1. WHAT IS THE HISTORICAL COURSE OF THE VENEZUELAN GUERRILLA EXPERIENCE?
It is difficult to summarize the wealth of experience and the lessons of the history of guerrilla struggle in Venezuela. There was a whole conjuncture of historical factors behind the formation of the existing guerrilla forces in this country. As in most countries, in Venezuela the forms of guerrilla struggle emerged in the heat of a crisis in which the forces of the people were in confrontation with the ruling class.
The present guerrilla struggle is the product of social conflicts which sharpened in Venezuela with the overthrow of the Perez Jimenez (1) dictatorship. Even at the time of the struggle against the dictatorship, the military preparation of a small nucleus of CP members had begun—albeit at a very rudimentary level. With the overthrow of Perez Jimenez, a vast, intense mass mobilisation began. The 23rd of January (2) brought to a close a whole period of struggle for the democratization of the State, and opened a new period, of struggle for national liberation and socialism. In fact from 1928 to 1958 a radical transformation of the economic structure had occurred, changing our country from a semi-feudal system, governed by absolutist military cabals, to a new system with a capitalist basis. The whole period of struggle from 1928 was dominated by the great contradiction between absolutist and bourgeois-democratic forms of government. At the culmination of this bourgeois democratic process, the reformist parties which had been leading the political struggle came into power: concretely, Accion Democratica under Betancourt (3). The bourgeoisie and the representative of imperialism, temporarily disoriented in the days immediately after the 23rd of January, acted with great caution, skill and precision. They fell back momentarily, and as the jubilant masses took to the streets, they made sure of their control over the instruments of power. The Patriotic Junta (4), which had led the masses in the struggle for the overthrow of Perez Jimenez, followed a mistaken policy. This was the result of the line followed held both by the reformist parties and by the Communist Party. The CP stayed tied to the policy it followed before the overthrow of Perez Jimenez, claiming that it was maintaining unity with the parties of Romulo Betancourt, Rafael Caldera, and Jovito Villalba. Meanwhile, the governing Junta joined forces with two of the most distinguished representatives of the bourgeoisie: Eugenio Mendoza and Blas Lamberti (5). The Patriotic Junta was relegated to oblivion, and finally wasted away. The CP carried on under the slogan of 'Back to the Constitution' which simply meant entering into the electoral process in which the reformist parties had every certainty of gaining power. At that time consideration was given to the absurd idea of a unity candidate, agreed among all the parties. The potentially revolutionary process begun on 23rd January, was partially frustrated. It was in these circumstances that the victory of the Cuban Revolution took place and became a kind of catalyst of the factors for revolution present in our country. Even in 1958, some of the leading cadre had recommenced the preparation of small nuclei on the basis of good planning. The plan was called 'The 500' because of the number of militants who were to be trained and organized for the coming struggle. Many of them began the work of penetrating the peasant zones which would later serve as bases for the first guerrilla forces. However, the idea of developing a long term plan was replaced by the adventurist spontaneist conception put forward by Guillermo Garcia Ponce (6) and approved by the whole Political Bureau (7). This policy was based on the forces which the PCV (Venezuelan CP) had inside the army, where a great number of officers were members and many others followed the party line. It was a very important force, but on its own it was not capable of guaranteeing a revolutionary victory. Had there been a really revolutionary leadership, which was clear about the prolonged nature of our war of liberation, the results would have been quite extraordinary. The forces within the army would have acted in co-ordination with the guerrilla units which were already active in both the city and the countryside, alongside the growing mass upsurge which was still being kept up for the moment in which the uprisings of Carupano and Puerto Cabello took place. They were brought in fact to an end by a disastrous military and political defeat, and it became clear, by Guillermo Garcia Ponce's aspirations to power.
The first organized guerrilla focus appeared in 1960 in the area of the plains (llanos) where the Guaitero brothers and the Faria and Noboa brothers began the work of political penetration and organization of guerrilla units. In the same period some initial steps were taken towards the formation of joint revolutionary forces between Columbia and Venezuela. In the Vichada zone some meetings took place with Tulio Bayer and Minuto Colmenarez (8). These plans could not be crystallized because of the difficulties and errors which every revolutionary undertaking normally encounters in its early days. But the idea of organizing a guerrilla persisted and, even in 1961 guerrilla groups appeared in El Charal (Portuguesa) (9), where Juan Vicente Cabezas (Pablo) began to play an outstanding role; in the Sierra de Iracara (Falcon State), the area of operations of Domingo Urbina, Elias Manuitt, Teodoro Petkoff, and Douglas Bravo. On this front, Felix Faria had begun preparatory work: he was to become one of the outstanding leaders. In the Cerro Azul area (Yaracuy State) Luben Petkoff was operating; Alfredo Maneiro was in Azulita (Merida State) (10). In other zones too, such as Turimiquire (Sucre State) and Vigirima (Carabobo State) guerrilla forces began to organize, but existed for very brief periods only. At this period the MIR and the PCV were acting in collaboration (11).
