Ep 363 - Venezuela's Unfinished Revolution with Ricardo Vaz
** Further questions about this episode? You’re in luck. Tuesday evening, January 20th, Ricardo Vaz will be with us during Macro ‘n Chill, our online gathering. Find the registration link at the top of our website: realprogressives.org
Steve opens in a subdued mood brought on by the dizzying speed of ‘current events.’ For this episode he’s stepping back and looking at Venezuela. News reports are working hard to create confusion. On social media US citizens claim that kidnapping a sitting president is justified if you don’t like him. Or if he’s socialist.
To understand a situation, it must be considered historically, materially, and as a connected process. With that in mind, Ricardo Vaz of Venezuelanalysis, joins Steve to talk about what the Bolivarian Revolution actually was – on the ground – beyond the familiar US media caricatures. Ricardo walks through key turning points in the Chávez era and the social gains that reshaped everyday life. But there’s a bigger question that haunts every revolutionary project. How do you build new forms of democratic power while the old state machinery, domestic elites, and hostile external forces push back?
(Does this sound familiar? It will if you took part in RP Book Club’s study of State and Revolution)
From there, the conversation follows the oil thread. It’s not a single-cause explanation, but it’s where sovereignty, development, and imperial pressure collide. Steve and Ricardo unpack how the hydrocarbons industry evolved, what “nationalization” really meant in practice, and why the fight over Venezuela’s resources can’t be separated from US strategy in the hemisphere.
They then look into the Maduro years, sanctions, economic siege, and the constant tug-of-war inside Venezuela between survival policies and revolutionary horizons. This includes a clear-eyed look at opposition figures and the narratives that dominate US talking points. The episode closes with a grounded discussion of why Venezuela matters as a 21st-century political experiment, and what meaningful solidarity looks like when the headlines are designed to mislead and misdirect.
Ricardo Vaz grew up in Mozambique with strong political leanings and a clear anti-imperialist outlook, which led him early on to closely follow the Bolivarian Revolution and Chavismo in Venezuela. After living in various countries and continents, he moved to Venezuela in early 2019. Although trained in theoretical physics, he gradually shifted into journalism and political analysis, joining the Venezuela Analysis staff as a writer and editor in 2018. His main interests include sanctions, popular power organizations, and corporate media coverage of Venezuela. He is also a member of grassroots media collectives including Tatuy TV and Utopix.
venezuelanalysis.com
@venanalysis on X
Transcript
STEVE GRUMBINE:
All right, folks, this is Steve with Macro N Cheese. And you definitely
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feel a little bit of a subdued Grumbine voice here because things are
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a little bit subdued right now. I am struggling mightily with the current
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events and there's so many of them, right? There's so, so many of
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them. Part of me would like to be talking about Minnesota right now.
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Part of me would like to be discussing fascism in the United States.
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But things are happening so fast, it's impossible to stay up on every
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single one of them. But we're trying. We're trying really hard. And we're
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looking also now at one of the most important moves that has happened
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under this Trump administration. And, and I would like to say right up
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front before we get into the guest and into the subject matter that
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this isn't new. Biden had talked about Venezuela. This is Trump just finally
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stepping forward and doing what the US Empire planned to do to begin
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with anyway. But today we're going to talk about Venezuela and we're going
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to talk about the Bolivarian Revolution. We're going to talk about the gains.
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We're going to talk about Venezuela as it is from an insider perspective.
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We're also going to better understand kind of the oil industry and how
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it plays out in Venezuela as well. And really, there's nothing isolated here,
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folks. Everything's connected. I think that's the most important thing to understand. You
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know, having a dialectical perspective I think is really important in understanding the
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events that are happening fast and furious around us. So today, like I
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said, we are going to discuss Venezuela. My guest is from Venezuela Analysis.
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His name is Ricardo Vaz and Ricardo grew up in Mozambique with a
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very, very strong political leanings from an early age and clear anti-imperialist outlook.
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He always felt a very strong affinity toward the Bolivarian Revolution and Chavismo and
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has closely followed the political developments in Venezuela. After living in different countries
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e moved to Venezuela in early:
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read straight from his bio. Although his background is in theoretical physics, he
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gradually moved toward journalism and political analysis and joined the Venezuela Analysis staff
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as a writer and editor in:
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sanctions, popular power organizations and the corporate media coverage of Venezuela. He's also
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a member of grassroots collectives, and I can't pronounce them, so Utopix is
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one that I can. But Tatuy TV I think. I hope I said that
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correctly.
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Close enough.
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Thank you so much, Ricardo, for joining me. I really, really appreciate it.
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No, no, thank you, Steve. It's great to be here and great to have an opportunity to go
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a little beyond. I mean, of course there's a lot going on right now, and we are kind
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of trapped in the moment, but kind of understand where we come from and how we got here.
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And that's really, I think, the evergreen portion of this conversation. People hear things,
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you know, the scuttlebutt, the word, the common sense they think they know, and
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little by little, we find out that a lot of things we think we
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know just ain't so. And I think the conversation about Venezuela is really an
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important one. All right, so, Ricardo, help me better understand how we got to
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this moment in time. Give me a little bit of history of Venezuela and
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the Bolivarian Revolution, and obviously we can discuss the oil industry as well and
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understand its role in developing the Venezuelan economy.
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Yeah, absolutely. I'm going to give some kind of historical perspective, but feel free to
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interrupt me and we can delve into things in more detail. And talking about oil
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is inevitable. Even now, I mean, you're seeing a lot of opposition to what the
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Trump administration has just did. You know, this January 3rd military attacks, the kidnapping of
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the sitting president, Nicolas Maduro. And, you know, the obvious answer is it's all about
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the oil. And don't take it from me, don't take it from anyone else, take
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it from Trump himself and his administration officials when they say "We're going to get
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the oil and we're going to get the oil in the best favorable conditions." And
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of course, that's the big part of the equation. But I don't think that explains
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everything, I mean. I think we're seeing US repositioning to impose its hegemony in the
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hemisphere. And if we talk about the obstacles to that hegemony, very close to the
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top is the Bolivarian Revolution. In my opinion, the Bolivarian Revolution is the most important
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and transformative political project of the 21st century. And that's one of the reasons why
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it has permanently been in the sights of the United States. You know, it's a
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bad example in the US's quote, unquote "backyard." The Bolivarian Revolution comes around at the
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crucial time. So we can go back to the early '90s with the fall of
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the Soviet Union and this idea of the end of history. And now it's going
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to be this unopposed, unipolar world where the US can just throw its weight around
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and do whatever it pleases. Perhaps in the beginning, nobody really thought much of it,
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havez, when he was elected in:
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like such a serious threat. But then, you know, history has a way of accelerating
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eemed over, you see Chavez in:
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the banners of socialism. And that's, from my understanding, what brings socialism really back into
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the political discourse here first and then in Latin America and then of course, around
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. So Chavez comes to power in:
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lost decade, really, in Venezuela. So this was the heyday of neoliberalism, where you had
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an economic model that had run into the ground and then there come the neoliberal
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examples imposed in all Latin American countries. And here in Venezuela, it was an absolute
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disaster with a rapid increase in poverty and inequality, as well as, you know, corruption
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and complete decay of the political class. And Chavez comes as an actual outsider, not
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like Trump, proposing to re-found the republic. And quite fittingly, where does Bolivar come in,
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right? Because it's a Bolivarian revolution and Bolivar is, you know, I'm sure everyone knows
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Bolivar is Venezuela's independence hero. He then played a key role in the independence of
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other South American countries. And Chavez brings back the example of Bolivar as kind of
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the re-foundation of the republic with republican values and a true moral compass as opposed
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to the decay that had been seen before. So Chavez gets into power and in
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the beginning, it's actually a very mild project. He's talking about the third way, social
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democracy and modest reforms. But even that was unacceptable for the Venezuelan oligarchy and the
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breaking point very early in:
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when Chavez wanted to pass some very far-reaching reforms. You know, we're talking about reforming
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the tenancy of lands, allowing landless peasants to have rights. And most importantly, and this
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was the straw that broke the camel's back, he wanted to change the legislation regarding
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elites. They tried a coup in:
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this is a really important moment in history because I was 13 at the time
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and I was watching and I had some historical notions and it looked like Chile
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:
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was to the Left and mildly challenging of the US and then it was just
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crushed by the army and the elites. And the US actually came out immediately in
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support of the coup. But history was going to be different this time around. The
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Venezuelan masses came out en masse, you know, pun intended, and reversed the coup and
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secured Chavez's return. This was really a triumph that ignited the Bolivarian revolution. So Chavez
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understood that even his idea of advancing slowly and trying to get everyone on board
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was not going to work. I mean, if he was going to return the stolen
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dignity of the Venezuelan masses, then he really needed a project that was going to
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transform much further. And so that leads to a kind of acceleration of the Bolivarian
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anti-imperialist character in:
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that the project that we're building has a name. This was Chavez in a meeting
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in Brazil. It has a name and it's called "socialism." And socialism has been kind
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of prescribed from the public discourse. Maybe. Let me stop here and see if you
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want to exchange any ideas before I continue.
