What Cannot Be Unlearned: The Defense of the Bolivarian Revolution

I was recently in an assembly in the west of Caracas where communards were debating how to prioritize scarce resources. The discussion was not easy. People disagreed about whether to invest first in a water system, a productive initiative, or repairing a community space. Voices overlapped at times, arguments were made and remade, and decisions did not come quickly. From the outside, it might look like a routine and even tedious meeting. From within, it is very much something else: a collective effort to think through material life under pressure.

Assemblies like this are not exceptional. They are part of the ordinary functioning of a society that, even under conditions of imperialist siege, continues to organize its material and political life. This is something that is often missed in accounts of Venezuela written from afar, where attention tends to focus on “high politics”—institutional declarations, negotiations, geopolitical responses—while overlooking the dense fabric of everyday political practice that sustains the process.

My argument here is that what might be perceived as simple inertia is better understood as something deeper: the expression of an ongoing historical process that has, over more than two decades, transformed not only institutions, but the capacities of the people themselves.

To grasp the durability of the Bolivarian Revolution just four months after the kidnapping of President Maduro and the attack on the country, it is not enough to look at the state, leadership, or even economic policy, although we should not forgo the analysis on that terrain. One also has to examine a different terrain: the production of political consciousness. What is at stake is not only sovereignty in its formal sense, but the extent to which a society has developed the capacity to understand, organize, and reproduce itself—what I have referred to elsewhere as “popular sovereignty.” This is where the question of popular education becomes central.

Imperialism operates not only through material force, but through the production of meaning. Its violence is not merely destructive; it is pedagogical. Coups and coup attempts, bombardments, kidnappings, and blockades are designed to weaken a country materially, but also to instill lessons: that resistance is futile, that sovereignty is unsustainable, that submission is inevitable.

This pedagogy extends into the symbolic realm. Mainstream media narratives speak of “normalization” in Venezuela—that is, a gradual realignment with a global order dictated from the North—or, alternatively, they refer to a “dictatorship” still in place, over which looms imminent collapse. In both cases, the operation is the same: to overwrite lived reality and produce a common sense in which alternatives to the capitalist and imperialist order appear unthinkable. In this way, imperialism seeks to shape not only what people can do, but what they believe is possible.

Unfortunately, some Left sectors end up reproducing a similar framework, albeit in a different language. When they suggest—explicitly or implicitly—that what has occurred in Venezuela after January 3 amounts to treason or capitulation, they not only misrepresent the process; they also erase the agency of the Venezuelan people. In doing so, they reproduce a logic that reduces Chavistas to spectators, rather than recognizing them as protagonists of a process they have actively built and sustained.

Learning Through Struggle

Yet this discourse encounters limits when it confronts a politically organized society. In Venezuela, imperialism’s attempt to impose a pedagogy of resignation collides with something I encounter daily: a pueblo that has learned, through practice, to interpret and act upon its conditions. Of course, this process has unfolded unevenly—as is the case in any revolutionary experience, where political consciousness and organization develop at different rhythms across territories and sectors. But that unevenness does not negate the transformation. What exists here today is a society marked by the experience of shared political practice that spans close to three decades.

From its inception, the Bolivarian Process placed education at the center of its project. Under the leadership of Hugo Chávez, it was never treated as a secondary or technical matter, but as a decisive terrain of struggle. This orientation drew from the “Tree of Three Roots,” which includes not only independence leader Simón Bolívar and campesino revolutionary Ezequiel Zamora, but also Simón Rodríguez.

Rodríguez, the teacher of Bolívar, argued that emerging Latin American republics could not be built on inherited colonial forms of thought. His insistence that “we either invent or we err” served as a methodological principle: social transformation requires the production of new ways of thinking, grounded in practice. Chávez’s emphasis on popular education can be read as a continuation of this Robinsonian tradition (Robinson was Rodriguez’s pseudonym) under contemporary conditions.

This perspective found concrete expression in initiatives such as Misión Robinson, which, with the support of Cuban internationalist brigades, brought literacy to 1.5 million Venezuelans. But to reduce the pedagogical dimension of the revolution to formal programs would be to miss its most decisive aspect. What has unfolded over the years is something broader: a vast process in which learning takes place through participation in social and political life itself—through assemblies, mobilizations, land struggles, and organized action. It was complemented by a sustained effort at political formation, in which Hugo Chávez played a central role as a popular educator, consistently linking history and theory to the concrete, lived challenges of building socialism.

