[Editor note: this article was originally posted on venezuelasolidarity.ca. The Spanish version follows.]
by: Juana Cabezas
Over 50 people convened in Toronto’s Trinity Bellwood Park, site of a bust of South American Liberator Simon Bolivar, as an expression of solidarity with the Venezuelan people and with the Bolivarian Revolution.
In a recent meeting in Caracas, Venezuela, a grouping of continental Left parties and movements calledthe Sao Paulo Forum issued a call for international solidarity for Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and the Bolivarian revolution to take place around the birthday of Simon Bolivar. The forum also called for more expressions of solidarity and the combatting of a decade-long media campaign against Bolivarian Venezuela that have looked to topple President Chavez and reverse the gains made by Venezuelan people in their political process.
The event included words from Nery Quintero of the Gran Polo Patriotico-Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (GPP-PSUV) in Toronto, as well as greetings from Consul General of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela in Toronto, Martha Pardo. Numerous participants also read short statements of solidarity, with others reading passages and quotes from Simon Bolivar.
Pablo Vivanco, Barrio Nuevo delegate before the ‘Avanzada Bolivariana campaign’ urged participants to join the campaign especially in the lead up to the October 7th Presidential elections in Venezuela. The Avanzada Bolivariana and PSUV in Toronto will be working to produce materials and other information in order to show the tremendous social, political and economic gains Venezuelans have made and the dangers that are threatening to undo these.
Más de 50 personas se reunieron en el Parque Trnity Bellwood de Toronto, lugar en donde se encuentra el busto del Libertador Simón Bolívar, haciendo una recreación de solidaridad con el pueblo venezolano y con la Revolución Bolivariana.
En la ultima conferencia del Foro de Sao Paulo en Caracas, Venezuela, que agrupa a partidos de izquierda y movimientos sociales de Latinoamerica, se lanzo un llamado Internacional en Solidaridad con el Presidente Hugo Chavez y la Revolución Bolivariana al rededor del natalicio del Libertador Simón Bolívar.
El Foro igualmente llamo a combatir la campana sucia que la media corporativa viene realizando por mas de una década en contra del proceso Bolivariano, que tiene como objetivo el derrocamiento del Presidente Hugo Chavez y los logros conseguidos por el pueblo venezolano.
El evento contó con las palabras de Nery Quintero, representante del Gran Polo Patriótico-Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV-GPP) en Toronto, así como los saludos de la Cónsul General de la República Bolivariana de Venezuela en Toronto, Marta Pardo. Igualmente numerosos participantes leyeron breves declaraciones de solidaridad, además de pasajes y citas del Libertador Simón Bolívar.
Pablo Vivanco representante de Barrio Nuevo ante la campaña ‘Avanzada Bolivariana’ instó a los participantes a unirse a la campaña sobre todo en el periodo previo a las elecciones presidenciales de octubre 7 en Venezuela. La ‘Avanzada Bolivariana’ y el PSUV-Toronto van a trabajar en la producción de materiales informativos sobre los grandes logros conseguidos durante el proceso Bolivariano así como también las amenazan al proceso Revolucionario.
Canadian Humanitarian Appeal for the Relief of Tamils
Editorial Note: In response to the solidarity work of the Tamil human rights organization Canadian HART in Venezuela, SriLanka has extended its campaign of misinformation into the Bolivarian nation and across Latin America in an attempt to turn the Latin American people against the Tamil struggle for justice and liberation.
Supporters of the Bolivarian Revolution across the world were shocked when one of Venezuela’s most important public intellectuals, Eva Golinger, wrote a piece on May 15 referring to SriLanka as an “anti-imperialist” and “progressive”, despite its close military ties to Israel and the United States. Golinger, following the slanderous line of the SriLankan government intended to isolate and criminalize all Tamil activists, referenced Canadian HART as a front group of the now defunct Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
The following public statement was written by Canadian HART to counter the campaign of disinformation being spread by SriLankan diplomats and taken up by the likes of Golinger. See basicsnews.ca for more information.
Canadian Humanitarian Appeal for Relief of Tamils (Canadian HART) both condemns and refutes the campaign of misinformation and intimidation being employed by the SriLankan government and it’s envoy to misrepresent Canadian HART’s international solidarity work in Venezuela.
Jeremias de Castero – BASICS Issue #19 – May/June 2010
A recent discovery of a mass gravesite in the village of La Macarena, in the Colombian Department of Meta – a region that has been under contestation between the government and the guerrillas – has shed more light on the violence in Colombian society.
Approximately 2,000 bodies are buried in this grave, according to a February 10, 2010 letter issued by Alexandra Valencia Molina, the director of a government agency tasked to investigate government corruption.
Jeremias de Castero – BASICS Issue #18
Over the past two decades, February has developed into an important month in Venezuela’s history, as Venezuelans celebrate the anniversary of the official beginning of the “Bolivarian Revolution” – now in its eleventh year.