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Oh, no, I want you to keep going. This story is really important.
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Okay. So Chavez came to power, and one of the key elements in his
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discourse was he called it "the repayment of the social debt." So you had
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this huge majority of the population, Afro-Venezuelan, indigenous descendant, that historically had always been
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forgotten and marginalized. They lived in terrible conditions in these huge urban slums on
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the hillsides. We've all seen the pictures. I mean, some of them didn't even
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have ID cards. They basically did not exist. And this was the base that
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Chavez wanted to address. So first granting them basic rights like the ability to
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vote, but then repaying the social debt, improving living conditions very quickly. So within
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the first few years of the Bolivarian revolution, poverty was halved from 60 to
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30%. Extreme poverty was cut down by three quarters. The United Nations recognized Venezuela
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as a territory free of illiteracy after a huge campaign with support from Cuba,
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of course. There were other initiatives, like Barrio Adentro. So barrio is these popular
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neighborhoods that historically never had any access to healthcare. And Chavez, with again cooperation
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from Cuba, took healthcare to the furthest corners, in the most inaccessible, either geographically
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or socially most inaccessible corners in Venezuela. And of course, that made the Bolivarian
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enezuelan masses. And then in:
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the socialist banner and saying, "You know, my project is socialism, and whoever votes
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for me is voting for socialism." He had the most historic landslide victory in
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a presidential election. He had, I think, 65% of the vote. So this was
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really the height of popular enthusiasm behind the Bolivarian Revolution. [Wow.] Of course, I
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way, and one of them was the:
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It was an attempt at a constitutional reform to kind of recreate the geographical
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division of the state. But in the end, Chavez himself recognized that there wasn't
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enough of an effort to explain what was going on, what they wanted to
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achieve with this, and this was narrowly defeated. Chavez accepted the defeat, but it
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was just a temporary setback, because another key pillar of Chavez's project dating back
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to the early '90s. So just a small parenthesis, Chavez appears on the political
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,:
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So this was again after the disasters wrought by neoliberalism and this decay of
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politics. Chavez attempted a coup. It was very audacious and it failed. He was
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arrested, but he instantly became a figure of popular cult because he talked to
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the press when the coup was defeated, basically telling his comrades to lay down
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their arms, and he took responsibility for it. And this had become unthinkable in
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Venezuelan society at the time, that the leader would actually take responsibility for failures.
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So he was already showing what the next leap in Venezuelan history was going
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n by a presidential pardon in:
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And he immediately began traversing the country from north to south, east to west,
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visiting the most remote villages, and, you know, even having assemblies with 20 people,
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if that's what it took. Because he wanted to know the country inside out.
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He didn't want to just make up some kind of cheap political project and
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try and take power. He wanted something profound that was going to really address
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the needs of the nation. But one of the key elements that he mentioned
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was this concept of protagonistic and participatory democracy, which seemed a bit vague in
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the beginning, but it was something that actually began to take shape as the
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revolution itself advanced. So from the get-go, Chavez was looking for mechanisms to improve
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the participation of the Venezuelan people in the politics and in the processes defining
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their everyday life. So there were things like water committees to decide water supply
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in neighborhoods, or urban land committees to regularize the tenancy of urban land, because
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you had all these people building informally in hillsides and there was nothing to
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show for it legally. And so this was very important. There were also, again,
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examples that were tried and did not exactly succeed. One of them was a
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cooperatives. This was around:
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oversight, there wasn't enough of a plan, and there was just a lot of
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credit given away without any kind of accountability. So it didn't really work, it
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didn't really prosper, and there was some money squandered in the operation. But Chavez
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never hid himself from admitting that, you know, we tried this, it didn't work.
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And this is what we learned.
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Powerful.
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He had the weekly broadcast on Sunday, which was called Alo Presidente. First it
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was radio, then it became television. And it ran for hours, three hours, four
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hours. I think the longest was eight hours. And this was Chavez discussing with
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his minister, discussing with people announcing government projects, really an effort to bypass the
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usual mediation from the traditional media and reach the people directly. And this is
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no small factor in understanding why the Bolivarian revolution was so far reaching. But
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going back to the issue of how do we create a new kind of
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democracy? So Chavez understood that it wasn't just a matter of creating cooperatives. There
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needed to be a change from the grassroots. And he finally settled on a
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. Let me put it like this- in:
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council- so communal councils are political spaces in a given neighborhood. They bring together
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from a few hundred to a few thousand, typically a few hundred families in
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a very delimited geographical space. And the most important thing is that it is
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ruled by an assembly where everyone over the age of 16 gets to participate.
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And this assembly then chooses committees on everything, day to day life- so education,
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healthcare, public services, sports, everything you can imagine, with the people choosing their own
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spokespeople. It's important to note the distinction. These are not merely representatives, they are
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spokespeople that actually can be recalled at any time if they're not fulfilling their
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duties. And the communal councils actually began accessing funding directly from the state. So
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again, bypassing the mediation of the regional governments and the local governments, and allowing
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the people to actually decide democratically what were their priorities, what do they actually
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need on the territory, and executing these projects themselves, rendering accounts, so trying to
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change the culture of politics altogether. But this was again confined to small geographical
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spaces. So again, the next step was understanding how to scale it up. And
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this was a few years later with probably the biggest, in my opinion, the
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biggest political legacy of the Bolivarian revolution, which are the communes. So communes, in
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Chavez's words, will be the spaces where we're going to give birth to socialism.
