National Movement Union of Independent Forces of Venezuela – the Bolivarian left at the Anti-imperialist Camp 2003
Maria Bencomo, representative of the National Movement Union of Independent Forces, is part of a new generation of revolutionaries which has been emerging in Venezuela since the election of Hugo Chavez for the presidency in December 1998. The new left became necessary as the traditional forces of the left were in one way or another involved in the old corrupt corporative system based on the oligarchic appropriation of the oil revenue. The Bolivarian alliance around Hugo Chavez rose as a symbol of the rupture with the old establishment and paved the way for a new anti-imperialist project.
The Bolivarian left which bases itself on the tradition and on the surviving organisations of the revolutionary resistance in the 70ies and 80ies has started up the dynamics of popular struggle and organisation considered to be necessary to consolidate and deepen the changes launched by Chavez and his government. One of these new forces are the Bolivarian Cirlces who support Chavez but at the same time press for a process of anti-imperialist and revolutionary transformation which currently is only in the initial stage. This implies as well the preparation for the defence as the Bolivarian process is permanently menaced by the internal counter-revolution supported by imperialism. That the US and Spain are behind the Venezuelan reactionary oligarchy has been revealed by the aborted coup d´etat of April 2002.
Maria Bencomo is due to speak on the development of the political situation in Venezuela, on the confrontation with the forces of the oligarchy, the panorama of the revolutionary left and the Bolivarian movement. Together with the Colombian comrades common perspectives for the future of anti-imperialist resistance in Latin America will be debated.