Land struggles, countercoups, and communal assemblies are not only forms of action; they are processes of formation. In them, people learn to deliberate, to confront entrenched relations of domination, to manage collective resources, to overcome non-antagonic contradictions, and to assume responsibility for shared outcomes. Through these practices, new political subjects are formed—capable of understanding, organizing, and transforming their reality.

The result has been a broad, if uneven, transformation. The revolution has not only altered access to resources or institutions; it has expanded the number of people able to think and act politically.

Irreversibility: What Cannot Be Undone

It is here that the question of irreversibility, which Chris Gilbert brought up in a recent article, becomes decisive. Drawing on the work of the Hungarian philosopher István Mészáros, Chávez argued that revolutionary processes could, under certain conditions, reach a point of no return. This notion is often interpreted in institutional terms, but its most profound dimension is at the grassroots level, where change is, for lack of a better word, molecular.

After more than twenty-seven years, the Bolivarian Revolution has generated a dense accumulation of lived political experience. Millions have participated in processes of organization, decision-making, and struggle. They have not only witnessed politics, they have practiced it.

From within that process, it becomes clear that such experience cannot be easily reversed. Institutions can be transformed, policies overturned, and resources reallocated. But the knowledge produced through lived practice—the capacity to interpret and organize—does not disappear so readily. People (including the political direction of the process) cannot simply “unlearn” what they have lived.

If the Bolivarian Revolution has functioned as a vast field of political learning, its most developed expression lies in the communes. There, collective decision-making is a daily practice. The commune is not a local refuge from the system, nor a mere administrative unit. It is a space where new social relations are forged—where, potentially, cooperation displaces competition, and where politics becomes inseparable from the organization of life itself.

At the same time, it would be a mistake to treat the communal project as self-sufficient or all-encompassing. From a Chavista, Marxist, and Leninist perspective, the commune cannot remain isolated to fulfill its truly revolutionary potential. It must become national, articulated with other spheres of power, including the government. The horizon is not a mosaic of disconnected local experiences, but the transformation of society as a whole.

This is not an abstract concern. From where I stand, it is clear that communes—still marginal in the national economy—cannot sustain or expand themselves if the state is lost to forces hostile to the revolution. Losing the government would not mean the immediate disappearance of popular organization, but it would interrupt the possibility of advancing toward a substantive democracy capable of eroding the metabolism of capital that begins to emerge in the communes.

This does not imply that support for the government must be uncritical. The relationship between popular power and the state has been contested at times since the early days of the revolution. There have been moments when the government distanced itself from the communal project, only to return to it later under pressure from organized sectors.

Against the ‘Safe’ Bet

This brings us back to the defeatist declarations of Left intellectuals that I was mentioning earlier, who insist that the Bolivarian Revolution has already ended, that the government has capitulated, that what remains is little more than a hollow shell. From the outside, this can appear as realism. From within, it reflects a profound misunderstanding of the process. At its core lies a failure to grasp irreversibility.

Those who declare or imply that everything has been lost tend to focus on the government as if it were the sole repository of the revolution. From that perspective, any concession or retreat appears as definitive proof of collapse. What disappears from view is the accumulated political experience of millions of people who have learned, over decades, to organize, deliberate, and act collectively—and, through that practice, are also able to identify errors, advance critique, and push for rectification when needed.

This omission is not neutral. It often reflects either a Eurocentric lens that renders the Global South’s political subject invisible, or a crude geopolitical lens that privileges institutional form over lived experience and underestimates the agency of organized people. From that vantage point, the revolution becomes something that can be declared “over” from afar. From where I stand, that claim does not hold.

Declaring that “it’s over” is not simply an analytical mistake; it has political consequences. It makes it harder to struggle in a very difficult historical moment, contributes to demoralization, and weakens the collective capacity to navigate difficult terrain.

It is always, of course, a much “safer” intellectual wager to declare capitulation, to distance oneself, to preserve analytical purity—it is safer since the reality on the ground is rarely pretty and never certain. But that is a wager made from the outside. Within the Bolivarian Process, the defining feature has been different: a refusal to abandon the struggle while conditions remain open. Moreover, accusations of treason or capitulation are not only false but also politically harmful. They flatten complex dynamics into moral judgments and obscure the strategic terrain on which the process unfolds.