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So communes are the Venezuelan road towards socialism. And communes bring together anything from
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three to 20 communal councils that are geographically contiguous but it's not just the
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sum of communal council, it's a lot more than that, because communes, crucially, are
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supposed to hold their own means of production, so have social property, enterprises, that
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are owned by the commune and which then mean to transform the relations of
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production in the territory. So, of course, there's a gap between theory and reality.
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We're going to get to that in a second. But beyond these enterprises, other
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things. The commons should have their own banks, they should have their own planning
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instances. And again, you know, mirroring the communal councils, but in a bigger scale,
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these committees to handle education, healthcare and so on. So it's a unit of
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self-government in the territory. And then, you know, looking towards the end goal, you
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know, how do you then build from communes? Well, communes then are supposed to
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come together and found the communal cities and then communal corridors, communal federations and
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so on, to eventually replace the bourgeois state with the new communal state. This
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is a very vague concept that of course, has to be built along the
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way and through struggles. But I mean, it's. At least that's the horizon.
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Yeah, let me stop you real quick. This is interesting to
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me. Is this, in essence the Venezuelan version of the Soviets?
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Yes, sorry, if you're going to add.
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No, no, I just. That was the point I was making. It's not like he's just
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sort of creating random stuff. He's using theory, he's using history. He's looking at what worked
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elsewhere and trying to provide Venezuelan properties to it in the design of what he's trying
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to create. And it sounds like- based on them bypassing kind of these bourgeois ministers in
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the middle- it sounds like he's leveling the class to really, really look like everyone has
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a say. Now, whether or not that worked perfectly or not is not really as relevant
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as the desire and the effort and the design to try to bring that about. And
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that's what I'm hearing you say. Am I close?
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Yeah, yeah, that's actually a great point. And going back to what we were mentioning in
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the beginning, how you only see in the news or on television where you hear about
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Venezuela once every few months, and you get a snippet of Chavez. And Chavez appears like
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just someone who makes these grandiose speeches, and he's always attacking Bush and whatever, and you
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think that he's just like that. But actually Chavez was a great student of history and
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politics and he was very eclectic in his sources. So in one of these broadcasts, he
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could be talking about, I don't know, growing tomatoes and then jump to a reference of
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Gramsci and then come back and sing a popular song and then talk about Rosa Luxembourg.
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You really had to keep up with him. And there was actually a sense that many
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of the things he said weren't really understood, you know, that their reach wasn't really understood
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at the time. I mean, it still happens now that we go back and we listen
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to a Chavez speech from:
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that is very deep, but somehow it doesn't get noticed at the time. So there's still
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so much to learn and to understand from that. But indeed, I mean, he was very
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eclectic in his sources. And of course, the Soviets are a key one when we're talking
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about this kind of transformation and construction of socialism. I mean, he also talked about the
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nese commune under Mao in the:
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connect to past experiences in Venezuela and in Latin America in general. So, for example, these
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communities of slaves that freed themselves and they organized here, they were called cumbes. In other
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places they were called palenques or kilombos. So these were again self-governed spaces of free slaves,
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where they also had some concepts like this, of horizontal democracy and so on. So there
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was an effort to learn the lessons from history. You know, it is not just making
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up anything new, or not making it up completely, but actually building on a history. And
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:RICARDO VAZ:
again, this is the whole ethos of the Bolivarian revolution. The idea that there is a
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continuous struggle dating back to anti-colonial indigenous resistance, and then through Bolivar and then through other
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efforts to fight back against the oligarchy and all the way to the present. This was
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:RICARDO VAZ:
something very important for Chavez. I mean, there was a lot of enthusiasm, a lot of
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:RICARDO VAZ:
progress, but we're seeing the construction of history in real time. And there are shortcomings, there
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:RICARDO VAZ:
are contradictions, there are obstacles. For example, you were mentioning the bourgeois state, of course, the
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bourgeois state. And it's not a matter of ill will or any kind of conscious idea
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:RICARDO VAZ:
in that regard, but it's kind of a structural issue. You have a new construction that
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ultimately is going to replace the bourgeois state. So the bourgeois state will resist it, right?
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It does not want to transfer competencies to these communes because that will make itself obsolete.
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So you had constant issues of tensions between constituent power from the ground up and the
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:RICARDO VAZ:
constituted power from top down. But this was something that Chavez actually embraced and discussed and
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:RICARDO VAZ:
understood that it wasn't something that's going to be solved overnight, but something that really should
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:RICARDO VAZ:
be present at all times. I mean, there were also struggles related to the Socialist party.
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So at one point, on Fidel's recommendation, Chavez created a political party, a mass party, because
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:RICARDO VAZ:
before he had the movement, it was a bit loose. And he created the party and
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:RICARDO VAZ:
instantly became this huge apparatus that was very useful for things like winning elections, but it
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:RICARDO VAZ:
also has its internal vices and this instinct to kind of control this popular effervescence from
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:RICARDO VAZ:
below. So this was always present. And I think something that's really worth discussing if you
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want to understand how constructing something new is going to come about.
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
Can we do that real quickly? Because obviously I want to get to Maduro
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and how things are the way they are today and kind of lay out
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
the empire and its reach into Venezuela. But I do want to go back
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
to exactly what you're talking about before we get there. Because to me, one
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
of the most important things I have always- I guess each of us, right-
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start from a position of ignorance and, you know, things elaborate and we learn
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and we grow. But one of the things that we were always raised to
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hear was all these, you know, "Communist, socialist dictators and they, they murdered billions
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
of people because zillions, trillions of people were murdered and slaughtered." And reality is
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so much different in so many ways than that. And understanding counter-revolutionary forces and
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
understanding the pressures to steal back winds and to bring capital back in charge
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
and to... I don't want to get into the Trotsky-Stalin stuff here, but just
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the idea that somehow or another a socialist state can survive on its own
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while the outside predators are trying to isolate and destroy whatever gains the people
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
have made. You know, it's messy and it's real easy for people to focus
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on one aspect of it. Not ever asking, not ever questioning, not ever wondering
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why in the world would somebody who's desperately trying to build an equal society
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
have such problems? And it really comes down- there's many factors, but one key
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factor- is that the powers that be want to take back what they gained.
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And you can see that in even something like the French Revolution, which was
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a bourgeois revolution. And you can see the counter-revolutionary forces in China and you
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
can see them in Haiti, and you can see them in Russia even. I
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
mean, there's always a counter-revolutionary force and people dismiss that like it's not a
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real thing. They don't pay attention. And it's easy to say "How come he
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
killed whatever?" And completely is erroneous. And quite frankly, I think something to learn
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
from. But I think it's something to contextualize.
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:RICARDO VAZ:
Absolutely. I think there's a tendency to be kind of narrow minded and taking
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:RICARDO VAZ:
one single element that might not look good out of context, when actually you
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:RICARDO VAZ:
should understand this as kind of a historical process where, you know, you really
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:RICARDO VAZ:
have an advancement of class warfare. So here in the case of Venezuela, you
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:RICARDO VAZ:
had these masses that had historically been marginalized and forgotten, and now you give
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them not just their rights, but you give them political agency. So they become,
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in a very eloquent fashion, they become the owners of their own destiny. Right?
