Above photo: Jan. 9- Participants of the Grand World Anti-Fascist Festival. Telesur.
More than 2,000 social leaders, communicators and national and international political activists gathered today at the La Carlota Center, Caracas, to participate in the Great World Anti-Fascist Festival and, from that front, to support the inauguration of President Nicolás Maduro Moros.
Delegations from more than 100 countries will travel to Caracas this Friday to accompany the ceremony, which confirms that Venezuela’s institutionality is recognized and respected by the peoples of the world, despite the destabilization attempts of the right wing and its constant calls to isolate the country from the rest of the world.
This popular and international support is not fortuitous. While unleashing a strong media campaign of hatred towards everything that smells of chavismo, Venezuela has focused on solidifying the country’s foundations, built five million houses and held popular referendums for self-sufficiency and self-management of communal councils and communes, to strengthen popular democracy.
Despite the economic war and the continuous international sanctions by the United States and the European Union, Venezuela is among the three Latin American countries with the best economic performance. According to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), Venezuela’s economy grew by more than 6% in 2024, outperforming several major regional economies.
The eyes of the world are on Venezuela because there is much at stake, including the ongoing construction of a social model of participatory democracy of influence in Latin America, the center of struggles of the left of the global south against fascism, genocide, and in favor of multipolarity as a political alternative, the bet on the socialism of the 21st century, of a possible future of prosperity, stability and dignity.
The Venezuelan “Never Again
The streets of Venezuela dawn with total normality and peace on the eve of the swearing in of President Nicolás Maduro this January 10, which will mark a new era of dialogue, political consensus and social and economic development in the country. The citizenry has assumed this Thursday as a working day and, since early in the morning, markets opened to consumers, children went to schools, the country maintains its usual routine.
After weeks of relative silence, in recent days the ultra-right has been active, promoting marches for this Thursday in protest against the assumption of the Bolivarian leader, and in support of the sudden self-proclamation of former candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia as “president”, a Guaido 2.0. The call of the extreme right, at the closing of this note, had not had not been able to gather much momentum.
The instigation to violence promoted by opposition leader María Corina Machado, and by the media that seeksto hegemonize the conversation about Venezuela outside the country, encourages the arrival of Urrutia illegally and by force this January 10, or his “inauguration” in a Venezuelan embassy abroad instead of before the Legislative Assembly as established by the National Constitution.
This call contrasts with the broad popular support to the government. Today, thousands of peasants, fish farmers, fishermen, workers, women and young people have taken to the streets in a march “for peace and joy”, which started from the Petare neighborhood.
The image of Venezuela during these hours is that of a people that does not want to relive the pain of the violence that followed the elections of July 28, 2024, nor that of the guarimbas of 2014 and 2017, reminiscent of days of violence, shortages and terror. What the hegemonic media hides is that the majority of the people support Maduro and a Bolivarian project that promotes political conciliation, instead of confrontation; national unity, attention to the poor and underprivileged, peace and sovereignty against fascism.