What is Really Happening in Venezuela?

A Speech by Steve Ellner

In the history of democracy… there isn’t one case in which a country has been attacked on so many different fronts … both from the internal power factors to foreign governments over such an extended period of time as in the case of Venezuela.” – Steve Ellner (from this week’s talk.)

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This week’s Global Research News Hour features a radio version of an October 19 2018 Winnipeg talk, delivered by Steve Ellner.

The presentation, delivered at the historic Fort Garry Hotel to about 100 audience members was entitled What is Really Happening in Venezuela. The main sponsor of the talk was the Winnipeg-based Venezuela Peace Committee, a group which sprang up in 2017 in reaction to the hostile actions, including sanctions, taken by the U.S. and Canadian governments toward the Venezuelan government.

According to a recent report coordinated by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the UN Refugee, the UN Refugee Agency, and the International Organization for Migration, the outflow in recent times of more than 3 million Venezuelans to neighbouring countries and beyond constitutes “the largest in the modern history of Latin America and the Caribbean.” The same report attributes this exodus to “the ongoing political, human rights and socio-economic developments in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.” Based on current trends, fully 5.3 million refugees and migrants will have left the country by the end of 2019. [1][2]

Further, a series of anti-Maduro protests have erupted inside Venezuela in the last four years with efforts to disrupt them being blamed for violence resulting in a death toll exceeding 170. [3]

Critics in the countries like the U.S. and Canada invariably use this crisis to bolster the claim that mismanagement on the part of the Maduro government and President Chavez before him. Nevertheless, such analyses conceivably ignore some of the recent historical and geopolitical context in which the Venezuelan people are now situated. [4]

Steve Ellner, who admits the Venezuelan situation is ‘complex’ attempts to provide that context in this Winnipeg presentation, recorded by Community videographer Paul Graham, and edited for radio by Global Research News Hour host / producer Michael Welch.

The complete unabridged presentation is included below.

Steve Ellner is Professor of Economics at the University of Oriente in Puerto La Cruz, Venezuela. His published works include ‘Implications of Marxist State Theory and how they Play Out in Venezuela‘ and an upcoming volume – ‘The Pink Tide Experiences: Breakthroughs and Shortcomings in Twenty-First Century Latin America’ (Rowman and Littlefield, 2019). His blogsite is steveellnersblog.blogspot.com

(Global Research News Hour episode 242)

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

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Notes: 

  1. https://www.unhcr.org/news/press/2018/12/5c136d834/emergency-plan-refugees-migrants-venezuela-launched.html
  2. ‘Regional Refugee and Migrant Response Plan for Refugees and Migrants in Venezuela: January – December 2019’ (pg. 11, 14), Response for Venezuelans: Coordination Platform for Refugees and Migrants from Venezuela; https://s3.amazonaws.com/unhcrsharedmedia/2018/RMRP_Venezuela_2019_OnlineVersion.pdf
  3. https://in-venezuela.com/killed-during-the-protests/
  4. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-36319877

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Articles by: Michael Welch and Steve Ellner

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