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They are for the first time writing their own history. And I mean, its
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:RICARDO VAZ:
significance cannot be overestimated. And that's why I stress that the Bolivarian Revolution is
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something that should really be studied and defended even, because there's also a reason
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why it faced so much backlash. It's because it was really trying to produce
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something, produce a new and equal society in these very difficult conditions. But you
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were mentioning the previous socialist experiences, you know, the real existing socialism of Eastern
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:RICARDO VAZ:
Europe and the Soviet Union. And of course there's a lot to take from
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:RICARDO VAZ:
there. Again, systems that existed with huge external and also internal pressures. But Chavez
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:RICARDO VAZ:
actually talked a lot about it and understanding, you know, where did they fail?
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:RICARDO VAZ:
You know, we cannot just attribute it to, you know, the constant imperialist onslaught.
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:RICARDO VAZ:
And one of the points that he emphasized was this lack of internal and
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:RICARDO VAZ:
grassroots democracy, you know, something that you saw very clearly with the Soviets, but
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:RICARDO VAZ:
then gets a bit eroded over time. So this was something that Venezuela had
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:RICARDO VAZ:
to- or any new socialist project would have- to change. And the communes offer
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:RICARDO VAZ:
that blueprint. Of course, that doesn't always work in practice. You can see vices,
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you can see, I don't know, subordinating themselves to the official agenda. A lot
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of things happen, especially in times of economic struggles where the communes do not
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:RICARDO VAZ:
have their own means of production, they do not have economic autonomy, so they
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:RICARDO VAZ:
become much more dependent on state funding. And that in turn, of course, subordinates
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:RICARDO VAZ:
them to the state agenda. All of this is happening and we shouldn't have
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:RICARDO VAZ:
any illusions about it. But it's no less significant because of that.
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
Thank you so much for bringing that out. I am curious though, as we
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
move through the gains and kind of understanding how they tried to build these
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
things out locally. There is an international component here that is always at play.
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
I don't know how you can ever look at the domestic without understanding the
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
empire's desire to undermine and steal the real resources underneath the soil and, you
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
know, structural adjustments with IMF loans and all the other things that have trapped
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
the Global South in perpetual poverty. Can you talk a little bit about what
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
the international angle was as they were moving through the Bolivarian Revolution and some
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
of these gains that Chavez did?
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:RICARDO VAZ:
Absolutely. I think that actually allows us to pivot to oil and
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:RICARDO VAZ:
then through oil, pivot to the present. So Chavez had an international
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:RICARDO VAZ:
perspective from the start. I mean, I've mentioned how Fidel Castro was
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a very close friend, a very close ally, and a very strong
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:RICARDO VAZ:
influence as well. And these gains, in terms of affording people a
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:RICARDO VAZ:
dignity that had been historically denied, extended beyond Venezuela. So there were
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:RICARDO VAZ:
some solidarity initiatives throughout the continent and even beyond with again, very
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:RICARDO VAZ:
strong presence from Cuba. And one of my favorite examples is Petrocaribe.
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:RICARDO VAZ:
So Petrocaribe was a program whereby Venezuela would supply oil and other
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:RICARDO VAZ:
derivatives to the Caribbean states and islands in favorable conditions. So it's
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:RICARDO VAZ:
not like they were giving them at a discount, but, you know,
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:RICARDO VAZ:
allowing them to pay over time, or direct barter exchange with agricultural
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:RICARDO VAZ:
products. And this had basically the same perspective of freeing these nations
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:RICARDO VAZ:
that are, you know, very small, very vulnerable, and had historically been
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:RICARDO VAZ:
dependent on the U.S. and of course, if the U.S. is going
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:RICARDO VAZ:
to supply them with energy, it's going to impose political conditions, so
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:RICARDO VAZ:
creating an alternative environment whereby they can look at their own sovereign
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:RICARDO VAZ:
path towards development. This was really a beautiful initiative which again had
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:RICARDO VAZ:
these issues at corruption that shouldn't take away from us looking at
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:RICARDO VAZ:
it from a fair perspective. But then, you know, much later we'll
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:RICARDO VAZ:
get to it with US sanctions, Venezuela stopped being able to run
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:RICARDO VAZ:
this program. But there were other programs, for example in healthcare, providing
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:RICARDO VAZ:
eye surgeries, again with very big Cuban expertise. But there was always,
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:RICARDO VAZ:
as you were mentioning, always this constant U.S. pressure. You saw the
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:RICARDO VAZ:
coup in:
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:RICARDO VAZ:
row Chavez in a classic style:
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:RICARDO VAZ:
plan, counterrevolution, they began looking at other avenues. You know, the soft
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:RICARDO VAZ:
power, USAID funded groups, quote, unquote, "civil society", trying to undermine the
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:RICARDO VAZ:
revolution from within. And this was one of the factors that led
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:RICARDO VAZ:
constitutional referendum in:
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:RICARDO VAZ:
Chavez ran for reelection in:
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:RICARDO VAZ:
cancer, but he did some kind of historic campaign, very, very physically
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:RICARDO VAZ:
e again won in a landslide in:
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:RICARDO VAZ:
so the revolution was really in a very strong position at this
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:RICARDO VAZ:
point and actually prepared to advance even further. But of course, you
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:RICARDO VAZ:
y a few months later in March:
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:RICARDO VAZ:
But actually the final point I want to mention about Chavez and then we can
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:RICARDO VAZ:
look at oil and kind of bridge to the present. After he was elected in
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:RICARDO VAZ:
October:
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:RICARDO VAZ:
public address. This was a cabinet meeting. And you would think, you know, after winning
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:RICARDO VAZ:
reelection for the third time and a very big fashion, a big margin, that this
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:RICARDO VAZ:
would be kind of a triumphant mood, you know, kind of a victory lap. But
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:RICARDO VAZ:
it was the opposite, on the contrary. And this was a meeting where Chavez absolutely
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:RICARDO VAZ:
scolded his ministers because he was saying, you know, nobody's paying attention to the communes,
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:RICARDO VAZ:
you know, everyone is just minding their own business. But this is actually a serious
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:RICARDO VAZ:
thing, that everyone should be on top of everyone's agenda because otherwise what are we
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:RICARDO VAZ:
doing here? And this is the first and only time where he says the slogan
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:RICARDO VAZ:
"commune or nothing," which then became kind of the flag for the communal movement here
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:RICARDO VAZ:
in Venezuela. So in spite of the progress, Chavez was critical and very self-critical on
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:RICARDO VAZ:
what the Bolivar revolution had yet to achieve. He made this analogy that, you know,
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:RICARDO VAZ:
we have a state-owned company somewhere in some agricultural heartland, but you know, if we
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:RICARDO VAZ:
don't change the relations of production around it, then this is just going to be
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:RICARDO VAZ:
a socialist island in a capitalist sea and it will eventually go underwater. And this
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:RICARDO VAZ:
became kind of a prediction of what was going to happen later under the economic
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:RICARDO VAZ:
crisis and sanctions. So if we go to the final point of Chavez's tenure, you
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:RICARDO VAZ:
know, late:
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:RICARDO VAZ:
with these structural issues that still needed to be overcome and which Chavez himself recognized
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:RICARDO VAZ:
needed to be overcome.