In 1962 armed struggle in the countryside was extended. The errors committed, together with the great offensive launched by the enemy, had the consequence of dispersing most of the initial focus to the point where only a few drastically reduced forces remained in Lara and Falcon. In the same year intense mass struggles took place in the cities, reaching their crisis point in a transport strike, which acquired the character of an insurrection. As I have already indicated, there was no revolutionary leadership with the ability to unite the conjuncture of favourable factors which had developed up to this moment. The guerrilla, the revolutionary and progressive forces within the army, the party and the masses, went each their own way, without any real coordination. This gave Betancourt a breathing-space, and the opportunity to unleash a repression of great proportions which ended by seriously weakening the revolutionary movement and destroying the radicalism of some leaders. Some began to vacillate. In spite of them, fronts were reorganized in Portuguesa with Fabricio Ojeda, Luben Petkoff and Lunar Marquez, and in Lara with Argimiro Gabaldon; in Oriente the 'Manuel Ponte Rodriguez' front grew up, led by Alfredo Maneiro, and in Falcon the 'Jose Leonardo Chirinos' front was maintained under the leadership of Douglas Bravo (12). The MIR organized the 'Ezequiel Zamora' front in El Bachiller (Miranda State). But the vacillations within the PCV as well as the MIR became increasingly acute, until they assumed crisis proportions. Immediately after the victory of Raul Leoni, Domingo Alberto Rangel published a document declaring that he was against armed struggle. In the PCV the crisis came to a head at the end of 1965. From the San Carlos barracks, where they were being held, Guillermo Garcia Ponce, Pompeyo Marquez, the Machado brothers, Teodoro Petkoff and Freddy Munoz, launched a veritable offensive against the line of armed struggle. They based this on what they termed the necessity for a 'tactical retreat'. According to them, the defeats suffered by the revolutionary movement demanded a halt to armed struggle, but now no longer simply in terms of a truce, as had been the case on previous occasions, but in terms of a retreat all along the line. They added that armed struggle was becoming an insuperable obstacle to the development of the mass struggle. Clearly, those like Teodoro Petkoff and Pompeyo Marquez, who had been the most ardent proponents of armed struggle in the moments of upsurge and victories, chose a formulation which amounted to a grotesque subtlety—the paradox is valid—since they referred to a retreat to recover forces.
In reality, the retreat turned out to be what Douglas Bravo had so strongly warned against—and this brought on him the hatred which led to his expulsion by the majority of the PB of the PCV—that is: a revision of the revolutionary line of armed struggle adopted at the 3rd Congress of the PCV and ratified in successive plenary sessions of the Central Committee. A line representing the most open betrayal of the revolution was imposed by a small group of renegades. The overwhelming majority of the cadre who had borne the weight of the armed struggle, quickly reacted to oppose the betrayal. The confrontation within the party became very bitter, and a split became inevitable. So in April 1966 there was a Conference of guerrilla and urban cadre and cadre from the mass fronts, under the leadership of Douglas Bravo and Fabricio Ojeda. It took the decision to found a movement independent of the PCV which could vigorously follow the revolutionary road of armed struggle, correcting the errors which had led to the downfall of the adventurist leadership of the PCV. This was the origin of the FLN—FALN, and the foundation of the Party of the Venezuelan Revolution (PRV). To date, these organizations have played the decisive role in working out a revolutionary line, and therefore, a revolutionary practice, expressed in the formulation of a theory, a strategy and tactics for the Venezuelan Revolution.
The measures then taken by the armed revolutionaries have been amply endorsed by the events which have followed. It was not a question of a simple 'tactical retreat' 'to recover forces'; it was a betrayal. In their 8th Plenary, the renegades went on from their thesis of retreat to formalize 'the end' of armed struggle, and later to participate in the elections under the name of UPA, while they carried on a campaign of denunciation of the armed revolutionaries, to the point where it has now become extremely difficult to make out whether a declaration against armed struggle comes from the mouth of Garcia Villasimil (Minister of Defence) or from Teodoro Petkoff. The latter has sometimes been more successful in the wealth of denigratory epithets he has employed. But despite the profound crisis which threatened the revolutionary movement with destruction, for we know not how long, the achievement of basing our action on correct theory and on a firm and decisive leadership, allowed us to overcome the moments of greatest danger. Today we can say that even though we are still going through difficult moments, the crisis has been overcome. The guerrilla columns have been able to consolidate themselves and have shown the inability of all the enemy's power to destroy them. In Oriente, the PCV dismantled the 'Manuel Ponte Rodriguez' guerrilla front. But comrades Carlos Betancourt, Gabriel Puertas and Americo Silva have been able, in the space of five years, to build a guerrilla force which has been notable for its combativity, and has inflicted heavy blows on the enemy. The consolidation of the guerrilla forces in Occidente, Oriente and the llanos, under the leadership of FLN—FALN and Bandera Roja; the process of integration going on between these two organizations, towards the formation of a united party and army; the progressive overcoming of many of our past errors and weaknesses, which had brought us into dangerous isolation from the masses; the revival of the popular movement which reaches new heights each day, together with the bankrupcy, daily more complete, of the reformist and revisionist parties—these are the most eloquent measures of our beliefs and of the correctness of the revolutionary road that we are opening for our people.