This is not simply a question of competing narratives, but of how reality itself is produced and understood. In Venezuela, these narratives encounter a specific difficulty: they collide with a politically organized movement that has learned to interpret reality together.

There are, of course, decisions in which people do not participate directly, but the debate is always present. Moreover, in robust communes, life does not follow a logic imposed from above; it is produced together, forged in assemblies and in everyday practices. That is why listening to the Chavista base—sometimes critical of specific policies but supportive of the government—matters: it makes it possible to distinguish between what is said about our reality and what is actually lived.

To defend the Bolivarian Revolution in 2026, then, is not only to denounce external aggression. It is to defend and deepen the processes through which a pueblo is learning to govern itself. And what has been learned does not disappear with a policy shift or a moment of retreat. It persists as capacity and consciousness. And that, of course, has material implications in the struggle.

There are no guarantees of victory. Revolutionary processes unfold in adverse conditions, shaped to some degree by forces that are often beyond their control. Marx compared the revolution to a mole that might go underground but remained a telluric force. What exists in Venezuela today is not an exhausted project waiting to collapse. It is a people that has learned—unevenly but decisively—to organize, to study reality, and to struggle collectively.

That accumulated experience cannot be dismissed or wished away. Nor can it be abandoned in favor of the intellectually “safe” prediction of defeat. Chavismo, forged through years of struggle and marked by a historical accumulation of political learning, remains a force with the capacity to defend, correct if necessary, and advance the process.

Shaking the World: Reports from Revolutionary Venezuela is a biweekly column by Cira Pascual Marquina for MR Online, offering frontline analysis of imperialism, popular power, and revolutionary struggle in Venezuela.

About Cira Pascual Marquina

Cira Pascual Marquina is a popular educator at the Pluriversidad Patria Grande, the educational initiative of El Panal Commune. She is also a member of the International Communal Democracy Network. With Chris Gilbert, Pascual Marquina is coauthor of Venezuela, the Present as Struggle: Voices from the Bolivarian Revolution (Monthly Review Press), the book series Resistencia comunal frente al bloqueo imperialista (Observatorio Venezolano Antibloqueo), and Protagonistas: construcción comunal en tiempos de bloqueo imperialista (Observatorio and PT). They are also founders and hosts of Escuela de Cuadros.

Poor man just wanted to run a brutal and profitable drug empire 😭

https://piefed.social/c/historymemes/p/2032658/poor-man-just-wanted-to-run-a-brutal-and-profitable-drug-empire

Il Tempo: Nordio pronto ad azione legale contro Ranucci per la diffusione di notizie non verificate

Il ministro della Giustizia Carlo Nordio sarebbe pronto a un'azione legale nei confronti di Sigfrido Ranucci per le sue dichiarazioni a "È sempre Cartabianca", su Rete 4: stando a quanto scrive il quotidiano Il Foglio, che cita fonti interne al dicastero, nell'istanza di risarcimento si farà riferimento al danno alla reputazione e all'immagine del Guardasigilli prodotto dalla diffusione di notizie non ancora verificate dal conduttore della trasmissione Report. Per questo, la Rai sarebbe indirizzata a non fornire alcuna tutela legale al giornalista. Ospite di Bianca Berlinguer, Ranucci, invitato per presentare il suo libro, ha anticipato alcune rivelazioni legate al ministro della Giustizia Carlo Nordio, sulla vicenda della grazia concessa a Nicole Minetti. "Una fonte ci ha detto di aver visto il ministro Carlo Nordio nel ranch di Cipriani in Uruguay", ha affermato il giornalista riferendosi a una delle proprietà in Sudamerica di Giuseppe Cipriani, compagno di Nicole Minetti.

Nordio ready to take legal action against Ranucci for the spread of unverified news.