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
You know, one of the big things that I realized, I don't think, you
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
know, this was something that came naturally. This is something that has come to
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
me through intense amounts of reading and talking to smart people like yourself, who
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
have a deep contextual knowledge of various situations. You know, socialism doesn't happen overnight.
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
It's not an event, it's a process. And it doesn't start at perfection. None
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
of the theoretical framework starts with perfection. It starts where it starts with the
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
conditions of the time, with the people where they are. And then over time
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
there are gains. You know, nothing is linear, there's backwards, there's forwards, there's up,
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
there's down, just like any other thing in life. The difference is, is that
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
whose interests are being served? Who's got control, if you will, of not just
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
the means of production, but the means of governance and the means of the
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
political projects that come out of the state? I mean, the state represents class
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
interests. And whose interests are they representing? Well, it depends, right? In the United
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
States we have a clear hyper-capitalism thuggery that sees the entire world as its
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
own little piggy bank. And that's really not the case in any way, shape
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
or form with what was occurring in Venezuela. Venezuela was looking purely to maintain
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
its own, to lift the people within. And within that space, things can go
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
wrong just like they're going wrong right now in the grand old United States
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
with all, all the people getting killed by brown shirts called ICE. I mean,
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
we're dealing with people that just literally have no ability to self-diagnose what is
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
happening in their own backyard. And they put all their projection on Venezuela or
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
whatever other state is trying to free itself from the predation of capital. I
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
would like your feedback on that before we move into oil.
408
:RICARDO VAZ:
Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, there are many analogies we can make. I mean, one
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:RICARDO VAZ:
of them is this idea of building a train while the train is in motion.
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:RICARDO VAZ:
And I mean, there are many criticisms and in hindsight, of course, you can always
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:RICARDO VAZ:
be right and saying, "Oh, Venezuela should have done like Norway and created a sovereign
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:RICARDO VAZ:
fund, save it for a rainy day." But Chavez had this priority of paying the
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:RICARDO VAZ:
social debt. And I like this perspective that you're making of the state as kind
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:RICARDO VAZ:
of a mediator in class struggle. You know, which side is it going to take?
415
:RICARDO VAZ:
You know, by default it's going to take the side of capital. But here people
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:RICARDO VAZ:
sometimes said that Chavez was an infiltrator within the state. You know, someone who would
417
:RICARDO VAZ:
use the power of the bourgeois state, which again had its limitations and its own
418
:RICARDO VAZ:
contradictions, but use it to advance this transformative project. And the other analogy that I
419
:RICARDO VAZ:
like a lot is the idea of a conveyor belt. So you can have a
420
:RICARDO VAZ:
state that actually brings down policies from the top down. But the Bolivar revolution also
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:RICARDO VAZ:
had kind of a conveyor belt whereby the desires and aspirations of the people could
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:RICARDO VAZ:
actually reach the very top in Chavez and allow for this very beautiful retroactive process
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:RICARDO VAZ:
where Chavez was in real time understanding where the policies were working, where they were
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:RICARDO VAZ:
failing, where they needed to be changed, and so on.
425
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
Very good. So one of the other things, because this is where we get
426
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
involved from our previous work through modern monetary theory is understanding the role of
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
the state as a currency issuer and foreign debt and debts denominated in foreign
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
currencies and so forth. And one of the big keys to maintaining, you know,
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
sovereignty is to be able to have value-added production and value-added internal production, not
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
requiring imports necessarily. I mean, imports can serve a great cause when you have
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
surpluses, but they shouldn't be your primary mode, even though, yes, you're trading paper
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
in terms of the fiat currency of the state for someone else's production, for
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
someone else's services, for someone else's minerals and, you know, so forth. But when
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
it comes down to Venezuela, Venezuela being a state that has an incredible amount
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
of oil, but they don't really necessarily have their own production of the refinement,
436
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
it's crude. So they're competing on a stage with others that have that same
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
crude. And Saudi Arabia and others are able to drop the bottom out of
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
the price and bankrupt the other states because they're dependent on exports to survive.
439
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
That's one component of it, but it's also a part of capitalism. And understand
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
the way that capital works on the international stage, predating and stealing and pillaging
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
and so forth. How did Venezuela go from private industry to nationalizing the oil
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
fields and so forth? I mean, if you want to bring it to present,
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
the fact is, is that Donald Trump is not acting on behalf of the
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
American people. Donald Trump is acting on behalf of global oil corporations to get
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
their money back, so to speak. Because once Chavez nationalized the oil fields, if
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
it was Chavez or if it was Maduro, I think it was Chavez. Correct.
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
I mean, I could be wrong, but I'll let you tell that story. Yeah.
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
So ultimately, there is a little bit of payback here. The capital order is
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
saying, "Hey, you done took our stuff, man. We want it back." And reality,
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
though, might makes right in this case, is kind of the message I think
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
Trump is telling everyone. It's not a matter of whether or not Venezuela deserves
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
to own its own real resources. It's a matter of capital says, "No, we
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
want it. We have a piece of paper somewhere that we made you sign
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
at gunpoint or some other rich class traitor took, you know, and ran with."
455
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
Help me understand that point. The nationalization of the oil and the blowback from
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:STEVE GRUMBINE:
that.