As I told you, it is very difficult to convey this whole process in a short resume. Here I have only attempted to point out some of the most striking aspects.
2. WHAT INTEREST DOES THE VENEZUELAN REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT HAVE IN RELATIONS WITH THE OTHER LATIN AMERICAN COUNTRIES?
In the first place we can say that there is an interest of historical origins. In this sense, as our comrade Douglas Bravo has put it, all the peoples of the continent have been engaged in a common struggle for 500 years, in which time they have experienced two great upheavals: the war of conquest unleashed by the Spanish colonial empire, and the war of independence which united the whole continent in struggle against this empire. Today we are faced with the third great continental upheaval: the war of our peoples against the exploitation and oppression of US imperialism, the war for national liberation and socialism. In the second place, there is a politico-military interest: before all the peoples of Latin America there rises an aggressive imperialist force which has not hesitated to carry out military occupations of our countries when it has seen the least shadow of danger to its economic, political or military interests. This imperialist force has numerous methods of guaranteeing its rule over our peoples. In every moment of danger, apart from its own forces it can count on the servile forces headed by the reactionary governments of the continent. That is, in the face of the interests of the people of the whole continent, there is a close identification between the interests of imperialism and the ruling classes of each of our countries. Che Guevara pointed out a very important fact about the triumph of the Cuban Revolution: it represented an exceptional lesson for it showed with the force of historical fact that it was possible for our peoples to achieve their independence despite the power of yanqui imperialism. But the reverse of the coin is that it was also a clear and painful experience for imperialism, which would not let itself be surprised again after that. The invasion by over 40,000 yankee and puppet soldiers of Santo Domingo—where the rebellion led by Caamano and Aristy was just beginning to point towards the instalment of a democratic regime—was the most incontroversible demonstration that the aggressive nature of imperialism, far from diminishing, was daily being exacerbated while it was suffering defeats.
We should note on this point too what Latin America means for U.S. imperialism. It finds here its safest rearguard, which constantly provides it with all kinds of raw materials, in which it gains a growing volume of superprofits, and which forms one of the most important and stable markets for its products. This means that Latin America, after the US itself, represents the most vital point for the interest of US imperialism. Without any doubt the liberation of this continent would be a death blow to US imperialism. It will do anything in its power to avoid a defeat on this continent; even more since the Cuban revolution and the defeats it is suffering in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. The weight of this reality imposes clear, identical interests on the peoples of Latin America, and more specifically, on their revolutionary vanguards. So among the basic points of our conception, we clearly single out the continental armed character of the liberation struggle in Latin America. This shows the reality that it is more than impossible—since the Cuban Revolution—for National Liberation and Socialism to come in a single country on our continent. They will be the product of a long painful and bloody process in which once more—as in the days of Bolivar—our continent will be the scene of great battles between our peoples united in a single army, and the armies of imperialism.
In the third place, the Venezuelan revolutionary movement has an interest in the countries of the continent, for a principled ideological reason: we identify ourselves absolutely with the ideas formulated by Marx, Engels, and Lenin on proletarian internationalism. We consider that our struggle is no more than a part of the struggle of all the peoples of the world to break decisively with imperialist dominion and exploitation. In this sense we now identify not only with the interests of the people of Brazil, Uruguay, Colombia, Guatemala, Domingo, etc., but we are completely identified too with the interests of the Vietnamese, Laotian, Cambodian, and Palestinian peoples and with the interests of the North American People themselves, who now see their sons dying not only in Vietnam, but on their own soil, as a result of the politics generated by the North-American imperialist system.