Justice Minister Carlo Nordio is reportedly ready to take legal action against Sigfrido Ranucci over his statements on “È sempre Cartabianca” on Rete 4: according to the newspaper Il Foglio, citing sources within the ministry, the compensation claim will refer to damage to the reputation and image of the Attorney General caused by the dissemination of unverified news by the presenter of the Report program. Therefore, Rai would be instructed not to provide any legal protection to the journalist. Guest of Bianca Berlinguer, Ranucci, invited to present his book, foreshadowed some revelations related to Justice Minister Carlo Nordio regarding the grace granted to Nicole Minetti. “A source told us that we saw Minister Carlo Nordio at the Cipriani ranch in Uruguay,” the journalist stated, referring to one of Giuseppe Cipriani’s properties in South America, Nicole Minetti’s partner.

#Nordio #Ranucci #CarloNordio #SigfridoRanucci #IlFoglio #BiancaBerlinguer #Justice #NicoleMinetti #Cipriani #Uruguay #GiuseppeCipriani’s #SouthAmerica #NicoleMinetti’s

https://www.iltempo.it/politica/2026/05/03/news/nordio-pronto-ad-azione-legale-contro-ranucci-per-la-diffusione-di-notizie-non-verificate-47555106/

Anti Imperialist Direct Action in Brazil

As the old world collapses and the new one takes too long to be born, we find ourselves living through the most decisive moment in human history.

In Brazil, from the left to the right, what we see is an excess of legalism, blind faith in institutions, and a pacifism that now borders on suicide.

The recent political developments that have shaken relations between Brazil and the United States are just another maneuver by imperialism to open a new front in its endless search for wars to feed the insatiable U.S. military-industrial complex.

In light of this new situation, we have brought together revolutionaries from all four corners of Brazil to build a new movement of the radical left in our country. Through direct action, with more practical work and fewer speeches and meetings, we will make propaganda our primary weapon.

Over the past three months, our group has been responsible for setting fire to six Statue of Liberty replicas in five different Brazilian states, across the North, South, and Eastern regions. These statues are symbols of a major Brazilian retail corporation called Havan, whose owner, Luciano Hang, is an active far-right political supporter, a personal ally of Jair Bolsonaro, and a loyal supporter of Donald Trump.

With billions in debts to the state, a controversial record of political involvement, and total alignment with U.S. interests, Luciano Hang decorates every new Havan store with these massive structures, which symbolize not only his personal megalomania but also the strong presence of the United States across nearly every Brazilian state where a Havan store operates.

Just a few weeks ago, we carried out a coordinated and simultaneous action in four different states, resulting in the total destruction of four statues standing 37 meters tall.

In response, Luciano Hang—jokingly known in Brazil as the “Havan Bald Man”—announced a rewards of R$50,000 and even R$ 100.000 for any information leading to our identification and possible capture.

Of course, the attempt was unsuccessful.

We know exactly what we are doing, and we are not going to stop.

New actions will be carried out, and with the success of this campaign, we will escalate our focus toward the U.S. presence in Brazil.

As a front-line force in street actions and direct confrontation against Zionism and imperialism, we aim to become an example and a reference point for hundreds of thousands—if not millions—who are waiting for the emergence of a truly combative and revolutionary movement.

Behind us, a broad popular front is beginning to take shape in Brazil, in Colombia, and in other countries across Latin America.

In early April, Colombia hosted the Founding Congress of the International Anti-Imperialist League (AIL), bringing together more than 150 anti-imperialists from 50 delegations across 14 countries and every continent. The Congress adopted a common anti-imperialist program, approved the League’s statutes, and issued six political resolutions supporting struggles against imperialism worldwide.

Despite escalating repression in Ecuador—where the Congress was originally planned—the event was rapidly relocated and successfully carried out under difficult conditions and political repression, demonstrating the determination and growing unity of anti-imperialist forces internationally.

Brazil was strongly represented by 17 organizations from workers’, peasants’, youth, women’s, housing, legal solidarity, and popular movements, contributing to the strengthening of international coordination in the struggle against imperialism.

Our organization, responsible for the direct actions mentioned earlier as well as other revolutionary campaigns, actively participated in the construction of the League.

This historic step marks the consolidation of a new international platform for cooperation, solidarity, and resistance among oppressed peoples worldwide.A platform that defends not merely rhetorical anti-imperialism, but rooted, uncompromising anti-imperialism, centered on the defense of armed struggle and insurrection as legitimate means of popular liberation.

Through these initial actions we carried out, we received a strong reception and significant visibility across Brazil. What began as a group of just four has now grown to more than forty comrades committed to carrying out even more impactful and relevant direct actions against U.S. imperialism, raising the banner of anti-imperialism and popular revolution.

