by the U.S., but not entirely defeated. So there is room to debate within discipline, within revolutionary discipline, some decisions that were taken. I'm not inviting internationals to jump into these debates with the willingness that they've done in the past. But I do think that there is, within the movement, you can see push and poll within the notion of revolutionary discipline. In fact, Igris Badella, the parliamentarian, a longstanding Chavista parliamentarian. When she went to the anti-Israel manifestation, she really was very critical of the government.

But then she said, and of course, I support Delci. So it's possible to manage those two sides of the revolutionary project, criticism within discipline. I just wanted to say something about the complex situation we're in. And, you know, complex can become a kind of euphemism for just total ignorance in our part. And I don't deny that we don't know a lot of the elements of this new situation created by imperialism, created by the disarray that we're living in. But I also think it's important to, here's some tools that I thought about in relation to this new situation. One is that the U.S. has been very aggressive militarily.

The Tri-Continental Institute talks about hyper-imperialism, and part of hyper-incarialism is a weaker imperialism in some sense, but a stronger imperialism in a military sense. And that you can certainly see, but the weaker element is also there because it's not like in the 60s when U.S. imperialism dominated Venezuela. It tried to do a full spectrum domination of the economy. And we can see how the U.S. is neither interested nor capable of doing that right now. In fact, there's still oil going to the Chinese. The U.S. has not stopped it because they need the Chinese.

They can't take away the debt being paid to the Chinese. And in fact, most of the economy, most of the products sold in Venezuela are Chinese products. And so it's not like they're doing the full spectrum domination. There is a Greek brilliant intellectual, sometimes a bit Eurocentric. But he said the nature of U.S. imperialism right now is about controlling the dollar and the F-35, you know, the F-35 being the latest fighter jet. And I think that's a good image of what's going on. It's more like using extreme military power to control certain bottlenecks,

especially the fossil fuel economy, that will in turn support financial power at which the dollar is central. But that's a different kind of imperialism, no doubt very aggressive, but it's not the same kind of full-spectrum domination that was existed before. And that's why when people talk about a vassal state, I want to ask them like, well, yes, it's true that the government isn't saying certain things, but how many vassal states continue to maintain their patriotic military, continue to maintain their communal projects, continue to maintain their socialist party? So I don't think it's, I think it's worth recognizing the novelty of that situation in which important elements of sovereign. are still existing. Another thing about the U.S. military, you know, historically fascism of the, I believe that U.S. is entering a fascist period. Some people will say it certainly has deep roots in U.S. racist society. But it's going to be due to a newly explicit fascist situation where you can see the most powerful elements of monopoly capitalism supporting a racist, xenophobic, recolonizing movement.

That's clearly emerged in Trump's second administration, where we saw the 10 richest people in world on the podium with him. But historically, fascism has burned itself out with adventures, military adventures. And while Trump claims to be someone who doesn't like military adventures, he seems to be going in that same path. So I think that the Venezuelan attitude, the attitude being pursued by the revolution, which is to make concession, make your treats, bend and not break, is actually a very rational attitude, because I think the path that the U.S. is pursuing right now is not sustainable. I think it's getting its comeuppance in Iran, and it will probably get a greater comeuppance in the near future. In that situation, we will be in conditions as long as we can

maintain the force of Chevismo in its different instances, the main pillars I pointed to, we will be in a condition to rebuild the sovereignty we've lost, and I would also point out, rebuild Latin American, the Latin American unity that has been damaged and partly destroyed in recent months and years. Yeah, thank you so much for that. I'm so glad you brought that into the conversation. Yeah, I wanted to know a bit more about the sort of nuts and bolts of how the relationship is now with the United States. Like you talked about the, in terms of specifically the oil agreement, right, and how the United States is holding the purse, which is like a very significant aspect of that oil deal. There's a lot of talk about how Marco Rubio essentially controls, right?

Like he's like the Paul Bremer was to Iraq. Marco Rubio is now to Venezuela. Give us a sense of, as far as you know, because I know that like a lot of this stuff is really happening behind the scenes, and it's not like they've issued public statements explicating exactly how the new power arrangement works, but give us a sense from your understanding of how this new power arrangement works and some of the most sort of outstanding or egregious or vassal-esque elements of it. Well, basically, I was talking about the U.S. holding the purse in relation to the most recent agreement, but the truth is that the U.S. holds the purse. and all incoming dollars from oil sales since January 3rd, right?

So now there's negotiations. I know for a fact that there's a team of negotiators on both sides, but that the order that they have been given by Del S. Rodriguez is that in terms of the purse that they control, that social initiatives will be actually funded. by Venezuela's oil resources. And we can see one evidence of that actually happening. So we are talking about the terrible thing. It is terrible that the US holds the purse, I think,

and that the Secretary of the State is the one who says, yeah or nay, to the funding going somewhere. But then we can see some outcomes that are, where maybe Venezuela has been able to leverage in its favor. And that's specifically with the earthquake. As everybody knows, there's tens of thousands of people without homes since the earthquake. And the Venezuelan government has, obviously, millions of dollars because houses are being built, rebuilt, purchased. There's an enormous construction effort.

And the people who were in houses that were, you know, like people who were in working, in-class barrios and lost their homes. And people who were in housing blocks that were actually state-built, MISION-Bivienda housing, all those people, we are talking about tens of thousands of people whose new home will be actually paid for by the government 100%. There is no doubt that the dollars are dollars that come from the sales of Venezuelans oil, but they will have gone through the Department of Treasury. So in the United States, when there's an earthquake,

working-class people who lose their homes, as far as I know, they don't get a home from the U.S. government. And here, the idea is that by the end of this year, everybody who was left houseless will have a home of their own property. And if they are working class, they will get it from the government or if they were living in working-class mission housing, they will get a house, and those people who are middle-class

will get a very beneficial credit loan granted to them by the government to the banking system. So if you take that case, those are the specifics that we know on that, and that has to be paid with dollars. And obviously those dollars, as I said before, come from Venezuela's oil, but will have gone through the department.

of Treasury. So obviously, because we know that in the United States, this would be not a conventional arrangement, we know that the Fittisan government had to and was able to negotiate favorably. I think that the response in terms of building houses, right now, as if the earthquake had been, say, a year and a half ago, the response in terms of building houses to give responses to people who have been left without homes would have been the same then as now. Now that doesn't mean that the response to everything

that has happened since January 3rd would have been the same than as now. I don't think that if a year and a half ago we had had the earthquake, we would have had the idea of coming to supposedly rescue people that would not have happened. But some of the things

you can see that there's a capacity to negotiate from the Venezuelan government in the favor of the people. So, So the changes are both. There's spaces where we have lost clearly territory, lost ground, and others where we see that the government is able to negotiate and maintain something that is probably close to what would be happening without the current arrangement with the United States, with the current very disfavorable.