3. IN YOUR OPINION, WHAT PERSPECTIVES DOES THE CASE OF CHILE OFFER THE LATIN AMERICAN GUERRILLA?
At the time of Salvador Allende's electoral victory, we put out communiques in the name of the Political Bureau of the PRV and of the National Command of the FALN (Armed Forces of National Liberation). In these communiques we expressed an opinion which can be synthesized in the following terms: the cardinal problem of every revolution is the problem of political power. A real revolution implies, as history has shown up to our own times—not simply taking over the State machinery but its destruction, and substitution by a new State of the people. In the case of Chile, it is clear that President Salvador Allende is standing at the crossroads: he can orient towards a revolutionary road by means of a thorough application of his socialist programme, or follow the way of many reformist governments which have ended by frustrating the hopes of the people. In the first case, if he follows a revolutionary road in which the interests of American imperialism would inevitably be liquidated, and the interests of the Chilean bourgeoisie at least considerably affected, there is not the slightest doubt, as we see it, that Allende will have to take on a tough armed resistance from imperialism and Chilean reaction. In this sense, being able to apply really revolutionary, socialist measures poses as a condition the organisation and preparation of the people for struggle, and concretely, for armed struggle. For that he would be able to count on many favourable factors, such as: the fact of having obtained an electoral victory within the institutional framework of the system, which poses for the ruling class the need to violate its own bourgeois legality; the absolute majority of the people would be at his side, just as would the other peoples of the continent and, another factor which should not be forgotten, in Chile an armed movement had already begun to develop, as the embryo of a revolutionary army: the MIR. Clearly in this perspective, the Chilean experience would be an extraordinary driving force for the revolutionary movement—and its expression in the guerrilla—on a continental scale. If the intervention in Cambodia by the imperialist troops let loose a wave of protest through our whole continent, an intervention against Chile would find all the peoples of the continent united. Chile would become the centre of all the contradictions of Latin America. The efforts of all the revolutionaries of the continent would have to be turned towards it. The war of liberation would reach a much higher level. From being a series of physically separated fronts in various countries, it would become a co-ordinated movement, united over very concrete tasks. For our part, as far as our strength and the strength of our people permits, we shall be ready to give of our strength and of our lives for the independence of Chile, which is part of the independence of our continental homeland. On the other hand, if the road Allende chooses should end in a policy of mere superficial reforms, despite the fact that this would be harmful for a time to the struggle for liberation and socialism, given the illusions which would be created in the masses, still in the end it would lead to a break with a possible myth, with the 'democratic superstition' which still exists in considerable sectors of the revolutionary movement and of the masses. We think that the consistency of Salvador Allende, expressed in positions held for many years, offers a security for hoping that he will orient towards a revolutionary perspective, even though he will have to confront the violent response of imperialism and its allies.
In any case, it will be future events which allow us to give a conclusive reply to your question, a question which in fact many people are asking.
4. WHAT POSITION DOES THE GUERRILLA MOVEMENT TAKE TODAY IN THE FACE OF PRESIDENT CALDERA'S PACIFICATION POLICY?
Exactly the same as we took as soon as Caldera assumed power and launched his pacification manoeuvre. Our struggle has not been undertaken as a rebellion against one particular government. Our struggle is the product of the confrontation with the system of imperialist exploitation and oppression of our country. The violence which has wrecked Venezuela for years is not simply the product of the conscious action of the revolutionary movement. Before the first urban and rural guerrilla units were organized in Venezuela, there was already violence. Violence is no more than the expression of the oppression exercised over our people for centuries. The root of the problem is that for the ruling classes, there is only one kind of violence: the kind employed by the exploited and oppressed when they fight for their emancipation. Nevertheless, their violence scarcely deserves the euphemistic title of 'Public Order', 'Respect for the Constitution and the Law' and other similar phrases, which are essentially no more than a mask to try to hide the violence evident in the appropriation of riches by a tiny minority, in the growing misery of our people dying of hunger and disease, watching their children die on the hillsides of the big cities, devoured by rats. This violence, evident in the existence of armed forces charged with the repression of any popular protest, of police, reactionary laws, jails, and of sacrosanct private property, is the violence which we meet with revolutionary violence. For Caldera, peace means leaving things as they are, that is to say, maintaining and increasing the imperialist exploitation of our country, allowing our people to continue being exploited and reduced to misery, not raising the slightest word of protest against the arch-reactionary, fascist policy of his regime. This is his ideal of peace. But for the poor there is a peace of a completely different kind. There can be no real peace where there is exploitation and domination of one class by another. This is a law of history and our country is no exception. Here the exploited classes have begun to use revolutionary violence. With his 'Pacification policy' Caldera wanted to reduce us to impotence through a double mechanism: a political mechanism, based on offering us life and freedom on the condition that we betray, trying to create the impression in the masses that we were blinded and immovable. In this way he tried to create the conditions for the operation of the other mechanism: an offensive of great proportions by the military and the police. We understood the manoeuvre in time and unmasked it. Within a few months of the launching of his 'pacification' offensive, his troops and police forces were already going for the first victims among the students who were protesting against the constant aggression against the universities. And so the pacification manoeuvre has only registered a few doubtful victories, in the persons of a handful of renegades and deserters who like Rafael Faria (Miranda) and Freddy Carquez, [together] with the renegades of the PCV, form a real trail of excrescence in the political history of our country. Faced by these renegades, the struggle of the people increased notably. 1970 was rich in workers' strikes and student protest. The great part of the strikes were declared illegal by the government, which by a variety of legal subterfuges, always finds a way of denying the working class its rights. On many occasions the workers found themselves facing Caldera's troops. "The Hunters" who were organized by the Green Berets—as an anti-guerrilla force, went into action against students and workers. So despite the fact that during 1970, because of the measures of reorganization which we had been carrying out within the armed revolutionary movement, not many military actions were carried out, class struggle reached a much greater degree of violence than in previous years. Caldera's manoeuvre was worth nothing, for even if we had got ourselves forgiven for the mortal sin of being serious revolutionaries, violence would still have been on the increase and other revolutionaries would have taken up the banners of National Liberation and Socialism.
