Yesterday, an attempt on Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s life rocked Caracas. At a parade celebrating the 81st anniversary of the Bolivarian National Guard, several drones packed with explosives descended upon the horrified crowd before detonating early and missing their target. According to Telesur, seven military officials were injured but, thankfully, no deaths have been reported. This latest act of terrorism, the most elaborate yet, once again confirms the obvious: the right-wing opposition and their foreign puppeteers are an existential threat to Venezuela’s democracy and sovereignty.

Old Enemies

Many of the opposition leaders and right-wing terrorists today are the same ones behind the failed 2002 coup which attempted to violently overthrow then President Hugo Chavez, as well as the violent outbursts which have taken place between 2014 and today. One of the terrorists arrested in connection with yesterday’s assassination attempt was also connected with the 2014 anti-government protests. Another was even allegedly involved in the failed 2017 attack on the military base in Valencia.

As for the higher ups, to name just one, there’s Henrique Capriles Radonski, who in 2002 stormed a Cuban Embassy with other right-wing terrorists to try and kill Venezuelan officials believed to be seeking refuge there. Capriles is now a top opposition leader with the US-funded far right party Primero Justicia and the Governor of Miranda.

There’s also Maria Corina Machado, an oligarch whose anti-Bolivarian NGO, Sumate, the National Endowment for Democracy [NED] and the US Agency for International Development [USAID] have given millions to. Just in 2014, hers was among the loudest voices calling for the opposition violence that would lead to the deaths of forty three people and she was implicated in a similar failed plot to assassinate Maduro.

And who could forget Leopoldo Lopez, the former mayor of Chacao, a wealthy district in Caracas, who led a band of murderous reactionaries into a crowd of pro-government supporters in an attempt to kidnap Chavez back in 2002. For this, he would be let go; though he was later arrested in 2014 on charges ranging from corruption to crimes of public instigation and arson, all of them premeditated. He, too, is a member of Primero Justicia, as well as Voluntad Popular, both parties which have received funding from the US, the NED, and USAID.

The opposition is, of course, using the humanitarian crisis in Venezuela as the justification and catalyst for their crimes. Though imperialists and the enemies of the Bolivarian Revolution have been quick to blame the food shortages on government mismanagement, this simply is not the case. Healthcare, housing, and education have improved considerably under Maduro, an improvement even from Chavez’s great reforms. The problem is that the opposition has been destroying food shipments.

Over fifty tons of food were destroyed in just one instance of right-wing violence last year. Another forty tons destined for children in Venezuela’s rural south were burned in a firebombing by opposition protesters cloaked, ironically, in shirts and flags depicting the Madonna and Child.

Protinal Proagro, a private Venezuelan food producer, was caught burying over 100 million perfectly healthy chicks alive by the Argentina-based new outlet, Primicias 24. It should come as no surprise that this shocking story of sabotage and kulakery was completely ignored by the Western media.

Moreover, Venezuela’s food shortages have been criminally exacerbated, if not entirely caused, by US sanctions. Just in 2017, the US blocked over 18 million boxes of food headed their way.* This is entirely in line with US foreign policy. They even bragged about doing similar to the DPR of Korea, though with much less success.

As for Venezuela’s international enemies, there is, of course, Human Rights Watch. They’ve has already called for UN intervention in Venezuela and you can read about their connections to the US State Department here.

There’s also the Lima Group, a collection of imperialist stooges and neoliberal dictators who get together periodically to bully and intimidate any Latin American country that dares to oppose the neocolonial order that keeps Latin America subservient to the West and the world market. As if to illustrate this fact even further, just before condemning Venezuelan democracy, the Lima Group met with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, a move which Bolivian Ambassador Juan Ramón Quintana, among others, described as, “the prelude of a US military intervention.”

One of their biggest criticisms was the historically low turnout in the recent election. Venezuela’s National Electoral Council puts voter turnout at 48%, though most independent organizations put that number closer to 46%. This poor turnout was caused largely by efforts of the opposition. The Socialist Party’s main opponents, the Democratic Unity Roundtable, boycotted the election, an old tactic of opposition parties who know they can’t get the votes. And opposition zealots were out in force, terrorizing anyone attempting to cast their vote. Just in Caracas, an innocent woman was gunned down by anti-government terrorists at a polling station.

It’s interesting to note also that the Lima Group (as well as the US) recognizes the 2017 election of Juan Orlando Hernández, a far right neoliberal, as President of Honduras despite widespread allegations of fraud.