And certainly the US is trying to colonize the continent. I will not say that they are not trying to do it. All I'm going to say is that people who talk about Venezuela having recolonized, they are only telling part of the story, not the whole story. In economic terms, we have lost a lot of ground, but in other senses we haven't. The threat here of the United States having such control over where this money, Venezuela's own money, goes. Do you foresee that shifting or changing in terms of like,

something akin to a structural adjustment program where the United States is, you know, will give you some of this money, but it has to be spent on this and this and this. And you can't spend it on these social programs. In fact, you have to cancel this and this and this because it, you know, ideologically doesn't align with mega imperialism or, you know, free market ideology or whatever it is. Is that happening at all? Do you see any rumors of that or any sort of like beginnings of that kind of control? Yes, it's going to happen.

U.S. imperialism exists, and they are going to try to force their own policies. There's no doubt about it. I see it specifically with World Bank and with the IMF. There are conversations. They are trying, the World Bank and the IMF is trying to get a lot of information. Obviously, they are not going to come with a package that will be sovereign. So this has happened with the post-earthquake situation, where I'm sure that the Venezuelan government had to negotiate so that people would be able to get housing, I think we are going to

see the same. The government will have to negotiate piece by piece. It's going to be difficult, and we are going to continue to lose ground. For a period of time, so we are kind of like avoiding a total confrontation award at which we could not win. In this period, we are going to continue to lose some ground, but at the same time we have to develop the correct strategy to regain ground. So it's going to be like what's coming is not going to be pretty. It's not going to be easy. People should be prepared. People who are still solidarious with the Bolivarian Revolution and we are grateful, they should be prepared to see some more concessions being made. But they should trust that we are thinking and that the government too is thinking

about how to revert the current situation. We had a very, very large loss on January 3rd. And before that, too, U.S. imperialism dealt us a big blow. And I can say that we were not prepared correctly for this. And that's a self-criticism that we can make and that we should make. And with that consciousness that we were not well prepared for what happened on January 3rd,

we should be preparing to recover from the blow from the January 3rd and the naval blockade that began about it. a year ago, a little bit over a year ago. I have some disparate things to say about that. The biggest blow that Venezuela experienced precedes January 3rd, at least economically. You know, like the blow to the economy was not being able to sell oil. A total inability to sell oil happened a few months before January 3rd. The kidnapping of Nicolas Maduro, the killing of 100 people, 100 plus people,

that's not the biggest blow that Venezuela experienced in an economic sense. I always think it's important to say that to put the concessions in context. I also think that regarding the kinds of concessions Venezuela makes or will be forced to make, I think it's important to recognize that we can see contradictions within imperialism right now. It seems to me there's two tendencies fighting over Venezuela. People who know U.S. politics will probably be able to render this in a more subtle way than I will, but it seems to me that Trump seems to simply want the oil to flow, whereas the Miami crowd represented perhaps to some degree by Marco Rubio

want to pursue other things, particularly they want to pursue elections that will put their people in power. And on the other side, Trump probably pragmatically, and I would say with a glimmer of rationality, realizes that very likely those people can't govern Venezuela. So that's where I think it's possible for Venezuela to take advantage of those contradictions. For example, the communes still remain intact, and you could imagine that the Miami, to want to see them destroy. And it's also interesting that the dangers that communes face don't

only come from. They could come from elements, for example, within the Venezuelan opposition, surely acting under orders of U.S. imperialism, but there's a strange character named Enrique Marcus, who's sometimes claimed to be a leftist. He sometimes had support from the Communist Party, here the old Communist Party. And he has been promoting the idea that the communes should have external elections. And I think his idea is to repurpose the communes as a force that will be against Chavismo. So you can see this whole complicated territory emerging in which there's all kinds of contradictions that even express themselves on the ground here, but also are expressed in U.S. imperialism, in which there's possibilities, just as I believe Iran is currently trying to

very intelligently exploit contradictions in U.S. imperialism, particularly as Trump has to face elections that he may get a come up on some of the domestic front too. I think that's possible for us to exploit some of those divergences within the imperialist camp to avoid having to do the kinds of structural adjustments that you were talking about and avoid having to lose control through budgeting of certain social elements within the Bolivarian process. What might that look like? Well, I think you could see that perhaps Delsey is doing it right now. For example, if the Miami crowd is very eager to see their people get in power. Some of these oil concessions that are

a way of deflating that project, I think there's good evidence that they have deflated the project of urgently putting on elections. Just to say something totally obvious, having elections, when there's a blockade going, is absolutely undemocratic. It's just like the situation in Nicaragua where they start a war against you, and they say the only way we're going to stop the war is if you elect our candidates, the Contra War, you can't have sanctions on a country, economic arm twisting and have a democratic situation for elections. So the idea of holding off on elections and perhaps working this oil deal as a way of staving off that scenario, that's an example of exploiting this kind of contradictions within imperialism where one side is pushing for regime change

and another side is mostly interested in securing oil and propping up the dollar as a global currency through the partial control of Venezuelan oil. And so on that question of elections, it's a really interesting one, right? Because, I mean, in this specific context in Venezuela, right now, and I'm not sure if this is the case or not, but I have seen criticisms that, like, elections may be delayed or not held or something like that. And of course, Delci Rodriguez was just sort of, she's the interim president. And she just was automatically put into that role because of the kidnapping of the actual president. But maybe if you could talk a little bit about this idea of elections, talk more about it because you just brought it up, Chris, in terms of how elections can be used in these kinds of situations as a tool of imperialism. and having an election at the wrong time, as you say, is actually undemocratic in many ways, which I think it sounds counterintuitive at first, but it actually makes sense when you think about it.

But yeah, I'm wondering if you can just address more broadly to this question of, is the idea of elections something on people's mind right now? Is that something that you see as a foreseeable area of contention? And yeah, if you can just talk about this idea that elections are, There's this criticism that we're hearing right now from certain people on the left that what's happening right now in Venezuela is very undemocratic and that nobody chose Delci Rodriguez to be in charge of all this and that kind of thing. Sure, there's two sides of it.

I'll address one part of it, which is to me the least important one, but it's the legal, judicial side of it. There's absolutely no legal or judicial need to have elections before 2030. That's because Delci's the acting president. You say interim president. And I think the term we use is Encargara, which I think is closer to acting president. But since she's the acting president, Nicholas Maduro is the president. There's no need to do elections in any legal or judicial sense until 2030.

