CounterOffensive

Reinaldo Iturriza is a Venezuelan intellectual and writer who served as Minister of Communes (2013-14) and Culture (2014-16). He currently heads the Socialist Democracy Studies Center (CEDES) in Caracas. In this interview with Diario Red, Iturriza offers his views on the present Venezuelan context, the US’ January 3 invasion and subsequent impositions, the phenomenon of political disaffiliation and the importance of organizing a counter-offensive.

Although US aggression against Venezuela has been going on for decades, what happened on January 3, 2026, was an unprecedented and, to some extent, disconcerting event. This is because of the kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, but also because it wasn’t a coup d’État, at least not according to the White House’s usual playbook, which involves a change in the government’s political alignment. What is your analysis of what happened that day?

What happened that day was an invasion, in every sense of the word. A flagrant and criminal violation of our sovereignty, preceded by constant threats and provocations, as well as the murder of dozens of fishermen in the Caribbean Sea – to which must be added the hundred Venezuelan military personnel and Cuban internationalists responsible for the president’s security who fell in combat during those early morning hours.

Regarding the shift in the government’s political alignment, the first thing this outcome reveals, in my view, is that it is absolutely false that the US aggression was motivated by anything even remotely related to its concern for democracy, just as the siege immediately preceding it had nothing to do with the Venezuelan government’s alleged ties to drug trafficking.

It is clear that the US government acted out of an interest in regaining control of our strategic resources, starting with our oil. Additionally, while weighing options and considering possible scenarios, the US concluded that the least traumatic way to achieve that objective was to leave the government structure virtually unchanged.

How did we reach this critical juncture?

Only someone completely unversed in politics would dare to claim that we should thank the United States for taking the first decisive steps to free us from a “tyranny” that had been in power for 25 years and that, otherwise, might have persisted indefinitely.

I mention this because Venezuelan society is not exactly known for its apolitical nature. What I’m getting at is that this is a narrative that is not only self-serving but also very dangerous, seeking to defend the indefensible. It is a version of events that is stumbling its way forward and aspires to become common sense. That is why it is essential to block its path once and for all.

And this requires emphasizing that throughout the first decade of this century, and even during the first half of the past decade, Venezuela was characterized as a high-intensity democracy, with very notable advances in all aspects of the material and spiritual lives of the popular majorities. What needs to be understood is what has happened here over the last 10 years.

When did the turning point occur? What circumstances led to the erosion of our high-intensity democracy? 

It seems to me that Antonio Gramsci provides invaluable analytical insights to begin understanding this historical development. What we witnessed and endured was nothing other than what the Italian intellectual calls the “reciprocal destruction” of the forces in conflict, with the consequent deterioration of democratic life and the progressive weakening of the political class and its respective social bases of support.

It is in this context that the intervention of the “foreign guard” took place on January 3, to continue using Gramscian terminology. A “foreign guard” that, incidentally, played a leading role in the conflict, decisively supporting one of the forces [the Venezuelan opposition] and doing everything possible to undermine the foundations of the national economy.

As the weeks went by, it became clear that the government of Acting President Delcy Rodríguez has largely accepted the conditions imposed by the United States. Is this a “betrayal,” or is it a tactical retreat aimed at sustaining the Bolivarian Process in the long term?

Speaking in terms of betrayal or loyalty to the cause contributes little or nothing to understanding the situation. Opinions one way or the other are part of what Gramsci himself described as “petty political criticism.” Nor, it must be said, does the abuse of historical analogies aid in this regard.

I clearly recall that regarding the government’s rapprochement with certain factions of the bourgeoisie throughout 2016, and later in connection with the implementation of the orthodox monetarist program in 2018 – aimed primarily at controlling hyperinflation, which meant, among other things, reducing public spending to unprecedented levels and freezing wages – some comrades asked me in good faith whether this was something akin to Lenin’s New Economic Policy or whether, on the contrary, we were witnessing the abandonment of the strategic programmatic banners of the Bolivarian Revolution.

I would almost invariably tell them that what was needed was an analysis of the balance of power and that, regardless of how one chose to characterize it, the indisputable fact is that a recomposition of the ruling bloc was taking place: the working class, slowly but surely, ceased to be the backbone of that power bloc, as it undoubtedly had been throughout the Hugo Chávez era and even during Maduro’s early years.

Since January 3, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk has been invoked to try to explain the reasons behind the rapprochement with the US government, much in the same way that anything was previously justified by invoking Stalin’s defeat of fascism because we were facing the far right.

