April 19: Massive call for day of solidarity with Venezuela
In Mexico City, Venezuelan and Mexican participants in “The Parties and a New Society” seminar with Berta Joubert-Ceci, center and John Catalinotto, right.
Mexico City — A broad spectrum of political parties meeting in Mexico City called for solidarity actions with Venezuela against U.S. attacks, including a day of international solidarity on April 19.
The 132 political parties from 40 countries and five continents meeting at the international seminar, “The Parties and a New Society,” taking place in Mexico City on March 12-14, held a news conference to state their solidarity with the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela following the March 9 threats made by President Barack Obama.
The parties said they “energetically reject” Obama’s “Executive Decree” calling Venezuela “an extraordinary and unusual threat” to the national security of the U.S. They said instead that it was U.S. imperialist aggressions that threatened the national security and sovereignty of Latin America and the Caribbean and to all the peoples of the world, “in its desperate search to maintain its declining hegemony and to control the strategic resources of the planet.”
They added that they “stand in militant solidarity with the Venezuelan people and express our firmest and unbounded support for the Bolivarian and Chavista government that is headed by President Nicolás Maduro.”
A Workers World Party representative at the seminar, Berta Joubert-Ceci, spoke at the news conference, saying, “It is a great travesty when Obama calls Venezuela a threat, when within the USA every 28 hours a Black person is being killed by governmental or private repressive forces. People in the USA whose lives were saved when they received heating oil from Venezuela, know very well who their enemy is. It is not Venezuela. It is their own government who denies full access to basic human needs. They and thousands of people in the USA stand in solidarity with the Bolivarian government and will do whatever is necessary to expose the USA’s lies and defend Venezuela!”
Call for solidarity actions April 19
Prensa Latina reports that on March 16, the São Paulo Forum working group, which often meets following the seminar, and which gathers Latin American political parties, joined the condemnation and called for the following actions:
- An anti-imperialist summit of Latin American popular organizations and movements in Managua, Nicaragua, on March 20 and 21.
- A “World Great Day of Solidarity with Venezuela and Condemnation of U.S. Intervention” on April 19 with the slogan “Peoples of the World United on Venezuela.”
- An extraordinary and extended meeting on April 13 in Caracas to express their support for President Nicolás Maduro and the Venezuelan people.
Solidarity with Black Lives Matter movement
At the seminar, the WWP representatives raised a resolution to send “a message of condolence to the families of the African-American and Latino/a victims of police killings in the United States” and “declaring our solidarity with the just struggle of the Black Lives Matter movement for civil and human rights and against impunity” for the police. The resolution received unanimous support from the 132 parties.