A new war scenario is beginning to take shape in Latin America, and Brazil has every indication of becoming a potential target of the fascist regime of Donald Trump. We have little time and a great deal of work ahead of us.

With this crowdfunding campaign, we will be able to expand our operational capacity and begin organizing large-scale actions and protests not only against Yankee imperialism, but also against the strong Zionist presence in Brazilian territory.

With this financial support, we will invest in logistics, safety for our organizers, and new, broader and strengthened actions. For example, by acquiring action cameras, drones, and other techs/equipment, we will be able to document our actions and turn them into powerful propaganda pieces that will serve us like a fine, polished gun.

In the long term, our intention is to formulate a new conception of guerrilla warfare that brings together a new tactic and strategy better suited to the times we live in— one in which the presence of hacktivists, people’s fighters, militants, and all kinds of revolutionaries is possible, from anarchism to Maoism, all under a single revolutionary and anti-imperialist banner.

A broad popular front is beginning to take shape across Brazil, Colombia, and other countries in Latin America. Your contribution helps strengthen this growing network of cooperation and solidarity.

Help us build a new, brighter and revolutionary future.

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

With your financial and internationalist solidarity, we will be able to do even more, directly impacting the Brazilian political landscape while at the same time building a renewed and vigorous anti-imperialist revolutionary force, uniting all sectors of the Brazilian and Latin American left.

You can donate through FireFund or directly and anonymously to our XMR wallet: 4AwgSPvWPVBUq2dCHGeeFzLfTmGkmbteHB7Em76ZUTwidT493FsPL7c3Ryc8cMvSHYjPgzphpo2X8gKpmmHWd7ej1tF4XmJ

OR through our campaign on FireFund: https://www.firefund.net/antimperialista

Patagonia has its own Big 5, and you may be surprised to learn what animals you'll spot. #travel #southamerica #patagonia

https://honestandtrulytravels.com/patagonia-animals/?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub

Posted into Travel Tips and Tricks @travel-tips-and-tricks-HonestAndTruly

There is no reason why the #UK should get to #occupy a group of #islands off the southern tip of #SouthAmerica. It is a staging ground for #imperialist #intervention against South American #sovereignty.

The vast territorial waters around it are also being licensed out for #Israeli and #American #oil ventures, taking #profit rightfully belonging to #Argentina.

Argentina was there well before the #dictatorship. The #USA forced them out.

#Malvinas #MalvinasArgentinas #Falklands #BritishEmpire

Chile: Memory and Struggle for the Anarchist Comrades Sara and Alessandro!

On March 20th, some sad news reached us from the other side of the ocean: two anarchists are dead. They were preparing an attack against capitalist inertia. An attack against desperation, against the convenience of obedience, which is always the easier road compared to the uncertainty of rebellion.

They could have chosen a life of resignation, yet, in that corner of the planet, amidst the ruins of the city and the tension of an action the choice of the two comrades Sara and Alessandro was the synthesis of a long history of struggle that weaves past and present, opposing life and freedom to the system of domination and death. Sara and Alessandro chose the struggle and anarchy; our commitment is to not desist from this path.

March 29th, El Día del joven combatiente the Day of the combatant youth: from the barricades we vindicated the fallen comrades in Rome. Strength, love and solidarity to their families, friends and comrades.

No to 41-bis!
Freedom for all anarchist prisoners!

No confusion, no doubt, no regrets… For anarchy!

source

Translated by Act for freedom now!

Chile: Harassment and Isolation of Lucas Hernández at Santiago Sur Prison

Lucas Hernández, transferred more than a month ago to the Santiago Sur Central Prison, is subjected to constant harassment and 24-hour daily isolation in an overcrowded punishment section where he shares a cell with more than twenty inmates—conditions imposed in retaliation for his political activism. Although a court ordered his release from isolation following an appeal by his defense team denouncing these rights violations, the Chilean prison administration has delayed the process by failing to provide the required reports and has still not implemented the court order. Faced with this daily psychological torture, urgent calls are being made to increase solidarity actions to demand an end to his isolation and harassment.

Source: https://secoursrouge.org/chili-harcelement-et-isolement-de-lucas-hernandez-a-la-prison-de-santiago-sur/