But beyond that, and the most important thing is that the real expression of democracy is we're saying that you can't really have a democracy where there's an external force exerting extreme pressure on a country. That is not a democratic situation. and the kinds of arm twisting that a blockade consists of or carrying out a war has happened in Nicaragua. Those are not democratic situations. And along with that, we should point out that the most important banner of democracy that Venezuela has raised during the course

of the Bolivarian Revolutionist popular power, just to say something a little bit pedantic but useful, is that democracy, if you break it down into its Greek roots, it means people power. And people should be understood as the majority's power. Even in Greek thought, it had a class basis. It was

a democracy of the people understood as a working class. And that's precisely why the most notable ancient Greek philosophers didn't like it because they weren't friends of the people. They were aristocrats. I refer to Plato and Socrates. They didn't like democracy because they felt it was giving too much

power to the people from below. So Venezuela is always essential to its revolutionary project like the Russian-Soviet revolutionary project, like the Chinese revolutionary project, is to strengthen people power. which is expressed in a lot of ways, but people power does not exist when a country has a gun to his head and they go through some electoral routine that will result in a distortion of democracy. Yeah, I totally agree with what Chris is saying, but I do want to highlight, bring the point home very clearly.

Maduro did not die on January 3rd. Maduro was kidnapped. Maduro was the person who we elected, who the people of Venezuela chose on 2024. So it's not up to the U.S. or to internationalists or intellectuals to decide who is our government and who is our president. Our president is Maduro. Our acting president is Delsi Rodriguez then. So she has that role while he cannot be in Mira Flores. This means that the electoral timeline hasn't changed. To say that there should be, for instance, presidential elections because we didn't choose. Delcy is absurd because basically we chose a Chavista who chose Delci as the vice president,

a Chavista leader, Nicolas Maduro, who chose Delci as vice president. And therefore, if he is not there, it should logically be Delci who is in charge. So we should have elections towards the end of 2030. Now, could the United States try to force elections to happen before in Venezuela? It's possible. I think that we will do everything we can to give the elections to the timeline that is kind of like constitutionally correct. But I actually wouldn't be surprised if we had elections before.

presidential or national assembly elections before because of the U.S. forcing them. We will see that's very, very uncertain to us right now. Now, I do want to say something about Venezuelist democracy along the lines of what Chris was saying as well. And that's that it's super important who we choose. It should be the people of Venezuela who choose it and not the United States, obviously, to say the obvious. But for us, democracy is not only restricted to electing our representatives.

Communal democracy, the kind of grassroots democracy that begins to change social relations. But can only change social relations if the government is a chavista government, by the way, because to change social relations, you need also mechanisms, economic and legal and political mechanisms to change social relations. So the relation between the government and the grassroots is important. It's a profoundly democratic relationship. And it is a relationship in which at least in the communes that are more robust, which are not all of them granted, the majority of the communes really are incipient communes.

But in the communes that are more robust, it is really the people in power in the territory. For instance, in my commune, in the Panal commune, There was an area, a communal council that joined the commune more recently, about two years ago. And there was a big square in the center of this communal council that had become kind of like a dumpster for old cars, in some cases even stolen cars. And there was a little bit of low-level drug trafficking there. and the commune came in and was able to clean the spaces and get rid of the junk jar that had become the square. And actually, with the help of the al-Qaldia of the major,

the commune was able to fix a very large infrastructure that was originally conceived as a social infrastructure, as a collective infrastructure, but built more than 50 years ago. It was going to be kind of like a community center. At one point, it was a community center. then it was abandoned and it was kind of like, yeah, totally abandoned. So the recovery of this social space was done with the major office,

and there was a kind of like a deal, a deal in terms of how to fix this space. There had to be a fair amount of money put into the recovery of this social space, both the square and the common space. And what the commune had to do is say, well, if you help us recover this infrastructure, which was in very bad shape, and it was clearly going to be a very wonderful communal space. If you help us recover this space, the theater that is behind this space, which is also within the perimeter of the commune, we will co-manage it. We will have 100% control of these communal social spaces,

and the major's office and the commune will co-manage a very wonderful theater that is within the territory of the commune, which was also in very bad shape. All I mean, I'm expressing this as a way for people to understand how the democracy that is built in Venezuela is a different kind of democracy. It actually means the working class, the organized people meeting with the government and actually negotiating, in this case, of course, in the favor of the community, getting resources and getting important spaces for the government. the community to be built, to be recovered in this case, but also making some concessions

because we were not going to get everything for free from the government, so the government wanted something in exchange. There's this co-management of the theater. This for me is an important example, a specific example of how grassroots democracy and the work between the grassroots and the government actually happens. And these kinds of situations have not changed these kinds of... relations, dialectical relations, and specifically, you know, very material, political debates and agreements that are made between the grassroots and the government have not changed

for more than a year. There has been a continuous relationship of cooperation and sometimes tension, but mostly cooperation between the grassroots and the government. And I think that that has to be centered. It's important that people know that this is true. and it's been told to you from a common art. And I'm telling you the story of something that has happened very recently, negotiation, basically, in which the grassroots was able to advance very clearly his interest because the institution was able to listen, to recognize that specifically this commune has a lot of organization.

And the commune, because it has organization, it was able to leverage in its favor, but the institution also has leverage and money. and so they were able to get this co-management of the theater. This is another way of doing politics. It's a popular way of doing politics, and this hasn't changed in the past few months. You're listening to an upstream conversation with Sierra Pascual, Marquina, and Chris Gilbert.

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a discarado an immoral Although his cancerverer That was done That was Don Samuel by Ali Prima. Now back to our conversation with Chris Gilbert and Sierra Pascual Markina. I want to spend a little bit more time discussing the

the figure of Delci Rodriguez because I think that there are a lot of like very important and interesting perspectives and angles through which all of this is being analyzed and sort of on on the one hand you have what Kimberly Don Miller has described as the delcification of analysis where like entire material processes and histories are sort of distilled down to you know speculation on internal political struggles and, you know, frustrations at this specific political figure. And then on the other hand, you do have the fact that all of this is happening under her interim presidency, right? So I do think it's understandable that people have a lot of questions about her. And I mean, you know, there's even speculation that she's somehow betrayed Maduro in all of this

and that she was even like the U.S. regimes inside man, so to speak. So I'm wondering if you can respond to some of these speculations and allegations and stuff and just more broadly give us a sense of the role that Delsey plays in all of this. I haven't read Kimberly's article, though I certainly respect her work, so I can't respond directly to her notion of delcification, apart from what you've just said to me. On the one hand, I think it's absolutely correct to include Delcy in the analysis. Delci is the leader of the revolution currently, among other people, but she's the principal leader,

and she's part of a longstanding leadership that has been constructed over the past of 27 years. On their hand, if that means filling the idea of Delsey with all kinds of wild speculation of the kind of you mentioned, I'm certainly against that. What we believe, or what I believe, is that just to go back to what this real revolution is, this real revolution involved taking power, it involved movement, Chavismo, taking power. And at the same time, after it took power, it always maintained a powerful relationship to popular power that is people's power. And that people's power was expressed in different institutions, including community councils, water tables, all of varying circles. But eventually, the main expression of popular power, apart from the army, which has always been conceived of as a people's army through what Chavez called the Civic Military Alliance.