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:RICARDO VAZ:
Yeah, it's actually, I mean, a great perspective and you've given me a
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:RICARDO VAZ:
lot of points to touch upon. There's a long history here to traverse,
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:RICARDO VAZ:
so I hope it's not too superficial. But in Venezuela, oil was discovered
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:RICARDO VAZ:
around the:
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:RICARDO VAZ:
predominant over everything else. And built on top of an economy that was
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:RICARDO VAZ:
severely underdeveloped. It was just basically an exporter of some raw commodities, coffee,
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:RICARDO VAZ:
cocoa and other agricultural outputs. So all of a sudden it becomes this
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:RICARDO VAZ:
almost mono producer of crude [oil] exporting a lot, at some point even
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:RICARDO VAZ:
becoming the main supplier to the United States. You had these refineries in
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:RICARDO VAZ:
the Gulf that were built and tailored for Venezuelan crude, which is, I
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:RICARDO VAZ:
mean, right now it's extra heavy, but before it wasn't. But anyway, you
468
:RICARDO VAZ:
had this industry that was developing very fast and it was always a
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:RICARDO VAZ:
constant source of struggle, struggle within the industry, because this was what decided
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:RICARDO VAZ:
the destinies of the country. And so you had the first major union
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:RICARDO VAZ:
strike here in:
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:RICARDO VAZ:
a constant struggle, even from moderate social democrat, US-aligned governments, to impose a
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:RICARDO VAZ:
bigger Venezuelan presence inside an industry that was very much run by US
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:RICARDO VAZ:
corporations like Standard Oil, Shell, Texaco, which later became Chevron and others. And
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:RICARDO VAZ:
then in the:
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:RICARDO VAZ:
War. And this leads to a complete skyrocketing of oil prices. And here
477
:RICARDO VAZ:
you had again a soft social democrat government that proposed the plan of
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:RICARDO VAZ:
the Great Venezuela. I mean, at that point it seemed like the resources
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:RICARDO VAZ:
were infinite and they ended up being a bit squandered. But there were
480
:RICARDO VAZ:
plans to replace imports to create kind of a domestic industry, but they
481
:RICARDO VAZ:
weren't followed through. And then of course, oil prices came crashing down. And
482
:RICARDO VAZ:
this is what led to then the arrival of neoliberalism, which then led
483
:RICARDO VAZ:
o the emergence of Chavez. In:
484
:RICARDO VAZ:
industry and the creation of a state-owned company. But this was always seen
485
:RICARDO VAZ:
as a partial nationalization. It just left a lot of loopholes which allowed
486
:RICARDO VAZ:
foreign companies to continue extracting oil, paying very little taxes and royalty. So
487
:RICARDO VAZ:
once Chavez comes into power, there are essentially three moments. So first is
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:RICARDO VAZ:
the:
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:RICARDO VAZ:
ere's this hydrocarbon law in:
490
:RICARDO VAZ:
the Venezuelan state must be a majority owner in all joint ventures. And
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:RICARDO VAZ:
then in:
492
:RICARDO VAZ:
to the largest oil deposits on the planet. And demanding that again the
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:RICARDO VAZ:
Venezuelan state oil company hold 60% of states in any joint venture. And
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:RICARDO VAZ:
this is what probably, because, I mean, Trump never speaks clearly, probably what
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:RICARDO VAZ:
Trump is referring to when he's saying "They stole our oil." So the
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:RICARDO VAZ:
Venezuelan state imposed that foreign corporations that want to stay are free to
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:RICARDO VAZ:
do so, but they need to accept these new conditions. And I think
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:RICARDO VAZ:
there were 33 companies at the time. 31 of them either accepted the
499
:RICARDO VAZ:
new conditions or accepted Venezuelan offers of compensation. And the two that did
500
:RICARDO VAZ:
not were ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips. And they pursued international arbitration. And ExxonMobil wanted
501
:RICARDO VAZ:
something like $18 billion. There was one process in the International Chamber of
502
:RICARDO VAZ:
Commerce, another in the International Court for the settlement of investor disputes. This
503
:RICARDO VAZ:
is under the World Bank. But ultimately Venezuela had to pay 1.6 billion,
504
:RICARDO VAZ:
which was a huge political victory. And this has been paid. So Venezuela
505
:RICARDO VAZ:
actually owes nothing to ExxonMobil. ConocoPhillips, on the other hand, started to get
506
:RICARDO VAZ:
a bit later and then there was political turmoil. There was this, I
507
:RICARDO VAZ:
mean, we don't have time to go into it, but there was this
508
:RICARDO VAZ:
imaginary self-proclaimed, quote, unquote, "interim government" led by Juan Guaido that the US recognized.
509
:RICARDO VAZ:
This ended up hampering Venezuela's defenses in this international arbitration court. But anyway,
510
:RICARDO VAZ:
long story short, ConocoPhillips has some $10 billion that it wants to collect.
511
:RICARDO VAZ:
It's going to collect part of it through the organized judicial plunder of
512
:RICARDO VAZ:
Citgo in the United States. But anyway, all of this to say that
513
:RICARDO VAZ:
these corporations that had their assets nationalized, I mean, they were nationalized first
514
:RICARDO VAZ:
and foremost because they refused to accept the country's legislation. But beyond that,
515
:RICARDO VAZ:
they've already pursued compensation elsewhere. So it's not like Trump has any debts
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:RICARDO VAZ:
to settle in this case. It's just opening a new page where you
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:RICARDO VAZ:
he's going to, at gunpoint, impose new conditions for the US oil corporations.
518
:RICARDO VAZ:
And it's a very crude image of the US government as a gendarme,
519
:RICARDO VAZ:
policeman enforcing the rights or the privileges of corporations around the world.
520
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
I appreciate that very much. Let's go to current times here. If we can
521
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
start with how Maduro came to power, because that is obviously a huge international,
522
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
you know, there's a lot of lies about it and there's a lot of
523
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
weird US manipulation and propaganda about it. And for the vast majority of our
524
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
listeners, sadly, I don't know that many of them know the truth of it
525
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
all. And they've heard bits and pieces, but none of them have actually, shouldn't
526
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
say none of them, I would say probably the vast majority of folks are
527
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
just taking the official narrative and saying, "Oh, yeah, okay."
528
:RICARDO VAZ:
Yeah, absolutely. I think oil gives us a path to the present, because, I
529
:RICARDO VAZ:
mean, it has to be underscored that Venezuela under the Bolivarian revolution, did not
530
:RICARDO VAZ:
overcome its major dependence on oil. And of course, you were mentioning this before.
531
:RICARDO VAZ:
I mean, we're talking about a short period, and Chavez, you know, he had
532
:RICARDO VAZ:
this coup in:
533
:RICARDO VAZ:
basically, he had 10 years in government. And this issue of oil dependence was
534
:RICARDO VAZ:
very much present, but the efforts to overcome it didn't take off far enough.
535
:RICARDO VAZ:
I mean, I could argue that there were other priorities. So Chavez passes away
536
:RICARDO VAZ:
in early:
537
:RICARDO VAZ:
without any sliver of doubt. Actually, John Kerry was US Secretary of State, and
538
:RICARDO VAZ:
he actually tried his best not to recognize the results. But anyway, Maduro came
539
:RICARDO VAZ:
into power and immediately had a storm upon him because there was a collapse
540
:RICARDO VAZ:
of oil prices globally. This was the heyday of fracking. And I mean, there
541
:RICARDO VAZ:
are other issues that Venezuelan oil experts would explain much better. But Venezuela over
542
:RICARDO VAZ:
time transitioned from the lighter crudes to in the west of the country to
543
:RICARDO VAZ:
this Orinoco oil belt, which has these extra heavy varieties. And these rely on
544
:RICARDO VAZ:
a high oil price to cover because it has higher production costs. So if
545
:RICARDO VAZ:
oil prices fall below $40 per barrel, then you're no longer making a profit
546
:RICARDO VAZ:
from selling oil. So this was immediately a hit for the Venezuelan oil industry.
547
:RICARDO VAZ:
In:
548
:RICARDO VAZ:
face--declared, declared Venezuela "an unusual and extraordinary threat to US national security." And while
549
:RICARDO VAZ:
this might seem just like official nonsense, it had an immediate repercussion in terms
550
:RICARDO VAZ:
of raising the cost of credit. And so it heightened the tailspin that the
551
:RICARDO VAZ:
then it really accelerated in:
552
:RICARDO VAZ:
already in the first Trump administration when the US Treasury Department begins to impose
553
:RICARDO VAZ:
oil industries. So here, mid-:
554
:RICARDO VAZ:
barrels per day, which was still very much in line with what was produced
555
:RICARDO VAZ:
historically over the previous 30 years. But under US sanctions, then there's an export
556
:RICARDO VAZ:
embargo in early:
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:RICARDO VAZ:
the time of the pandemic mid-:
558
:RICARDO VAZ:
then there's a kind of a slow effort to recover. But with all these
559
:RICARDO VAZ:
sanctions remaining in place, it still hasn't been able to surpass 1 million barrels
560
:RICARDO VAZ:
per day. And that's by design. And so if we think about what has
561
:RICARDO VAZ:
happened to the Bolivarian revolution, it's very much connected to this, unfortunately, because this
562
:RICARDO VAZ:
has a huge effect on living conditions. This drives migration, it erodes support for
563
:RICARDO VAZ:
the project, as you can expect, even though paradoxically, and it's really a testament
564
:RICARDO VAZ:
to Chavez's legacy, the project retains a very significant support base. And popular movement,
565
:RICARDO VAZ:
you know, tying back to what we were talking in the beginning, popular movements
566
:RICARDO VAZ:
and communes first suffers a lot because, I mean, everyone is focused on surviving.