5. BY WHAT CRITERION DO THE COMPONENTS OF THE VENEZUELAN REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT JUDGE THE REFORMIST PARTIES OF THE COUNTRY? ON WHAT DO THEY AGREE AND WHERE DO THEY DIFFER?
In Venezuela the whole political process of the past 40 years has unravelled under the direction of the petite bourgeoisie. Practically all the political parties which have risen up since 1928 have been formed under the leadership and ideology of the petite bourgeoisie. In so far as the struggles are posed against absolutist forms of government, of which the most outstanding example was Juan Vicente Gomez (13), these parties played a progressive role. In this manner, they led the mobilisations of 1928 and 1936-7 (14), and up to January 23rd 1968, in the struggle for the conquest of democratic objectives. This was possible in the circumstances I described to you in answering your first question. But as soon as the bourgeois democratic process reached its peak in Venezuela, it can be said that those parties had exhausted their revolutionary potential, and were no longer capable of leading popular struggles towards a new stage of liberation and socialism. This can only be done by a truly revolutionary, Marxist-Leninist party. Hence all those parties began to suffer from internal quarrels which have led to the formation of a veritable constellation of groups and small parties. In brief, we can say that these parties played a progressive role until the fall of Perez Jimenez. In some cases their leaders still take positions with which we agree. For example, the General Secretary of URD, Jovito Villalba, recently made declarations in which he denounced Caldera's pro-imperialist policy; he showed his determination to develop the struggle against the daily increasing penetration of our country by imperialism, and proclaimed the need to form a nationalist front with this objective. [At] the same time he declared the need for self-criticism in relation to the support his party had given to Accion Democratica in previous governments. The main point of divergence lies in what has historically separated reformism from revolutionary concepts. The former tries to solve serious problems affecting the people while ignoring completely the inevitable struggles between opposed class interests which until today, have only been resolved through armed violence. In this way all the reformist parties of Venezuela, including the Communist Party, cling with a vehemence worthy of a better cause to electoral formulas, opposing and fighting the revolutionary line of armed struggle. And so agreement can only be concretised in relation to partial struggles, on very concrete and temporary objectives.
6. IS IT AT ALL POSSIBLE THAT A REVOLUTIONARY GOVERNMENT CAN COME TO POWER IN VENEZUELA BY THE ELECTORAL ROAD?
No. Even in 1968 the Central Committee of our Party and the National Command of the FALN made their position clear, demonstrating that the concrete conditions of the Venezuelan electoral system did not allow the revolutionary movement to participate. The history of the last few years, which have been precisely those of bourgeois-democratic forms of government, has been characterized by growing violence. After the 23rd of January, when the flames of the struggle against Perez Jimenez had only just died down, Romulo Betancourt obtained a decisive electoral victory, with the support of imperialism and important sectors of the oligarchy, with whose interests he was clearly identified. It was Betancourt's role to elude the serious dangers which had surrounded the ruling classes when a revolutionary situation had been created, raising the possibility of seizure of power by the people. As I already indicated before, the absence of a real revolutionary leadership which was clear on the problem of power, led the PCV to practise an electoral policy, tailing the bourgeoisie. Since then the Venezuelan people have experienced in the flesh a violence much more intense and extensive than that suffered at the time of Perez Jimenez. The AD and Copei governments have equalled the monstrosity of the methods used by Juan Vicente Gomez, surpassing him by far in refinement and cynicism.