But as recently is the most clear and most glorious expression of that popular power. is the communal movement. So I always think it's important to keep in mind the two elements, both the popular power and the leadership. And remember that the leadership is also a popular construction. In no way would Chavez be the kind of important, powerful revolutionary leader that it was his form of leadership and even the image of Chavez wasn't something popularly constructed. So when this huge thing, which is the revolution, it has so many components to it, including a strong organizational component, runs up against obstacles, I think it's fairly absurd to think that it would, on the one hand, it would just collapse immediately, precisely because of its

solidity. Since it didn't collapse in the face of the blockade that's been going on for something like 10 years, that's precisely why the U.S. did January 3rd, and I don't think it would collapse on that. Nor do I think the betrayal narrative makes much sense. In fact, I'm suspicious. I think the whole notion of betrayal should raise suspicion from people who know the history of colonialism in which the colonized subject is always thought of as traitorous or treacherous. And so I think there's a lot of projection that goes along there. But apart from that, I think there's some simple questions to ask. Like if Delsey were a traitor, wouldn't she have to begin to take apart the key pillars of the revolution? Wouldn't she have to take apart the army? That's the first thing you do

with a defeated enemy, when someone betrays their organization, their country, and gives them over to an enemy, the first thing they have to do is take apart their army. In fact, there's nothing of that kindness happened. They also changed the leader of the army for someone who's actually, in some ways, a more politically solid chavista than the previous head of the military. And then, as Cedar was saying, the whole communal project has actually been probably bolstered in the wake of January 3rd. It was growing. Nicholas Maduro had turned to the communal project with great force around 20, initially around 2020, but with even greater commitment in 2024. And so Delsey seems to continue that. So I don't think there's much evidence for the betrayal narrative.

The other thing that people should remember, it's just a little step back into history, recent history, which seems to often be the hardest thing for people to grasp, is that Nicholas Maduro was talking about revising the hydrocarbons law. Nicholas Maduro was saying he would make a deal with the United States. So everything points to what Delci did as being an absolute continuity of what was conceived before January 3rd. In fact, that makes me wonder why the U.S. did January 3rd. I think it's a little bit of sadistic Pentagon Hollywood to try to mark before and after, to try to put in people's heads maybe some kind of narrative of betrayal precisely to destroy the revolution.

That's another thing that, I mean, it's not the only test left should do to itself, they should ask themselves, when they espouse a narrative, like many of the people who are criticizing Venezuela most harshly, are doing so as individuals and not as organizations. If you look at the organizations, even the organizations they belong to, those organizations have a much more sober attitude. So you should kind of, people as a reality check, they should say, what is the narrative that I'm espousing as individual?

What organization supports my narrative? And you know the terrible truth? A lot of times the only organization that seems to support their narratives is CIA. as expressed through organs like axios. For example, around the oil agreement, most of the most radical ultra-left readings of the oil agreement precisely coincided what's being said by the most clear imperialist CIA-supported organs.

So that should be a kind of reality check for people. So you mentioned that Delci Rodriguez has put somebody who's a more solid chavismo adherent into the leadership role of the military. You mentioned that the communes are still going strong and there hasn't been any kind of structural damage to them. Give us more of a sense of that. Like, in terms of the military,

and you talked about the military being seen as like a popular military, like a people's military, give us a sense of the different factions, I guess, and how their interplay, during all of this chaos that's kind of taking place. Like, has the executive been sort of taken over by the State Department? And then we have these, like the communes in the military are not as affected. Is that not a correct way of thinking of it?

And then, yeah, just give us more of a sense of like the dynamics here and how you see all of these different components of what is the Venezuelan state and Venezuela more broadly, how you see them all. responding to what's happening right now. I can say a few things about that, but I want to pick up first on what Chris was saying, which I think is really important. I mean, the criticisms that are made of the...

I mean, there's plenty of things that people can be critical about in the current circumstances. It's not that I am or any Chavista is in agreement with everything that is happening after January 3rd or before. Chavismo is a movement that is a life. life that is thinking. And after January 3rd, too, there have been some difficult decisions that have had to be made, also after the double earthquake. So it's one thing to defend the

government, and it's another thing to be in agreement with every step taken by the government. I want to separate those two things. But I do think it's super, super important to understand that these positions that are super critical of the situation of the Polybrian Revolution and of the government are generally individual positions. Any actual really existing organization has much better tools to understand the kind of compromises, the difficulty in making deals, the contradictions, the contradictions that emerge in actually making something happen, the many barriers and the turns that you will have to make in building anything, in building a revolutionary organization. So that's why organizations are actually much better prepared to understand the difficulty

of the situation. And if you look around the world, there's been very few organizations that have said what many of these individuals have said, which is actually, there's a bit of Therefore, if there's betrayal, you Venezuelans have to rise up against the current government of Venezuela. So you have to rise up against Delzi Rodriguez. And these individuals never think, never turn to the people of Venezuela, to the communards, to the people who are actually building transformation, I mean to the people who are committed to the revolution. These people who are saying everything is lost with the Polyverian Revolution have tremendous arrogance. Because they are not listening to people in communes, for instance, who are actually, who will have criticisms of the government, for sure, but are not thinking about making a rupture or raising up against the government of Delsi Rodriguez, because we understand the difficulty of the situation.

We understand that we have an accumulated history of more than 20, of almost 30 years, that there's a lot that we have to protect. also we trust that collectively we will be able to regain territory where we have lost it and we have lost territory. So I wanted to say that these people who are talking about, you know, basically calling us to interact against the government of Del Cid Rodriguez, they are totally detached from both actual organizational processes in their context and are not listening to people who are organized here. in Venezuela. I think that's very important to highlight. And then in terms of the whole thing about treason, I think it's pretty absurd. I mean, to talk about this, as Chris said, it's actually very clear that President Maduro had this position, and actually, to tell you the truth, was begging the United States to dialogue, because the situation with the sanctions was really

very difficult, because it was causing a lot of harm. As I probably said in the earlier episode, between 2018 and 2019, about 40,000 people died because of the U.S. blockade. But death's because of lack of medicines have continued. That's because of all sorts of other problems that have the origin in the blockade have been continued through the present. So, Nicolas Maduro was willing to negotiate, but they wanted to do it in another way. They wanted to turn this into an apparent absolute defeat of the Bolivarian. revolution. And to a certain degree with these comrades who are not comrades in the global

north, they are succeeding at making it seem like the revolution has been defeated. And this is actually truly very dangerous. They are actually collaborating with the US interests so that there is apparently no hope here. And therefore, if there's no hope, it's because they would not have in history, but there is both history and hope, even though there's many contradictions, many difficulties, I cannot tell you for sure if we will win, if we will overcome. But there's the terrain in which to fight, and it is for the people of Venezuela, the people of Venezuela who are organized, who are building a new world, the people of Venezuela who are committed to the transformation, it's for the people of Venezuela and communes.