Even more interesting, one member state of the Lima Group is Columbia, a nation whose government, depending on who you ask, has either turned a blind eye to or actively participated in “social cleansing,” the murder of homeless people, street children, suspected criminals, and anyone else whose mere presence might ruin a cocktail party. The Lima Group has obviously ignored this classicide, a disgusting but entirely unsurprising double standard.

Undoubtedly, the same interests and even many of the same people behind the 2002 coup, the violence in 2014, the 2017 Valencia attack, and the helicopter attack on the Supreme Court are also behind yesterday’s assassination attempt.

But what is the US’ role in this?

It’s a long story…

In 2007, journalist and lawyer Eva Golinger, a vehement Chavista, called out several journalists whom she accused of accepting bribes from the US government in exchange for spreading pro-US, anti-socialist sentiment. This backfired spectacularly. The government and the left mostly ignored the accusations while the right, then much smaller, accused Golinger of trying to start a political witch hunt. The story fizzled out without many noticing or caring.

There was, however, one very important listener who took this story very seriously: the US Embassy in Caracas.

A cable, later exposed by Wikileaks, ‘IV Participants and USAID Partners Outed, Again,’ reveals that, though Golinger had only managed to embarrass herself by going public with her accusations, she was right. The US was indeed funneling money to Chavez’s opponents. This was confirmed in another cable from 2004, ‘Update on the USAID/OTI Venezuela Program,’ which detailed several programs costing more than $450,000 annually working to “provide training to political parties on the design, planning, and execution of electoral campaigns.” One program would specifically build and fund “campaign training schools” to recruit campaign managers and promote “the development of viable campaign strategies and effectively communicating party platforms to voters.”

In short, the US government was manufacturing opposition.

These programs were definitely effective. Two major far right opposition parties, Primero Justicia and Voluntad Popular, were founded in part with funding from USAID and the NED. These would not be what the are today if not for the $100 million they received from US organizations throughout the last eight years. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Though many in the West have conveniently forgotten, the 2002 coup was a brutal and bloody conspiracy by anti-democratic forces against the people for the reestablishment of the right-wing oligarchy Venezuela suffered beneath before the Bolivarian Revolution. The economic prosperity pre-Chavez Venezuela experienced was at the cost of mass illiteracy, homelessness, and poverty. Their great democracy left out millions of working class families who found themselves unable to get out from under the boot of US imperialism and the handful of obscenely rich moguls and compradors who benefited from it. Chavez changed that. Within less than fifteen years, illiteracy in the country was declared eradicated by the United Nations and all levels of education and healthcare were made available to every Venezuelan. As for the talk of dictatorship? Nonsense. Former president Jimmy Carter himself called Venezuela’s electoral system “the best in the world.”

Naturally, the US and their pet bourgeoisie in Venezuela put a target on Chavez’s back. The Bolivarian Revolution was now an enemy of reactionary forces across the world. Immediately, the US began undermining Venezuelan democracy and sovereignty and, within four years, the Observer would undercover that “The failed [2002] coup in Venezuela was closely tied to senior officials in the US government.” Then president George Bush and his team of Reaganite “Dirty War” veterans were blatantly funding, arming, training, and supporting the conspirators.

The same is being done today. As Bolivian President Evo Morales pointed out over Twitter, “Within the last twelve months, US Vice-President Mike Pence made three trips to Latin America to meet at least eight presidents from whom he demanded support for a military intervention against our brother president of Venezuela Nicolás Maduro. Those are the Empire’s coup attempts.”

Learn From Allende

Note how leniently this terrible authoritarian dictatorship has treated violent anti-government extremists who actually tried to overthrow the government. Not only were most let go, some are now in positions of power. Judging by how they’ve used this power, is it any wonder why the government may not be taking any more chances with foreign-funded terrorists, especially when the US hasn’t ruled out a direct invasion? They are not going to let some scorned oligarchs force the working people back into poverty and destitution. And as the election has shown, the working people support their government.

Their leniency, however, has been one of the greatest weaknesses.

It has never been enough for the working class to seize the ready-made instruments of the state, especially in Latin America, the US’ backyard. Chavez, for all his great successes, clearly did not learn this following the failed 2002 coup. Letting terrorists and bourgeois keep their heads will always comes back to bite you. We can only hope that, after such a close call, Maduro will heed Lenin’s words: “democracy is not identical with the subordination of the minority to the majority. Democracy is a state recognizing the the subordination of the minority to the majority, i.e., an organization for the systematic use of violence by one class against the other.” The Bolivarian Revolution and the great victories of the Venezuelan proletariat will never be safe until a workers’ state is build atop the ruins of the old bourgeois democracy.

* Side Note: Even after all this, Venezuela still offered the US over $5 million in aid to victims of Hurricane Harvey; making it one of the only two nations to offer anything.