While most of the people of African descent in the United
States will be watching Obama’s pole numbers and shuttering in fear at the next
feudal inspired declaration of Romney, there is another upcoming election with
profound implications for people of African descent throughout the Americas.
On Sunday, October 7th the Bolivarian Republic of
Venezuela will conduct its national elections. The main contest in these
elections is between leftist President Hugo Chavez Frias and right wing
opponent Henrique Capriles Radonksi. According to most polls, President Hugo
Chavez will win his third reelection bid fairly handily. President Chavez, the
Unified Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), and the broad progressive alliance
driving the Bolivarian revolutionary process are seeking to use this
prospective victory to deepen the revolutionary process and engage in bolder
initiatives to build 21st century socialism.
Many of these bold initiatives are specifically intended to
strengthen the Afro-descendent movement throughout Latin America and transform
the material conditions of people of African descent throughout the hemisphere
and the world. Some of the existing initiatives include:
- · Building strong South to South economic and political relationships between the nations of Africa and Latin America
- · Supporting progressive Afro-descent organizing and social movement building throughout the America’s via the social movement initiatives of ALBA (the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas)
- · Supporting conflict resolution in Colombia and Honduras, specifically focusing on ending the disproportionate amount of violence historically and currently directed against people of African descent in the conflicts in these countries
If Chavez and the PSUV win not only will these critical
programs expand, other bolder initiatives will follow. One of these will
undoubtedly focus on including African descendants into the constitutional
framework of Venezuela more directly to ensure land rights, specialized social
services, and restitution for slavery and centuries of racial discrimination
and exploitation. Some of the other initiatives will likely focus on supporting
progressive social movements in Haiti to counter the reemergence of the right
under the patronage of the imperialist alliance of the US, Canada and France, and
countering the initiatives of US imperialism to foster the development of a
right wing faction within the Afro-descendant movement in Latin America.
As these points illustrate, a lot is riding on the outcome
of the Venezuelan elections for people of African descent in the Western
Hemisphere. If the right wing candidate wins, you can best believe that he and
his US allies, will do everything within their power to reverse the gains of
the Bolivarian revolution, and specifically the gains that have been won by the
Afro-Venezuelan movement, which has played a leading role in the Pan-African
movement over the past twenty plus years. A victory however, means that the
Pan-African movement will have a strong political base that will enable it
coordinate critical international initiatives like the Decade of People of
African Descent (tentatively scheduled to be 2013 – 2023) and other aspects of
the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action, including the campaign for
reparations from the imperialist nations of Western Europe and North America
for the crime of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and chattel slavery committed
against African people for centuries in the Western Hemisphere.
People of African descent in the US should definitely pay attention to the elections in Venezuela and study and stay tuned to the initiatives emanating from the Bolivarian revolution, as they directly impact you in positive ways. Further, those of us in the United States who are partisans of Pan-Africanism must play our part in supporting the Bolivarian revolution and the Afro-Venezuelan Network, and keep in mind the lesson from Mozambican revolutionary Samora Machel, that “international solidarity is not an act of charity: it is an act of unity between allies fighting on different terrains towards the same objectives”.
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