They are the ones who should be listened to in terms of actually deciding whether to support or not the government of Delsi Rodriguez. You will have not seen any one single commune saying we are against this government. And you will not see any one commune so far saying that we are against the current deal. Even though every commune understands that the current deal is not a positive one, but it is understood correctly in the historical context. So it's not a good one in an abstract. situation, but it was necessary in the current situation.

So I do feel like I'm really starting to understand this distinction that, you know, like you both at times have used the gun to the head metaphor. And I think that what I'm really starting to understand is that there is not really a gun held to Delci Rodriguez's head, which is sort of the way that the metaphor is usually deployed, right, but that the gun is actually held to the entire Venezuelan population's head in a sense. And yeah, I'm just wondering if you think that's a better description of it. Sure, I think that's a great description because when you say the gun to the people's head, I think part of the whole idea of the gun to Delsey's head actually serves to produce a division

between the people and Delsey. In fact, as you're saying, the gun is the blockade and the sanctions, which have been there for some time and are not going to be solved by individual acts of terrorism on the part of the leadership. So I think that's a very good way of describing the situation. It points to the fact that some of these concessions are actually solutions to longstanding problems rather than just arbitrary decisions on the part of the leadership. I wanted to pick up the earlier threat about the factions, even though I have to admit that the question of factions is not, is a huge one. and as you were hinting that we don't have total information about things.

In fact, the military is a huge black box. There's not that much information on different factions inside the military for obvious reasons. But the most important thing to point out is that, first of all, the historic patriotic character of the military and working class character of the military is something that preceded Chevismo. And it's a very important fact in Venezuelan history. The Venezuelan left since the 1960s has always tried to work with the military. Sometimes it was seen as bizarre for that reason.

Che Guevara actually in the mid-60s, kind of the internal meeting in Cuba, he kind of criticized Venezuela left for always thinking he could infiltrate the military. But obviously that's because of Che Guevara's background. He comes from Argentina and the whole situation in Cuba where the existing military, Batista's military, was totally unsavable.

But the Venezuelan situation is different, probably because the oil, because the oil rents caused the upper classes here to avoid anything. like military service. And the working classes ended up being in the military. In addition to the long history of the military, being a Bolivarian military,

which has its roots in the independence struggle. But then, you know, I think one thing we can be sure of, and we know this, I mean, because Chavezmoe existed, persisted, was that Chavez worked very hard to keep the military as a revolutionary force. That meant changing leaderships, purging people, moving forward new generations.

You can say that keeping the military patriotic and working class, part of the revolution was one of the great, probably under-recognized achievements of Chavez while he was alive. And Manduro continued that work, and the only thing I can say about that is that he wouldn't have lasted if he hadn't continued that work of keeping the military as a patriotic force. Now, when I say that Delsi put a more solidly Chavez to figure there, I say that partly, I mean, just to counter some of the arguments,

The truth is that Wistelva Gonzalez-Lopez, who replaced Vladimir Padrena López, was close to Chavez. So the current head of the military was someone who was very close to Chavez. Whereas Vladimir Padrena López, the previous head, was basically a product of Maduro. So Vladimir Padrino-Lopez emerges ahead of the military more or less when Maduro came into the presidency. I actually don't think the change in leadership is significant, apart from normal institutional things. When you come into an institution, you want to put your own people there, you want people to have a closer loyalty to you. But when we're doing the test, it's true that Gustavo Gonzalez-Lopez was someone very close to Chavez and has a long revolutionary history. About other elements, you know, Cetus talked about the communes.

But another element is what people call the bureaucracy. And I have to push back against some of the things people, you know, even the word bureaucracy is seen as all kinds of bug bears emerge. But I think most of us, even people who use the term bureaucracy consistently as a pejorative, actually realize we live, we have two registers. because I know many people in that bureaucracy, some of them who are powerful and some of them not so powerful. There's a whole range of things. And I'm quite aware that they are thinking agents, they're revolutionaries, they're usually party members.

And they also, for example, I know that some people in their bureaucracy, first of all, I want to plan on the bureaucracy as disciplined, like any serious element of the revolution. So they might have internal critiques. But, of course, in the last instance, they will respect democratic central, you know, a centralist decision, a democratic centralism.

there might be debate before a decision is taken. But after the decision is taken, they would be traitors if they didn't defend that decision in spite of whatever critiques they have. For example, I know people in the bureaucracy who think there should have been more of a fight on January 3rd, but they rightly say, well, that's water under the bridge.

The decisions were taken, and we need to go forward as a revolution with the decision that was taken. That's where I think there's a whole lot of organizational ingenuousness, naivete on the part of a lot of the people who approach the Bolivarian Revolution right now. It's as if reality began today and that, you know, we're just facing a situation without an organizational history, without a strategy, without a whole set of traditions and practices. And so that's kind of what drops by the wayside.

So those are the three main elements. I want to say something about, I realize we're jumping around a lot, but I want to say something about retreat. I do think this is a retreat. Now, characterizing the nature of the nature of the way of the way. the retreat and the why of the retreat is something's important to do. When you think about why there's a retreat, the most obvious need to retreat is that U.S. imperialism, mega-imperialism, which seems to be particularly aggressive with such things as the Dunrow Doctrine, the revival of the

Monroe Doctrine, the whole wave of regime changes essentially through controlling and manipulating elections, though in case of Venezuela, kidnapping the president. This certainly represents a new level of aggression. So this puts us on the defensive. And if you think about what is it the need for this, why are we taken off guard? I want to point to two things. One is the military, the military problem. We are not prepared for the kind of military aggressions the U.S. has submitted us to. That's partly a technological issue, you know, and some of the first window of the technological problem could be seen in the way the U.S. attacked the FARC, the Colombian guerrilla, on the last, turning its last decade of existence.

