Socialist Anti-utopia
By Nicolas Maduro Moros on January 19, 2019
Photo: Marco Bello
They fight for a socialism that doesn’t exist. They fight against an anti-utopia that doesn’t belong to anyone. They imagine a world without family, without order, without market, without freedom. The right-wing liberals of the world invented a ghost, hung the sign of socialism on it and now they are seeing it everywhere, above all, and every now and then in Venezuela. But enough is enough.
Because the socialism they fight against, is not the one which we, the inclusive democracies, full of people, want to implement in the 21st century. Our socialism is a particular one, popular and deeply Latin American. As we clearly stated during the United Nations Assembly last September, ours is an autonomous project of democratic revolution, of social demand, it is a model and a path of its own that is based on our own history and culture.
And of course, our democracy is different because it was founded neither by nor for the elites, as were the liberal democracies of Europe and the United States. We rebelled against that model and that is why we proposed, 20 years ago, a democracy of ours, based on the sovereign heart of the Venezuelan people.
What happened is that, at the end of the twentieth century, when in Latin America we came out of the period of dictatorships promoted by the United States, they tried, with the idea of liberal democracy, to wrap us a gift package – like a Trojan horse – with all the values of their own concept of modernity. But we want to tell you that here in Latin America we also have an identity and values, and that we want to wrap our own values in our democracy, rather than those of others. It is not just for the benefit of the individual and capital but those of solidarity and community. For us the homeland is that.
We have learned the lesson, for it had happened to us for centuries. Instead of enriching their own culture with that of the outside, Latin American elites and their liberal fashions permanently tried to re-discover Europe in the heart of America. Destroying along the way everything that seems different. Elites for whom the rest of us, the Indian and the black, we were considered the monkey before the human.
We fervently believe in our Latin American democracy, because we believe and work in Venezuela with three fundamentals that are essential and necessary: First, because we carry out elections systematically and peacefully. During the past 20 years we have held 25 elections, all of them endorsed by national and international institutions and political observers. Some of these elections we have won overwhelmingly, others we have lost. Second, because in the citizens of Venezuela, through the mechanisms of direct democracy, fundamentally with neighborhood organizations and political parties, have access to and have control over public resources. And third because in Venezuela it is the people who rule, not the elites. Before me Chávez governed, a soldier of black and Indian descent who became the father of the country. Today Venezuela is governed – and for six years – by a modest trade unionist and bus driver. In Venezuela it is the people who govern themselves, because it was their Constituent Assembly that conceived and wrote their own constitution.
We are not and do not want to be a model of democracy. We are, on the other hand, the democracy that defined and defends its people, the one that goes forward in a daily effort against lies and false positives. An imperfect democracy that works day by day to be everyone’s and one that is fairer.
Source: La Jornada. Translation, Resumen Latinoamericano, North America bureau.
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