It is paradoxical that over the past 10 years we were able to find ourselves in the situation of the Soviet Union in March 1921, then in May 1945, and finally in March 1918, yet today, following one tactical retreat after another, the Bolivarian Process is hardly in a better position to face the future.

In retrospect, the facts seem to point to a structural retreat or, more precisely, a full-fledged strategic retreat.

A few days after January 3, you wrote an article in which you noted that the public reaction following the kidnapping [of Maduro and Flores] was one of “silence.” At that initial moment, there were no celebrations by the opposition, nor were there pro-government demonstrations; instead, a mood of “mourning for the humiliated nation” prevailed. And you made a very interesting point by arguing that “far from signifying consent with what had happened,” it was a manifestation of dissent that could find no “means of expression.” This is striking given the narrative of polarization that has surrounded Venezuela for years, which seems to encompass the entire society, dividing it between Chavistas and anti-Chavistas. Is there a vacuum of political representation?

Indeed, quite contrary to the prevailing narratives, Venezuelan society over the last 10 years has become increasingly depolarized, or perhaps we should work with the hypothesis that polarization has taken on new contours: the majority of the population versus its political class.

On several occasions, I have argued that during this period, no political phenomenon has been more significant and with more far-reaching implications than political disaffiliation. And this is by no means a recent “discovery”; I first raised this point in December 2015, in the context of the opposition’s parliamentary election victory.

When we analyzed the situation in depth, it became clear that the defeat of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) stemmed from the fact that, in Chavismo’s electoral strongholds, there had been a protest vote against the government.

It is no small matter that, despite the historical and contextual differences, that 2015 defeat, as was the case on January 3, was not celebrated by the people. That protest vote reflected a demand for correction.

In the eyes of a very significant portion of the social base supporting the Bolivarian Revolution, that correction did not occur. Quite the contrary: it was precisely from that point on that this process of recomposition of the power bloc I have already referred to began or intensified.

Why do you think this political disaffiliation occurred?

I am working on the hypothesis that the massive disaffiliation from Chavismo – understood here as a political identity – is directly proportional to the gradual distancing of the official political class from its working-class origins. In other words, to the extent that political identity ceased to embody the interests of the popular majorities, they ceased to feel represented by that political identity.

What occurred was what René Zavaleta Mercado termed a political and ideological hollowing out of the popular classes. This hollowing out, incidentally, should not be confused with depoliticization. The concept refers rather to the fact that the main guiding ideas that organize and give meaning to the way we conceive of the political are no longer associated with a specific identity.

This is particularly evident among younger people: my generation (and even more so the generations that preceded us) often laments the depoliticization of youth. And yes, there is depoliticization. But it is not uncommon to strike up a conversation with a young person from the working class in their twenties and realize that several of the key ideas that historically defined Chavismo are still there, yet those ideas have no political expression today.

In any case, I must emphasize that this phenomenon is far from being exclusively limited to young people. In reality, it describes the situation of the vast majority of Venezuelan society. A majority that does not condone something like a foreign invasion, but that cannot find ways to express its deep discontent with the state of affairs.

In your role as Minister of Communes between 2013 and 2014, but also as an activist and intellectual, you have been involved in the process of organizing and building the communes. This is a novel form of popular organization proposed by the Bolivarian Revolution and particularly by Hugo Chávez. For those unfamiliar with the topic, what are the communes? What is their objective?

The communes, and before them the communal councils, can be understood as the political formula devised by the Bolivarian leadership, and in particular by Hugo Chávez, to organize fundamentally that segment of the working class that came to constitute the backbone of the movement: the subproletariat, understood as the working poor whose labor does not guarantee them sufficient means to ensure their reproduction as a labor force.

Elsewhere I have elaborated in greater detail on what I am now only touching upon very briefly: the subproletariat was the driving force behind the popular uprising of February 27, 1989, [known as the Caracazo]. During the 1990s, under neoliberalism, the subproletariat came to represent the largest segment of the Venezuelan working class.

Excluded from the market, politics, and citizenship, it became politicized under Chávez’s leadership. It did everything possible to bring him to power. It defended democracy when it was threatened by the elites and led the massive street demonstrations that succeeded in reversing the 2002 coup d’état. Months later, it was on the front lines of resistance against the strike-sabotage of the oil industry and the corporate lockout: the Bolivarian Revolution would not be defeated by hunger and unemployment.

In a country on the brink of economic ruin [in 2002-03], we witnessed the recovery of the oil industry and experienced the effects of the first attempts at the democratic redistribution of oil rents – an experience that was entirely foreign to the more recent subproletariat.