They used intelligent bombs, they infiltrated it, of course, and implied all kinds of new intelligence, but especially new technology against the Colombian FARC, and forced it into a peace situation. So that was one of the first direct, very direct U.S. interventions in the continent in recent years. And I think that was kind of the preamble to what happened on January 3rd. If you talk to people in Colombia on the left,

some of them said, well, it's good that the FARC made peace because that's what allowed a progressive president like Petro to get into power, essentially saying that only because the FARC made peace, was Petro able to get into power? But then the other side of the coin is that after the FARC makes peace, the U.S. can get rid of Petro when they want to. And that's kind of a situation where now we're defenseless because we don't have the military preparation.

And the military preparation isn't just a question of, you know, special drones. It's also a question of organization, as the Iranians have shown. You have to have a level of organization that allows their leadership to be decapitated, and you can take those hits and go forward as the Iranians have done in such a brilliant way. So that's one reason we need to retreat. We're not military really prepared for this kind of aggression. But the other thing is, when you think about the actual situation of the populations, not exactly the revolutionaries in Latin America, but including in Venezuela, for example, right now, about 30% of the population in Venezuela, possibly more than Brazil are evangelical Christians.

And many of those evangelical Christians might be revolutionaries, many individuals. and they're certainly glorious. I know some great cases of evangelical Christians who are revolutionaries in Venezuela. But as a tendency, evangelical Christianity tends to be very close to the imperialist project, and it's almost always explicitly Zionists. They have doctrinal theological beliefs about the importance of Israel and all kinds of nonsense like that. I'm just wondering that fact about as a way certain levels of consciousness

and certain problems have been introduced profoundly into Latin, American populations which weaken our movements. So if you have 30% of the population that is leaning towards Zionism, that explains part of the problem through which these terrible decisions, I mean, terrible, perhaps forced decisions, but nevertheless terrible that Syria was pointing to about possibly reopening relations with Israel, allowing the IDF to come to Venezuela. All these things are terrible and shameful. But one of the root problems is the way the population has been mined by imperialist ideology, among other things, through organs like evangelical Christianity. So in this situation, you know, we do need to retreat.

Chavismo is still a powerful force, but it needs to do a kind of retreat to rebuild forces to weather this situation and one hopes move forward in the future. And that's where I remember that I recently pulled up some writings about Lenin from 1922 in which he talks about how you have to carry about a retreat and how you have to impose discipline on people. And one curious thing about these writings, which are, you know, basically the NEP, the new economic policy was a retreat that the Bolsheviks did after the period of war communism. And one interesting thing he points out to is how it's the international, precisely the people in the West, and it's a little bit like our situation, precisely people in the global north. And he says they're the ones who are most concerned

or most inclined to weep, he says it was one moment. I wish they would weep now. In fact, they just get angry at us. But Lenin says that they most inclined to kind of lose their cool in a retreat, are the internationalists from Western Europe who are sympathizers with the Bolsheviks. And right now that's similar to our situation. And Lenin says the reason for that is that they've never advanced. So I guess they're vicariously living the revolution.

And maybe some of that's true right now is people who are vicariously living a revolution rather than actually doing it. They want to see that vicarious dream carried out in ethereal perfection rather than facing the real contradictions we have to face. And that's one of the challenges we're facing right now in this kind of conjuncture where we have all kinds of people throwing up their arms, weeping,

shouting at us because they see a step as a retreat and they're unhappy about it. But the question is what to do with that unhappiness, how to direct it. And I wish they would show discipline, think about what's really a stake, which I believe is the revolution and not the small catharsis they might have in planning out a contradiction. And I want to say something about this whole saying about the government and the communes not being two totally separate things. Because one of the favorite things of people who are saying everything is lost with the Bolivarian revolution, when you tell them that, they'll tell you no, because I know the communes are wonderful, and the commun arts are wonderful, and they are doing wonderful things, and blah, blah, blah.

They'll say that. They'll say, I'm not against the communes and the communards, I'm against the government, and what the government has done. but since the communist are not against the government and understand why the government has had to make these decisions then they are actually against the common arts too even though they say no we are saving the communards they still represent hope for us but since the communards are not against the government

even though we'll have critical positions in relation to the government then they are actually against the common arts too So it's extremely bad faith what they do. They say against the government with the common arts. But at the same time they are telling us, communards rebel against the government. But the common arts understand that we cannot rebel against the government if we want to maintain the threat of the Belivarian Revolution.

So those would be some elements, some very broad elements to make an argument in terms of the positions that these people have. They are bad faith, they are bad faith positions. They do not understand the context. They don't understand struggle and revolutions. Therefore, they are Eurocentric.

And generally speaking, they are global North chauvinists or big nation chauvinist, as Lenin would have said. And so you've both talked about this a little bit already and have given some examples of it, but maybe just in a more general or broad sense, like, what does constructive or helpful or appropriate criticism look and sound like in this particular situation, you know? Westichivism or communal chavismo has to continue thinking with its own heads and making criticisms when they are necessary. That doesn't mean that in this dialectical relationship between the government and the rest, which is an active relationship. is not a passive relationship.

The communal movement has to make criticism, as it does of the stuff that it's unsatisfied with. And that's going to continue. And probably we will see more criticisms from the communal movement towards the government in the future, because right now we are still kind of like trying to process the current situation. The current situation is very difficult.

We still feel like the whole situation of precarity of our government, government means certain things, means that we have to be careful. But they have known that, that we will see more criticism. As there's been, in the Polyverian Revolution, there's been periods when there's been a lot of criticism towards the government, but that never meant rupture. And then there's been times when there's been less criticism. So I actually can predict that there will be moments of further critical, not critical positioning,

but more criticism towards the government as things goes on. Because the truth is that the pressure from the United States is so violent, so intense, that sometimes the government will want to make some concessions that may not be correct, like the one in relation to Israel. And then the people of Venezuela, the communards will have to be critical. That doesn't mean making a rupture. That's what I think some intellectuals around the world don't understand, that you don't like something, or that something that is done,

you consider maybe correctly or incorrectly that is wrong when you're talking about real actual living movement, that doesn't mean that it needs to come with a rupture or an insurrection. And yeah, I think that that's something that it's hard for them to understand. There's a lot of work and just understanding things. I think too often people pass to judgment without, you know, there's a, what is it, a famous saying by, I guess it's Alexander Pope who said a little bit of learning is a dangerous thing. So there's a lot of work people could do to have a great understanding of situation in Venezuela and the situation in the world, questions of history. Understanding the Latin American situation

is something that requires a lot of work and there's a lot of work still to be done before one passes to judgment, which people do with too great a facility. For example, a lot of times people say, oh, Chavez would never have done this or Fidel would never have done this. And it's true that, for example, both Fidel and Chavez were people who acted according to revolutionary principles. But it's not true. They didn't make compromises. You know, for example, Chavez found himself shaking hands with Uribe, sometimes Alvar Aribi, a fascist Colombian leader. And I remember that Fidel, Fidel is perhaps the most principal leader of revolutions and all of all history. But even so, by his own account,

he compromised on his attitude towards Czechoslovakia in 1968. So if they know a history better, they'll see that many revolutions have had to make retreats, have had to make compromises. So just a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing, and there's a lot of, there's a lot more knowledge that people could do before they hastily pass into judging things.

