Venezuela Against the US

The Union of South American Nations is a new regional, large-scale international organization that includes all the countries of South America and was founded on May 23, 2008 with the fundamental goal of guaranteeing the peaceful coexistence of, and cooperation among, the countries of that important part of the world.

It is to this organization that Venezuelan Foreign Minister Elias Jaua presented an important denouncement of the U.S. last Friday, stating that, since last February, the U.S. has been guilty of having organized violent actions carried out in order to subvert peace and public order in Venezuela with the aim of overturning the constitutional and democratic government of Nicolas Maduro. Such violent action, which mainly took place in certain cities and houses, took on the characteristics of real terrorism; it was organized to kill police officers and ordinary citizens in cold blood, and was supported financially and logistically, in effect, by the U.S. government — which, as a Guardian commentary article brought to light, allocated $5 million toward this aim in 2014 alone. At the same time, the U.S. government, making use of its many means of mass communication, as well as the availability of journalists, self-professed mercenaries and liars, has openly and publicly waged a systematic campaign of interference in Venezuela’s internal affairs. This campaign is in clear violation of the fundamental provisions of international law, such as Article 2, paragraph 7 of the U.N. Charter; the fundamental declaration 2625 about the friendly and cooperative relations between governments, which specifies that not only armed intervention but any form of interference are prohibited; Article 3, letter E, of the Charter of the Organization of American States; the decision to implement the South American Defense Council of Dec. 15, 2008; paragraph 23 of the Caracas Declaration of Dec. 2-3, 2011; and even the special declaration about democracy and constitutional law in the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States of Dec. 3, 2011.

The principles encapsulated by these and other international provisions have a lot of value in general because they make up the main basis for peaceful cooperation among governments, regarding them as sovereign and equal entities. It’s possible that these have a major significance in the competition between the U.S. on the one hand and all the other countries of the American continent (and not just those) on the other — relations that, as history teaches, were characterized by the most shameless interference of the former in the conflicts of the latter, starting with the affirmation of the Monroe Doctrine.

The law constitutes an important weapon for putting an end to this state of things that has always given rise to violence, oppression and misery in the entire American continent and the whole world. That’s why the Venezuelan government’s choice to impose this weapon against the superpower of the U.S. — the U.S. having attempted to dissolve a government that has always fought for the autonomy and sovereignty of all of Latin America — is important.

It is necessary, therefore, to push back on the attempt of the U.S. to rely once again on an imperial interference against countries like Venezuela, which are independent and sovereign, in particular through a design of law, which is currently under discussion in the U.S. Congress, that plans for economic sanctions and was loudly requested by the insurgent Venezuelan right led by Leonardo Lopez. We are talking about a design of law that in many ways reproduces that which has been in effect against Cuba for many years; that among other things allots $15 million in financing to armed anti-Chavez groups with the clear aim of fomenting civil war in the country. An aim, as I just had the opportunity to observe, that goes hand in hand with that of thwarting the peace negotiations currently underway between the Colombian government and FARC. A negotiation that exists thanks to the courageous choice of both contenders, FARC and President Santos — who today or at election time will more than likely be reelected to lead the country — but which goes against the interests of the most reactionary part of the American right, from whose influence Obama must manage to finally free himself if he does not want to disillusion the tens of millions of honest Americans who voted for him twice.