There never has been in our country, as in Chile, a democratic tradition through which the people could make gradual gains. In Chile, the parties of Popular Unity have acted for years on a clearly defined policy, with a programme of government and a candidate who has kept a firm and consistent line on the side of the people. Salvador Allende's attitude towards American imperialism, to the Cuban revolution, the socialist countries and the peoples struggling for liberation, has allowed him to obtain a growing influence among the working masses of Chile. This has not happened in the remotest degree in Venezuela. All the parties, without exception, have been characterized by the most abrupt and sharp zigzags imagineable. One day they hold a demagogic programme which is thrown in the rubbish bin as soon as the electoral business is over. Take the example of the most radical party of the petite bourgeoisie: the PCV. In 1958 it went in for the elections; in 1963 it raised the need for armed struggle; in 1966 it declared that armed struggle was an error; in 1968 it called for participation in the elections and since then it has gone on raising storms against armed struggle. What consistency, what clarity, what definition can the people find in a spectacle of this kind? And so among the masses, the system of parties and the 'rules of the electoral game' have created a profound scepticism. Their participation in elections is by way of inertia produced in them by the absence of class consciousness and the still notable weakness of the armed revolutionary movement, rather than by a firm belief that they are going to attain their objectives by way of the electoral urns. In so far as we are able to practise correct politics directed towards the masses, we shall be using the necessary means to break decisively all the machinery of deception and compromise represented by the Venezuelan electoral system. And so despite the fact that we are not blind adulators of a particular form of struggle, we declare quite firmly that the only possible way to attain National Liberation and Socialism is through an armed process with an armed conclusion. On the part of the government as much as on the part of the masses, violence is an unavoidable fact. The level of struggle in Venezuela has already transcended the straight political battle on the level of a war between opposed classes. If you have been reading the national press you will have come across a tragicomic article: a headline brings out the fact that the government had declared a strike legal!! This attracted a lot of attention because it was a real find in a country where all strikes are illegal. But there was a reason for this exception: the strike was of the employees of the University of Zulia. As you know, in Venezuela the government has adopted the aim of adjusting the whole educational system to its fascist conception of the State. So it is progressive by converting all the national universities into regimented institutions. Whenever you look, you will find a scene of violence. A short time ago Caldera let loose a real 'rathunt' under the name of 'Operation Vanguard.' In less than a month a veritable record was chalked up: more than 30 people shot in the street by police units acting, like James Bond, with licence to kill. This was how Caldera tried to solve the problem of delinquency which generates its own system of misery and poverty. With this 'Operation Vanguard', Caldera stepped back several centuries in the practice of criminal justice: the delinquent converted into the object of damage to society, must as such be exterminated.
Would it be correct within this framework, of which I have given only the bare outlines, for revolutionaries to accept an electoral way forward? This would be to return to the same mistake of the 23rd of January: when the masses were pressing for more extreme measures, creating the conditions for the formation of a popular government—not by electoral means but by means of direct action by the masses—the petite bourgeoisie, dragged along by the bourgeoisie, led them towards the electoral course which resulted in the painful experience our people have lived through in the past decade.
7. WHAT VIEW DOES THE FLN—FALN TAKE OF THE RECENT SPLIT IN THE PCV?
Even before the split we were giving a certain amount of attention to the internal divisions of the PCV. From the analysis we made of the Draft Programme edited by Pompeyo Marquez, which was to be approved at the IVth Congress of the PCV, we reached the conclusion that there was 'nothing new under the sun with the PCV'. They were the same ideas as always, dressed up in clothes which through repeated use no longer serve to cover up the private parts of a scandalously reformist ideology. If during the government of Romulo Betancourt the PCV took the slogan of a fantastic 'Turn to the left' against a government which was defending yanqui interests and killing the people on the streets, now, with Caldera in power, they plan struggle to achieve a 'reorientation in public administration'. On this there was no divergence between the two factions. In its essence, the conflict had nothing to do with revolutionary ideology nor with the specific problems of Venezuela. The fight became sharper over the invasion of Czechoslovakia. While the ultra-right under Guillermo Garcia Ponce was in agreement with the invasion, Teodoro Petkoff, leading a shame-faced right, was condemning the invasion. Shortly afterwards a book by Petkoff appeared (Czechoslovakia, Socialism as a Problem) in which he made a passionate defence of the theses upheld by Dubcek and Ota Sik. For the rest, the internal struggle of the PCV acquired all the characteristics of a fight for the control of bureaucratic positions within the organization, to the point of provoking the split and occasioning two IVth congresses. So the PCV gave birth to a new group called 'MAS'. From the documents we have been able to read, we can find no fundamental difference in their concept of struggle. The two groups coincide in stubborn opposition to armed struggle. Both qualify us in the same way. Both agree on the need to form electoral fronts with the same forces. But that is not all. Within the MAS, as its own leaders recognise, there are tendency struggles. There is an important number of militants grouped in it, who have clung to the idea of a united PCV, with the hope of winning it to a revolutionary line. It will not be long before they see the abortion of their hope that this can be achieved within the MAS. Some of them are already beginning to come close to our organisation. They no longer regard us as infernal beings who have to be 'reduced to dust'—as Pompeyo Marquez demanded—. They listen to our opinions and are beginning to join our ranks. This phenomenon, still very small, will grow in step with our ability to maintain a broad line and with the intensification of the struggle, revealing all the opportunism which permeates the two factions. To sum it up, it has been a split which by its nature has been unable to produce either a warm or cold response from the mass of the people.
