Freedom Rider: An Evening with Nicolas Maduro
by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
“Maduro’s enemies at home have declared war on their own government and people.”
In the Bronx, New York, Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro reminded black Americans what they have lost as a result of following misleaders and worshipping Barack Obama. Before corporate dollars and Barack Obama delivered a crippling blow to black politics, African Americans were in the forefront of opposition to United States foreign policy.
More than any other group in the country, black people could smell a foreign policy rat as soon as it was spawned by Washington. Any claims of dangers to American interests were met with skepticism and outright disdain. Every declaration of criminality from the Gulf of Tonkin resolution to Operation Just Cause to Operation Iraqi Freedom were known to be frauds meant only to keep the rest of the world under America’s thumb.
The late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez was the great liberator of his country and as such earned the enmity of the United States government. Venezuela was an independent nation but not independent of the dictates of imperialism. This country never rejected Manifest Destiny or the Monroe Doctrine and still sees itself as entitled to rule over all of North America and South America and indeed the whole world.
Nicolas Maduro has made mighty efforts to continue the Chavez legacy. He has been met with terrific opposition from the same domestic interests who tried to undo Chavez and by the United States and its allies. Maduro’s enemies at home have declared war on their own government and people in an attempt to make Venezuela ungovernable and bring down the Bolivarian revolution.
“This country never rejected Manifest Destiny or the Monroe Doctrine.”
Maduro is to be applauded for not succumbing to United States pressure and protecting his nation from intrusions and interference. At the same time he has continued the Chavez tradition of making common cause with people here in this country who also want to see a just world free from imperialism and the inequality that creates so much suffering.
Chavez began the practice of using the Venezuela owned Citgo oil company to help not only his countrymen and women but impoverished people here as well. In this country, so often called “the richest country in the world” the safety net is frayed and in some places non-existent. Many people in this rich land live without adequate heat or in places like Detroit, even without water. If Venezuela had an extra supply of that, they would surely lend a helping hand.
Maduro does the same and he used the annual United Nations meeting in New York as an opportunity to speak to Americans who understand and support the need for people around the world to be free of United States domination. At Hostos Community College in the Bronx, Maduro explained his presence there.
"This meetings enable us to see us, to talk, about social struggle ...in essence we are the same, you people here in the Bronx and in the United States, and in Venezuela, we´re the same, these meetings let us see that, recognize it."
So many lies they tell about Venezuela, whose only crime is to ... try to transcend capitalism, they declare us sinners because of our right to dream, to build humanist socialism."
“In essence we are the same, you people here in the Bronx and in the United States, and in Venezuela.”
Maduro has reason to reach out to Americans as the United States continues its tradition of subverting the institutions it claims to support whenever they deliver an unwanted result. Venezuela should have no trouble taking its rotating seat on the United Nations Security Council representing Latin America and the Caribbean, but in 2006 the Bush administration pressured other nations to vote no. Venezuela was deprived of the rights that a United Nations member state is supposed to have.
Now the corporate media are following the Obama administration in attacking Venezuela. The Washington Post called Maduro "the economically illiterate former bus driver.” Maduro quite rightly responded by labeling the paper’s assertion racist and made it clear that their little barbs would not dissuade his country from exercising its rights which the United States feels no need to respect. The New York Times urged that another nation challenge Venezuela’s seat. Without a hint of irony the Times claims to want to spare the world from “petty theatrics” should Samantha Power have to sit next to Maria Gabriela Chavez.
The path to liberation is not just national, but international. High crimes are committed here and abroad and all of them must be exposed and opposed. On the same day that Maduro came to the Bronx, Barack Obama began bombing Syria and Iraq. A Venezuelan voice on the Security Council, even temporarily, would expose American crimes. That is why leaders like Nicolas Maduro are important and why black people must reclaim their history of supporting them.
Margaret Kimberley's Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR, and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well as at http://freedomrider.blogspot.com. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgendaReport.com.
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