But the other thing that's super important, and maybe even I'd like to emphasize more, is just people, I found, and it's hardly surprising, the people who actually have a practice of revolutionary organization, or even progressive organization in the Global North, they're much less likely to make these hasty judgments, and they're much more likely to make wiser evaluations of things.

And I think there's two simple reasons for that. One is that they are aware, and the only way to really understand the complexity, the non-linear character of any revolutionary or progressive process is by living in your own flesh. And in my own case, that's provided lessons. I used to be hypercritical of other revolutions until I started to see the difficulty of the revolution here.

the difficulties, the real concrete difficulties, which there's no way of avoiding here in Venezuela, it made me understand things like the Chinese opening that it did in the late 70s. Only through living it, do you start to understand how these nonlinear processes are necessary if you want human beings to emancipate themselves? But the other reason why people who actually have a practice in the global north, an organizational or progressive or revolutionary practice, are better equipped, is they're much more likely to debate some of the their ideas with other people. You know, like some people will write things about if they just debated that, if they just

presented their writing or ideas to someone before they published it, they might be able to point out contradictions or problems in that writing, or they're more likely to develop their own ideas in a situation where every person's knowledge is become stronger and more robust through process of internal debate. So people who are involved in progressive processes are much more likely to have a sober and serious analysis of situations outside. And recently, we've seen how a new group of young people who've been involved in pro-Palestine organization in the United States

have really emerged as marvelous internationalists toward Venezuela. They come with the idea of supporting the revolution and seeing how it can go forward rather than bringing it down. So to me, that's a kind of proof that experiencing revolutionary organizing or progressive organizing in your own context is the best preparation for internationalism. Actually, I want to say something about this that Chris was saying. I recently published an article in M.R. Online, which is called The Hour of the Furnaces, and it's about internationalism.

And basically, I kind of like compared two kinds of internationalism. For the past, I mean, basically until 2026, the Polyvean Revolution, specifically Caracas, kind of became a hub for internationalism. There were congresses here almost every, and sometimes it seems like every three months, there was a Congress in which, you know, like 200 to 2,000 people would be brought from abroad to, say, an anti-fascist Congress or to an election or something like that. All these people were put in five-star hotels or four-star hotels, the government would pay for their trips and so on. And this was useful.

It was a useful thing for kind of like the defense of the Bolivian, revolution, it was a tremendous effort for a country in their siege to put so much money. But the truth is that many, many things happened here. Not only did people go back home with more disposition to defend the Bolivian revolution, but also there were networks that were built here, and the left needs places to meet and to imagine collectively, to analyze collectively. Caracas came kind of like the smaller degree, but kind of like the headquarters of a sort of international until 2026. This is of course over. So the question is how should internationalism

against the Bolivarian revolution be shaped up right now? That internationalism, that earlier internationalism actually to a great degree was for many people they just came because of the great pleasure of being invited to a country and staying in a good hotel and then hearing from people in the high government. So there was a certain amount of privileged being moved around with that kind of solidarity that was built during those years, in addition to the very useful thing that happened of being kind of like a headquarters of an international. Now, what kind of internationalism should be built with Venezuela? First of all, it's not that Venezuela has to become the center of people abroad. But for those who are interested in,

Venezuela, I have seen a very interesting way of internationalism building up, not the only one, because it means coming here, but a very, very fruitful one. So since January 3rd, we have seen different organizations coming to Venezuela in self-organized brigades that have, for instance, the first one was just a few days after the attack, people from Colombia, from Pupsoc, they came on an old Rikitibas and they came around the communes and talked to the people. That was an initiative that came from actually understanding that we have a common struggle, the people of Venezuela and the people of Colombia, we have a common struggle. That's one, but then more recently there's been three brigades, one from Catalonia, and they have all stayed in my commune, in the Pannal Community, one in

Catalonia, one from several countries, Colombia, Connoisse de los Pueblos, MST, Brazil, Basque country, And in these brigades, basically we collectively talk about strategy, the situations, the difficulties we face and how to overcome them collectively. And then there was also an Alba Movimento's brigade. More recently, Alba Movimento's being the organization that brings together most of the progressive and left movements, grassroots movements of Latin America. So these brigades offer you a new roadmap in terms of internationalism, not because you have to come here to be an interesting. internationalists with Solidaries with the Polyvarian Revolution, but because they are organization-based and not individual-based. So from the organizations, from the experience of the organizations themselves, you can actually build something that is much more useful. I think individual intellectuals are

pretty much useless to us right now. We need to think this stuff collectively, and not only collectively here, from the ground in Venezuela, but collectively with a working class, with the organization, organized people of the world because the challenges we face are many, but also very similar in many ways, although the specificities will be different. So I want to end, and you already brought Lenin into the conversation, so thank you for that. I want to end by evoking Lenin's 1922 text on, it's called On Ascending a High Mountain, which he wrote when the young Soviet Union had to temporarily. step back from some of the socialist reforms that were being implemented in order to introduce

what was called the new economic policy or NEP, which introduced limited markets and certain capitalist elements. And there was a lot of debate at the time around whether this was going back on the aims of the revolution and that kind of thing. And so the text is basically a metaphor of a lone traveler who is climbing up a very high mountain. they find a path ahead that is very treacherous and it turns out it's impossible for the traveler to keep going up in that direction. So the traveler has to retreat back down a little ways to find a safer route up. And while this is all happening, there's crowds of people below watching him and mocking him because they see he's descending the mountain, right? It looks from up

there that he's actually coming down. So yeah, they essentially mock his failure. But the whole point that Lenin was trying to make is that sometimes you have to make these strategic retreats and they may look and feel like failures at the time. And going back down just to climb back up again may seem frustrating, right? It's a longer route that you might have to take, perhaps a more circuitous route. And so on the face of it, it seems like a failure. but that that is often the only way to secure a genuine future advance where you actually have a chance then to find a new path that can take you to the top of the mountain, which is your goal.