567
:RICARDO VAZ:
They hardly have time to organize. But then they understand that the project is
568
:RICARDO VAZ:
kind of losing its path. It's very much tempted to just make concessions to
569
:RICARDO VAZ:
private capital, both national and foreign. And so the popular movements rise up to
570
:RICARDO VAZ:
fight for the direction of the project, and actually, against all odds, recover and
571
:RICARDO VAZ:
re-emerge as significant players to restate for those who might have stopped believing that
572
:RICARDO VAZ:
socialism remains on the horizon. So that's more or less what we've seen in
573
:RICARDO VAZ:
the past five years, I could say. But again, with an economy that's so
574
:RICARDO VAZ:
built around oil, you had historical collapse. I mean, GDP contracted by more than
575
:RICARDO VAZ:
three quarters between:
576
:RICARDO VAZ:
ll be the fifth year. I mean,:
577
:RICARDO VAZ:
of economic growth, but the fall was so steep that the economies still below
578
:RICARDO VAZ:
e-third of the size it had in:
579
:RICARDO VAZ:
of the magnitude of the economic contraction and everything. I mean, just going to
580
:RICARDO VAZ:
the present now we have this Trump administration trying to impose some real neocolonial
581
:RICARDO VAZ:
conditions on the Venezuelan oil industry. And I believe, I mean, I hope for
582
:RICARDO VAZ:
people who listen to this in a while that this is going to open
583
:RICARDO VAZ:
a new stage of struggle within the oil industry as again, a starting point
584
:RICARDO VAZ:
for defending Venezuelan sovereignty and again advancing.
585
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
So let's just call her out, because I know that there's been several kinds
586
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
of US props for having a leader imposed by the US intelligence. And one
587
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
of the worst, most grotesque things I've seen is this Maria Corina Machado, who
588
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
went out and said "It would be an honor basically, for you to bomb
589
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
our country to freedom." She's just like. I'm looking at her, I'm like, this
590
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
is a joke, right? This isn't real. But it is real. And we've seen
591
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
this with others. It's not just as they kidnap Maduro and go in there
592
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
and just act like this is straight out of Confessions of an Economic Hitman,
593
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
you know, kind of stuff. Tell me a little bit about her. Obviously, she
594
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
won the Nobel Prize, but she's begging people to bomb her country and she
595
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
thinks she's the right one to take over. And this whole concept of narco-terrorism,
596
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
et cetera, et cetera, get us to the current here.
597
:RICARDO VAZ:
Yeah. So, I mean, fortunately, criticizing Marie Corina Machado is not going to get
598
:RICARDO VAZ:
outdated at any point. So we just saw, I mean, it was already beyond
599
:RICARDO VAZ:
absurd for her to get the Nobel Peace Prize. I mean, this was someone
600
:RICARDO VAZ:
who was lobbying the US to bomb her country for years. But now, I
601
:RICARDO VAZ:
mean, it's somehow adding insult to injury. She now wants to award the prize
602
:RICARDO VAZ:
to Trump after Trump bombed her country. So, I mean, it's even hard to
603
:RICARDO VAZ:
describe. But I mean, it's also a consequence. Her efforts to ingratiate herself with
604
:RICARDO VAZ:
Trump are a consequence of her own political shortcomings because the Trump administration just
605
:RICARDO VAZ:
bombed Caracas. And when asked, you know, are you going to put your main
606
:RICARDO VAZ:
surrogate in power? And Trump basically said, "No, she doesn't have the support, she
607
:RICARDO VAZ:
doesn't have the respect of the country." That's why she's trying so hard to
608
:RICARDO VAZ:
please him and ingratiate herself, because Trump apparently is very sensitive to praise. But
609
:RICARDO VAZ:
so Maria Corina Machado has historically been one of the main agents of US
610
:RICARDO VAZ:
imperialism in Venezuela. She was a very marginal political character for a long time,
611
:RICARDO VAZ:
you know, perhaps in tandem with the resurgence of fascism and the far right
612
:RICARDO VAZ:
around the world and in Latin American, she became the main figure of the
613
:RICARDO VAZ:
opposition. Right now, she appears sidelined. I don't know what her plan is, but
614
:RICARDO VAZ:
she had also been making this pitch, you know, before trying to please Trump,
615
:RICARDO VAZ:
she was trying to please the US corporate class, you know, saying, "Venezuela is
616
:RICARDO VAZ:
a land of grace and you're going to have $1 trillion worth of riches
617
:RICARDO VAZ:
ready for investment. We're going to privatize anything and everything. We're going to privatize
618
:RICARDO VAZ:
the oil industry," which is a bit of a red line even for the
619
:RICARDO VAZ:
Venezuelan right, because, I mean, we were talking about these governments that nationalized the
620
:RICARDO VAZ:
industry, even if it was partial. But they were US-aligned governments, they weren't leftist
621
:RICARDO VAZ:
by any stretch of the imagination. So the ownership of the industry and especially
622
:RICARDO VAZ:
ownership of resources, something that's very deeply ingrained into the Venezuelan conscience. But she's,
623
:RICARDO VAZ:
I mean, if it gets her into power, she's willing to sell everything.
624
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
Just real quick. The libertarian angle here is so grotesque. It's kind of like, "Yeah,
625
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
just, you know, there's no such thing as bad capitalism. Come on down here and
626
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
do it." I, I just, you know, her and [Argentinian president Javier] Milei, I mean,
627
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
they seem very, you know, it seems very, very similar to one another in various
628
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
ways. Just kind of terrifying. I want to pivot momentarily to, who is Delcy Rodriguez?
629
:RICARDO VAZ:
Yeah, so Delcy Rodriguez is now acting president. She's a bit different from
630
:RICARDO VAZ:
the other main Chavista cadres that you saw over the past 25 years.
631
:RICARDO VAZ:
Whereas the others came from popular struggles. Maduro, for example, was a trade
632
:RICARDO VAZ:
union leader. Delcy is a foreign-educated technocrat. So she didn't have much of
633
:RICARDO VAZ:
a role with Chavez, but then with Maduro she slowly climbed the ranks.