They are also celebrating the twenty-first anniversary of the Caracazo, the popular rebellion in Caracas on February 27, 1989, which marked a real turning point in the emergence of the power of the people in Venezuela’s recent history.
And of course, they are celebrating the emergence of their popular leader, Hugo Chávez Frías.
Canadians and Venezuelans Building People-to-People Solidarity
by Pablo Vivanco, Solomon Myobuku, & Kelly O’Sullivan
BASICS #15 (Sep/Oct 2009)
On July 3rd, 2009 the first delegation of Canadians with the Frente Norman Bethune Brigade of organizers departed for Venezuela for nearly a month of exposure with the mass movements of the socialist ‘Bolivarian Revolution’, soon to be followed by a second delegation of Canadians on July 20th.
Frente Norman Bethune (FNB) is an initiative of the Toronto-based Latino community organization Barrio Nuevo, and its main objective is to facilitate an exchange between activists in Venezuela and Canada, allowing them to share their experiences in the various social movements and struggles they are involved in.
The two delegations that visited Venezuela this summer consisted of a mixed group of community activists, educators, artists, union activists as well as a photographer. Back in late 2008, a number of activists from Venezuela were hosted by Barrio Nuevo here in Canada, and were toured across many cities and regions (see BASICS #11). Read more…
by Lucho Granados Ceja and Karen Springs
BASICS #15 (Sep/Oct 2009)
In the early morning of June 28th, 2009 democratically-elected President Manuel Zelaya of Honduras was abducted from his home by the military and exiled to San Jose, Costa Rica. This coup has been widely condemned by multiple international organizations, including the Organization of American States, the European Union and the United Nations; and no government in the world has recognized the de facto regime – installed after the coup – as legitimate.
The coup was perpetuated by a group of political elites in order to oust Zelaya, who was implementing pro-people reforms such as a minimum wage increase. The ruling-class had grown accustomed to growing rich off the backs of the people. The day of the coup a vote was meant to have taken place in order to determine the desire of the Honduran people to re-write the constitution. It was this prospect of a more progressive constitution that would favour the interests of the people and not the rich that drove them to oust the President. Read more…
Greatest Enemy of the Peruvian Revolution Now Behind Bars
By Derek Rosin – BASICS #14 (June / July 2009)
This past April 2009, former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori was convicted of murder and kidnapping and sentenced to 25 years in prison.
Fujimori’s crimes stem from the vicious counter-revolutionary war he led against the Maoist rebels of the Partido Comunista del Peru (PCP), popularly known as the “Shining Path.”
The PCP gained strength throughout the 1980s by waging a guerilla war popularly supported by urban slum dwellers and the poor indigenous peasants of Peru’s Andean highland regions. By 1990, when Fujimori was elected, the PCP controlled large parts of the Peruvian countryside and threatened the stability of the US-backed regime.
To attack the mass base of the PCP, Fujimori killed or “disappeared” thousands of Peruvians. One needs only list a few incidents to give a sense of the monstrous nature of the campaign: four adults and a child murdered at a slum-apartment fundraising barbecue for a pro-revolution newspaper in November 1991; nine leftist students and a professor abducted and killed from La Cantuta Technical College in July 1992; picking out and executing forty suspected PCP leaders after a raid on Canto Grande Prison where political prisoners were held in May 1992, and so on.
Fujimori’s conviction is bitter-sweet. On the one hand, Peruvians are glad to see this cold-blooded killer finally face some justice. On a deeper level though, Fujimori was just one man, and his crimes were committed by many people in the army and government, fully supported and aided by the United States.
And what does sending a former president to jail mean for the big picture? Today, the poverty, inequality and racism that gave rise to the Peruvian revolution remains firmly in place. Moreover, Peru is now headed by Alan Garcia, a man also responsible for numerous massacres of Peruvian peasants and political prisoners during his first term as president from 1985 to 1990. With people like Garcia still free to run Peru’s dirty system, the vast majority of Peruvians continue to be denied meaningful justice.
by Jeremias De Castero
Basics Issue #10 (Aug/Sep 2008)
On June 7th, 2008, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Colombian President Álvaro Uribe Vélez signed a free trade agreement, pulling both of their countries deeper into the miserable economic system of capitalism. The experience of free trade for working Canadians over the last two decades has been immiserating: jobs have been shipped to the more exploited countries of the world; our public resources, like education and health care, are being privatized; and Canada is participating in endless wars abroad.
As the deal was being worked out in June 2008, it’s interesting to note how much talk there was in the Canadian media of how Colombia has become so much more democratic under its current president Uribe. Well if this trade deal is about free trade, and we know how destructive free trade has been to the world in the past decades, then what kind of democracy is the media talking about? Let’s sum up the “democratic” advances Colombia has made under Uribe to get an idea of what kind of democracy the Canadian government has in mind:
Since Uribe became president of Colombia in 2002 under the banner of ‘democratic security’, Colombian society has become more militarized and more impoverished. Read more…