8. WHAT IS YOUR FUNDAMENTAL CRITIQUE OF [COPEI]?
It's difficult to choose from among the many which could be made. If we take the root of the problem, we could locate it in the critique of the close identification of the ideology and policy employed by Caldera, with the imperialist interests which exploit our country. All the vices of COPEI flow from this. To be able to sustain the system of imperialist exploitation, Caldera has been assuming more blatantly each day, the character of a fascist government, which is mediated through a progressive militarization of all the organs of the State, through systematic violence against the masses, torture, assassination and constant disappearances. A few months ago—with the support of Accion Democratica—COPEI approved the so-called 'Service Contracts'. This is a dolled-up reproduction [by which part] of the national territory, containing our great wealth in oil, was handed over to the oil companies. The growing indebtedness of the State in order to cover the expenses of the military and bureaucracy, falls on the poorest sectors of the people through a tax policy of a 'developmentalist' slant which deems it inconvenient to 'the national interest' to reduce the super-profits obtained by the imperialist companies. The increase in the oil quota and the 'preferential treatment' so strongly demanded by Caldera from the US government, represent nothing but an increase in the exploitation of our principal wealth. There is an inversely proportional relationship between Caldera and Venezuela: what benefits him, is bad for the country, and what benefits the country is bad for Caldera.
9. WHAT LINKS EXIST BETWEEN THE VENEZUELAN REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT AND THE GOVERNMENT OF FIDEL CASTRO?
I shall begin by repeating what I said in reply to one of your earlier questions: our movement is based on a fundamental principle of all revolutionaries, I mean proletarian internationalism. The Cuban Revolution led by Fidel Castro, was the first really damaging blow struck at American imperialism on this continent. At the same time, it is the first socialist experience in Latin America. So for those of us who are engaged in struggling for National Liberation and Socialism, nothing that occurs in Cuba can be indifferent to us. There is a very concrete link of fraternity. Going from this elementary principle, we discover that in the international camp we are confronted by the same dangers: on the one hand, imperialism which exploits our people and fights to frustrate the success of socialism in Cuba: on the other hand, revisionism which as the negation of revolutionary theory and practice, carries out politics of confusion in our country, boycotting the revolutionary struggle, and at the same time, fights to divert the revolutionary course of the Cuban Revolution, separating it from the other revolutionary movements of the continent, trying to convert it into an island, not just geographically but from the ideological and political point of view. In so far as the Cuban government confronts imperialism and revisionism, its links with the Latin American revolutionary movement in general, and the Venezuelan movement in particular, will become closer. For our part, we can say with pride that the most active form of solidarity which can be demanded from a revolutionary in relation to the Cuban Revolution, is practised consistently by us, without any kind of vacillations. Even though it is not explicitly a part of your question, I should like to take this opportunity to underline what Comrade Douglas Bravo said in the interviews with Solioni and Mattei (15), about some twisting of our words by the bourgeois and imperialist press, according to whom we made a series of slanderous accusations against the Cuban Party. If there are differences, which it would be wrong to deny, these differences can lead to a positive result if they are correctly handled. Each time we have referred to this problem, in documents as well as in declarations, we have done it in the style which should distinguish polemics among revolutionaries, basing ourselves on the same principled politics with which we have faced other situations. The differences which can and do exist between the Cuban revolutionaries and ourselves, however complicated they may be, will never lead us into the area where our common enemies wish to see us. For now, our fundamental task is the struggle against imperialism, and we know that everything we do against it will have beneficial results for the Cuban Revolution.