634
:RICARDO VAZ:
She was first foreign minister, then president of a constituent assembly that was
635
:RICARDO VAZ:
formed in:
636
:RICARDO VAZ:
also oil minister. And in the absence of Maduro, who was kidnapped and
637
:RICARDO VAZ:
is going to be tried on absolutely false and ludicrous quote, unquote "narco-terrorism"
638
:RICARDO VAZ:
charges, she is now acting president and she's been in charge of economic
639
:RICARDO VAZ:
policy in recent years. And she's kind of the liaison with Venezuela's allies
640
:RICARDO VAZ:
and you know, we're talking about companies in India, in China, trying to
641
:RICARDO VAZ:
get foreign investment, but also a liaison with the Venezuelan private sector and
642
:RICARDO VAZ:
the main private sector guilds like Ferre Camaras, which historically was very much
643
:RICARDO VAZ:
against the Bolivar revolution, but under sanctions, they realized that they needed to
644
:RICARDO VAZ:
find some kind of accommodation, modus vivendi with the government. So the Delcy
645
:RICARDO VAZ:
Rodriguez is very much a pragmatist in terms of finding economic solutions. And
646
:RICARDO VAZ:
in recent years it has to be understood that this is under a
647
:RICARDO VAZ:
context of severe, wide reaching US economic sanctions. What you have seen from
648
:RICARDO VAZ:
the Venezuelan government has been on one hand some social pause to try
649
:RICARDO VAZ:
and shield the most vulnerable sectors of the population. But at the same
650
:RICARDO VAZ:
time, policies of liberalization, offering benefits for foreign capital, for the private sector
651
:RICARDO VAZ:
in a bid to jumpstart the economy. This of course sparked debate. It
652
:RICARDO VAZ:
has had some successes and shortcomings, but debates in terms of are we
653
:RICARDO VAZ:
surrendering some of the key pillars of the Bolivar revolution? Are we going
654
:RICARDO VAZ:
too far in terms of undoing labor protections and this kind of thing?
655
:RICARDO VAZ:
Are we surrendering too much sovereignty in these kinds of new hydrocarbon deals
656
:RICARDO VAZ:
with foreign agents? These kinds of debates, which again are part of the
657
:RICARDO VAZ:
struggles faced by a revolutionary project, even more so under these constant US
658
:RICARDO VAZ:
imperialist attacks.
659
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
It's kind of humorous. I just leave my comment here that obviously, you know, she was
660
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
the daughter of a former Marxist guerilla and deputy to Nicolas Maduro. And so they're painting
661
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
her out to be like a real hardcore Marxist, when in reality, what you just said
662
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
is that's not really true. I mean, that doesn't mean that she didn't have those credentials
663
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
coming from. But it sounds like technocrat and pragmatist. Sounds very, very much like what we
664
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
would get from a Hillary Clinton in the United States. Or, you know, the other one
665
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
which you could look at is Toussaint Louverture as opposed to Jean Jacques Dessalines. I find
666
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
it fascinating because, you know, if you read this stuff in the mainstream media, the corporate
667
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
media, etcetera, you get a very different look and feel from the people that are living
668
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
it and experiencing it firsthand. All right, we are coming up on time here. So what
669
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
I want to do is I know we didn't cover everything, and I would love to
670
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
talk to you for hours and hours because you're amazing. That said, I want to give
671
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
you an opportunity to fill in any gaps that we missed and take us out with
672
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
the final word.
673
:RICARDO VAZ:
Yeah, I mean, absolutely. I think the more we talk, the more we realize
674
:RICARDO VAZ:
that there are topics we'd like to go into in detail. I mean, of
675
:RICARDO VAZ:
course, I don't pretend to be an expert on any of these things. It's
676
:RICARDO VAZ:
just historical perspective that gets us and allows me to actually connect with some
677
:RICARDO VAZ:
of the great points that you were making yourself. So right now, I think
678
:RICARDO VAZ:
we have to understand where we are having the US Empire pivot again towards
679
:RICARDO VAZ:
the Western Hemisphere and what that's going to imply for the peoples in Latin
680
:RICARDO VAZ:
America, and particularly in terms of international solidarity, trying to put the brakes as
681
:RICARDO VAZ:
much as possible on this project of death and destruction that's going to be
682
:RICARDO VAZ:
unleashed all over the continent and inside the United States as well. So I
683
:RICARDO VAZ:
think in that sense, podcasts like this one that give us an historical perspective
684
:RICARDO VAZ:
are very useful because they take us a bit away from being trapped in
685
:RICARDO VAZ:
the moment and just looking at the developments from last week and allow us
686
:RICARDO VAZ:
to understand that this is a longer struggle. And, for me at least, the
687
:RICARDO VAZ:
really important thing is having a horizon. You are fighting what's in front of
688
:RICARDO VAZ:
you, but you have to understand that you have this horizon of having a
689
:RICARDO VAZ:
society free of exploitation, having a society that is built on social justice and
690
:RICARDO VAZ:
equality, but not as an abstract concept. But that's something that people in many
691
:RICARDO VAZ:
places, but in this case in Venezuela, have tried to and continue to build,
692
:RICARDO VAZ:
even amongst the most difficult circumstances, from the ground up in their territories. And
693
:RICARDO VAZ:
so that's something that we need to learn about, discuss and of course, support.
694
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
Thank you so much. There was a part of me that thought about bringing up
695
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
the, the quote unquote "narco-terrorism" stuff, which is just preposterous. I mean, the facts are
696
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
clearly out there. Like at the end of the day, one of the things that
697
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
I, I know for sure and you can look at Washington DC and I'm not
698
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
talking about the government, I'm talking about the people that live there. And you know,
699
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
a lot of people talk about crime in the big city and so forth. They
700
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
don't talk about the dialectical energies that have to go into understanding the poverty there.
701
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
From the cuts, the absolute austerity that's brought down and the things that, that generates.
702
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
The, the, you know, it's like when you introduce a contagion, the follow up dominoes
703
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
that come from that have to be understood. You have to know where ground zero
704
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
of that contagion came from. If you use international sanctions on a country and you
705
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
choke off every aspect of their ability to survive and thrive, and you bring CIA
706
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
propaganda and CIA actions behind lines, so to speak, expecting people to just survive and
707
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
thrive and do well, it fundamentally is a ludicrous position to take and it really
708
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
makes it very challenging to understand the world in which we live. And we come
709
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
up with these very easy answers to very tough questions. And I think it's a
710
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
real shame. Listen, you've done great work. I really appreciate the conversation. I hope beyond
711
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
words that we can have you back on again because I really do want to
712
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
talk more. There's so much you brought and maybe you can introduce us to others
713
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
that maybe can help us carry the story further.
714
:RICARDO VAZ:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's been a pleasure. I always enjoy, especially I
715
:RICARDO VAZ:
mean this last week has been very complicated. I mean, to put it
716
:RICARDO VAZ:
very mildly. These are tough times, these are dark times. And of course
717
:RICARDO VAZ:
I've had to report and talk about the recent developments. But looking at
718
:RICARDO VAZ:
the broader historical perspective, even if we understand the contradiction and shortcomings, also
719
:RICARDO VAZ:
gives us hope to realize that there's a lot to be won still.
720
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
I love it. Thank you. Great way to take us out. So folks,
721
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
my name's Steve Grumbine. I am the host of Macro N Cheese. This
722
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
podcast right here that you're listening to is part of the Real Progressives
723
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
nonprofit a 501c3 that we live and die by your contributions. I would
724
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
also like to say that Ricardo and Venezuela Analysis is a nonprofit as
725
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
well and they could use your support as well. And if you look
726
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
up their website, venezuelanalysis.com you can find ways to donate to their effort.
727
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
On behalf of my guest Ricardo Vaz and myself, Steve Grumbine, on behalf
728
:STEVE GRUMBINE:
of the podcast Macro N Cheese, we are outta here.