Citizenship and the market were no longer off-limits: they gained gradual access to healthcare, education, and food. Their neighborhoods began to appear on official maps. Millions were able to obtain an identity card for the first time. They achieved their most resounding political victory in the 2004 referendum, which decided whether Chávez would remain in power.

In 2005, the Bolivarian leadership faced the challenge of how to organize a sub-proletariat that, by definition, is not in the factory, that due to its political culture distrusts the more traditional forms of political representation, and that also demonstrates a strong inclination toward political experimentation.

The answer, broadly speaking, was that it was necessary to promote the creation of popular self-government in the territories; this self-government had to, among other things, identify the productive potential of those territories and organize itself to develop that potential.

It was in this context that the first community councils were established. Later, in 2008, in areas where the self-governance initiatives were deemed to have the greatest political potential, efforts were intensified with the pilot launch of the first communes.

The communes were conceived as spaces with relative autonomy. This means that they were not to be subordinate to any formal power, nor were they to function as small, self-sufficient communities – like tiny islands in the sea of capitalism.

In Chávez’s words, they were to be capable of organizing themselves in a networked manner, “like a gigantic spiderweb covering the territory of the future, but in no case outside the strategic horizon of the Bolivarian Revolution.” In this sense, they represented a kind of popular vanguard in the process of implementing the program of transformation in the territory.

What is the current state of communal organization in Venezuela compared to previous years? How has the process been affected in recent years?

That’s a good question, especially since it has become customary in recent years to point to the existence of the communes as a kind of political – and even ethical – bulwark that could eventually serve as a counterweight to more authoritarian or conservative tendencies within Chavismo.

As a sort of consolation: we admit that things aren’t going very well, to say the least, and it’s equally true that the outlook isn’t encouraging at all, but at least the communes exist.

However, we must emphasize a few points I’ve already mentioned: the last 10 years have been a time of recomposition of the ruling bloc, of massive political disaffiliation, and of an economic policy that does not prioritize the interests of the working class. These are times of managing the status quo, which means that the scope for political experimentation has been reduced to historic lows.

To this, of course, we must add that after January 3, it is the US government that ultimately administers and decides how our revenues are spent. In other words, the problem is no longer even the scope of action of the communes, but rather the scope of the republic’s sovereignty.

This issue of the communes’ relative autonomy presents itself to us today in a radically different context: it remains to be seen whether, beyond the ability to manage very limited resources for the implementation of very limited local projects, communal leadership has the will and capacity to reaffirm its autonomy – no longer in the face of state or party institutions, but primarily in the face of a “foreign guard” that seeks to decide the nation’s fate.

Regarding the latter point you mentioned, Donald Trump’s offensive against Latin America, within a global context of military escalation and the rise of the far right, presents a very complex scenario for leftist governments, movements, and organizations. Added to the aggression against Venezuela is the intensification of the blockade against Cuba and the pressure on progressive governments in the region. How do you see the future of Chavismo and the Bolivarian Revolution in this context?

Let me refer once again to Gramsci: the analysis I have attempted here is not an end in itself. Its purpose is not to demonstrate clarity, eloquence, or anything of the sort. Such an analysis only makes sense if it aims to create the conditions for “optimism of the will.” 

The global onslaught of the far right cannot be met with voluntarism or naive pragmatism. There is no more effective incentive than developing the capacity to conduct analyses of the balance of power that are as rigorous and unflinching as possible. In times of retreat, the priority must be on organizing the counteroffensive. And such a thing is impossible based on complacent analyses or those aimed at reaffirming our status as victims.

In the battle of ideas, it is imperative to construct an effective narrative regarding the Bolivarian Revolution. One that does not shy away from pointing out our mistakes or limitations, but at the same time – and drawing on abundant historical evidence – properly highlights our numerous successes, starting with the fact that we managed to outline a programmatic vision that the popular majority embraced, feeling for the first time in a long while that they were masters of their own destiny.

The current state of affairs is not the inevitable consequence of an anachronistic program –one alien to our ideas and customs –that carried within it the seeds of authoritarianism from the very beginning. On the contrary, our program was well-suited to its time, consistent with our political culture, and realized itself as a high-intensity democracy. We must account for the multiple causes of various kinds that led to the interruption of the process of implementing that program.

This must take place within the context of a profound crisis of political representation, so we will most likely have to be prepared to witness – and even foster – the emergence of a new political identity that does not renounce its national, popular, and anti-capitalist character.

In the short term, what is essential is the convergence of all forces of different stripes that oppose the imposition of conditions of tutelage on our nation. We are on the threshold of new battles to recover our full sovereignty. This is only just beginning.

Source: Diario Red