10. HOW DO YOU JUDGE THE STRUGGLES OF THE PEOPLE TAKING PLACE IN THE UNITED STATES AT THE PRESENT TIME?
Imperialism, as the highest form of exploitation and oppression which humanity has known to date, feeds equally on the blood and sweat of the oppressed peoples and of the exploited sectors of its own lands. It is clear that the effects of imperialist exploitation generally make themselves felt more intensely and rapidly in the exploited countries. It is for this reason that the first disturbances are appearing on the periphery: Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Palestine, Latin America, etc. But in step with the sharpening of anti-imperialist struggle in the exploited countries, imperialism finds itself obliged to maintain a permanent state of war within its own boundaries. This fact, together with internal exploitation, ends by generating a growing resistance on the part of its own people. Within the United States two major factors are today united to feed the resistance of ever growing sectors of the people: in the first place, the exploitation of Puerto Rican origin, and the Chicanos, together with the constant repression of the student movement. This has the consequence of an increase of the protest mobilisations which are already beginning to employ forms of armed struggles. In the second place, the criminal war which imperialism is waging against the peoples of Indochina. Day by day the North American people see how their sons are dying thousands of miles from their country in a struggle which has no meaning for them. What motive can a North American Black have for shooting at the Vietnamese people, if in his own country he is affected by the same forces which have unleashed the war against the peoples of other countries? Slowly [this is becoming aware] of a struggle between classes, even though certain privileged sectors of the North American proletariat make common cause with imperialism in opposing the struggle against the war in Vietnam. And so the struggle of the American people is increasingly closely identified with the struggles of the North American people. The most tangible example is the growing world campaign which is being carried out to save the life of Angela Davis, who today symbolizes, with her striking firmness and serenity, the decision of all her people to struggle until they reach victory, even at the cost of their lives. Here I must emphasise that the whole Venezuelan revolutionary movement, our party and the FALN, unite their words and their efforts to the fight to save the life of Angela Davis, who is threatened with death by those who already are feeling the symptoms of the death agonies of a system which has plagued the peoples of the world with misery in the name of freedom—as Simon Bolivar prophesied.
NOTES
(1) The dictatorship lasted from 1948 to 1958; it was characterised by vast speculation out of oil revenues on the part of the government and its officials, and by wage freezes and rising unemployment for the Venezuelan working class.
(2) On this day in 1958 a general strike brought down the Perez Jimenez regime: but it was a coalition of bourgeois democratic parties which came into power.
(3) A petit bourgeois party with a mass following, with its main objective to increase the national share of the oil revenue and develop a national company. Betancourt had already had a brief period in power before the Perez Jimenez coup of 1948, backed by imperialism, deposed him.
(4) The alliance which took over from Perez Jimenez: COPEI, the Christian Democrat Party led by Caldera (who is now President); URD, basically a bourgeois nationalist party which received the votes of the CP in the subsequent elections; and AD, led by Betancourt, which won them. The Junta had been organised as a clandestine opposition largely under the leadership of Fabricio Ojeda, who gained the co-operation of both workers' and students' groups. Later, disillusioned with the outcome of this experience, he was to become one of the main guerrilla leaders. He was assassinated in prison in 1966.
(5) The Junta which immediately assumed the reins of government in the name of the coalition of "democratic forces" was in fact led by high-ranking military officers under Admiral Larrazabal (who was supported in the Presidential elections later in the year by the URD and the CP). They naturally formed strong links with the interests of finance capital
(6) CP Secretary and Parliamentary Deputy.
(7) The plan was to use risings by discontented army officers to spark off a generalised struggle for power. Barracks revolts took place in Puerto Cabello and Carupano in early 1962, but were quelled, and the mass movement, which was not prepared militarily, suffered severe defeats in the towns. The context in which this plan was adopted is not discussed by the comrade here: it is necessary to point out that the rise in the mass movement represented by the overthrow of the dictatorship had not been entirely quelled by the establishment of a bourgeois government; it received fresh impetus from the success of the Cuban Revolution. Castro himself visited Caracas soon after the formation of the Accion Democratica Government: the resultant demonstrations made clear to Betancourt the need to develop repressive activity very quickly, and the army began to operate to break up students and workers' actions in Caracas. The CP leadership was therefore faced by strong pressure from the base for a response.
(8) Part of the Eastern Plains area of Colombia, bordering the Southern Venezuela plains where the early guerrillas started. Bayer led a local grouping there supported by the Colombian MOEC (Workers', Students', Peasants' Movement) and the FUAR (United Armed Revolutionary Forces), politically influenced by Castro and by left-wing Gaitanism.
(9) In South Venezuela.
(10) These groupings, the basis of the fronts which were to have the greatest success, were in the northern mountain areas near the Colombian border. Those in the northern plains next mentioned were more easily destroyed.
(11) The MIR (Left Revolutionary Movement) was the left-wing split from Accion [Democratica led by] Domingo Alberto Rangel. Some of the major guerrilla leaders, however, including Douglas Bravo and Teodoro Petkoff, had been organisers of the armed CP units which had worked for the overthrow of Perez Jimenez.
(12) Now joined also by Fabricio Ojeda.
(13) Dictator of Venezuela, 1902-1935. Stayed in power on the basis of the early boom in oil and in direct alliance with imperialism.
(14) 1928 was the year of the first great upsurge against the dictatorship: there were strikes, student demonstrations, and political parties began to organise. Again after Gomez's death in 1935 there were two years of sharp struggle during which the basis was laid for the formation of Accion Democratica as a mass Movement.
(15) Further documentation of Bravo's views is published in French by the Ligue Communiste in Cahiers Rouge's "Reformisme militaire et lutte armee en Amerique Latine", available from Red Books.