So I hope I did justice to that story. It's a really beautiful piece if anybody wants to actually go and read it. It's called On Ascending a High Mountain. But yeah, so I wanted to evoke that sentiment here as we close. and as all of Latin America struggles to understand exactly how to contend with this new modality of imperialism, right? This new form of imperialism that is spreading through the U.S. regime right now across Latin America. What are some of the questions that we should be asking? How do we avoid the trap of defeatism, which will likely only lead us to paralysis?

I think that passage from Lenin, which is parallel to the one, and I think almost in simultaneous in time to the one that I mentioned earlier about, it comes from the 11th Congress of the Party in which he also talks about retreat and the kind of discipline you need to sometimes impose in a retreat and the problems of discipline that he also touches upon here. One thing that I find interesting in this metaphor or parable that Lennon offers that you just read is the difference between the actors and the spectators. And I think you could say that one of the things that our society or the global situation now produces is new levels of spectatorship for revolutions or counter-revolutions too. And that's a reality. It's produced certain problems that we're facing right now.

You could say that the problems we face are similar. It's like to the second power of the ones that Lenin faced because there's so many spectators who look at a revolution and apply the typical criteria of spectators. In that sense, it reminds me of something I've been thinking about since January. 3rd and even earlier. And it's a huge area of like comparing sports to politics. But I think one of the real problems right now, because sports are a clear area of spectatorship, is people think,

I mean, I can just see how people think of revolutionary processes as a sporting event and a revolution as a sporting team. And they think of it as like the World Cup. We're going to the World Cup. And some people feel like they're going to support one team and other people are going to support another team. And it's really a very poor metaphor.

for how to think about revolutionary processes. It means that you're casting a lot with, I know there's some sports fans who do or die and have a lifelong commitments or perhaps family commitments that reach back into prehistory or something. But the problem with one of the sports metaphors, you just change your team.

You know, Jose Martí said, I cast my lot with the poor of the earth. Here we say, well, if that didn't work, I'll try something else. So I see how people feel, okay, well, the Venezuelan side is not looking so good right now. So I'm going to cast my lot, instead with the Cuban side or the Iranian side or the Yemeni side.

And my God, that's not how politics, revolutionary politics works. To say something obvious, it's because the revolution is a, it requires all of those processes to go forward, the Yemeni, the Iranian, the Venezuelan, and the Cuban one, among others. And so it's simply to see it as a matter of lightly casting you a lot with one. And when that one starts to turn not so wonderful, not so romantic looking, I'm going to try to find something else. That's, of course, extremely poor criterion. And it's an example of what Lenin's pointing to is the revolution is not a spectator.

It's not an event. It's more like an experiential problem. And there are questions of strategy and organization. You know, the one thing that Lenin doesn't bring up in this text is that he says a lone traveler. And in fact, a revolution is a multiplicity of travelers going forward. And one of the key problems is when people start to criticize it from the spectator's position, but a lot of their criticism, it tends to provoke disunity. in the rank and file of the revolution.

And that's one of the biggest problems that we could potentially face here. So far, it hasn't happened. Chavismo has maintained its unity, apart from a few separations that don't really draw people with them. But you have to think about the revolution needs to preserve unity.

Revolutionary politics, you know, can quote Fidel, he said the essence of revolutionary politics is sumondo forces, as unifying people. And we need to keep that in view. I say just to end, two things we need to keep in view

is that the main three things, the main enemy, which is U.S. imperialism, the goal, which is human emancipation, and the organizational force that we need to carry that project forward. And a lot of the criticisms we maintain, don't maintain those three things in view. Don't maintain clarity about the enemy. They don't mean clarity about the goal, and they don't maintain clarity about the organization we need to carry that goal forward. Yes, well, I would say that, I mean, how to you? what to do and so on. In this moment, I would say, of course,

we are not requesting or demanding that the Bolivian Revolution, that solidarity with Bolivarian Revolution be central. People have to be solidarious with the people of Cuba because the situation of the Cuban people is really dramatic. There is a genocide via the blockade going on in Cuba and the folks in the United States should, and in the global north should move. lies to revert it. I mean, of course, everybody in the global South too, but because the

blockade is being promoted by the United States, people in the United States actually have a responsibility. When it comes to Venezuela, listen to other people of Venezuela, but not just any random person, because of course, middle class people will have, will be heard much more rapidly than coming arts. And so don't listen to some random Venezuelan. person who may say this or that, look at what communes are doing. You will hear it. The first moment that communes make a rupture with the government, you will hear it. You will hear it even in the New York Times, I'm pretty sure. It won't happen. So if you don't hear from the New York Times that communes are making a rupture with the Bolivarian government, it's because they aren't. Communes are,

from my perspective, the best thermometer to know what to do in relation to the current situation for internationalists abroad. I'm not essentializing. It's not only, this process is not only about communes. The party's important. The army is important. It's important that we maintain a government that we chavista, all that is important. But in terms of the thermometer, as to what to do or how to position oneself with the Bulgarian revolution is the first thing if there's no ruptures from the communal movement, which everybody abroad celebrates. So listen to what the communes have to say. Understand that, of course, this is a situation that is rife with tremendous contradictions.

Understand, too, that the government will make mistakes, and also that the people will have the capacity to have the government correct some of these mistakes and others not. It will take some time to correct some of the mistakes. But what it will take longer to revert is the tremendous. those violence through which U.S. has imposed some concessions, which are real concessions. So the biggest fight is against, of course, U.S. imperialism, be on the side of the Venezuelan people, on the side of the Cuban people, on the side of the Iranian people, and on the side

of the Palestinian people in the struggle against U.S. imperialism. Understand that U.S. imperialism is our main enemy, our collective main enemy, and that until we are able to deal some blows to the U.S. imperialism, all revolutions, and in fact all people of the world, will be threatened by this monster that takes lives every day, that takes the resources that worms up the planet so that we cannot live in it, that generates tremendous environmental crises. This is our enemy. We have the same enemy. Anybody who says that Tulsi Rodriguez is the enemy is totally wrong. So that would be my call to unify us,

working class and to clearly define who is our enemy. And to listen to the people of Venezuela when it comes to Venezuela, common arts especially. You've been listening to an upstream conversation with Chris Gilbert and Sierra Pascual Markina. Chris Gilbert is a professor at Venezuela's Bolivarian University and a writer based in Caracas. He's the author of Commune or Nothing, Venezuela's communal movement and its socialist project.

And Sierra Pasqual Marquina is a researcher and popular educator at El Panal Commune in Venezuela. She's the author, along with Chris, of The Present as Struggle, Voices from the Bolbarian Revolution, and co-host, along with Chris, of the Marxist Educational Project, Escuela de Quattros. Please check the show notes for links to any of the resources mentioned in today's episode. Thank you to Ali Prima for the intermission music. Upstream theme music was composed by Robert. Upstream is entirely listener funded.

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