Sanitarios Maracay, a Venezuelan factory under workers control, holds an assembly. Topics covered include the previous boss’s acts of sabotage, logistics of workers control, and socialism of the 21st century.
Workers should be running the country
October 17, 2008
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Venezuela, Workers in Struggle | 
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6 years on: Venezuelans celebrate defeat of April 2002 coup
April 15, 2008
Photo: ABN/Prensa Miraflores. View video footage here
President Chávez meets with his people at Miraflores
By Heison Moreno for ABN/YVKE Mundial
Translated by Tim Bowron for The Spark
The head of state celebrated this April 13 together with hundreds of Venezuelans who were out on the streets of Caracas since the early morning. The President told Venezuelans in the opening phrases of his speech that “Venezuela will never be anyone’s colony” and announced the launch of the “Misión 13 de Abril”.
Caracas, Sunday afternoon
The citizens are gathering on Urdaneta Avenue in Caracas to commemorate the civil-military struggle that enabled President Hugo Chávez to return to power six years ago, as a kind of celebration of the recovery of national dignity.
Points such as the corner of Santa Capillas and the environs of the office of the Vice-president of the Republic are again marked by the presence of the people, the same people who in 2002 went out into the streets in order to demand the return of the head of state and the constitution.
Urdaneta Avenue was packed in the early morning with Venezuelan men and women who gathered just like on that previous April 13, to take back their country’s freedom and to sweep away tyranny. The guardians of freedom, members of the misiónes and the general populace gather today to the accompaniment of music by Ali Primera which can be heard even as far away as the Laguno bridge.
The Caracas metro is providing free underground transport so that everyone can mobilise.
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Venezuela: Orinoco steel industry nationalised
April 11, 2008By Community Reporters of Merida for Aporrea.org
(see original report in Spanish here)
Translated by Tim Bowron for The Spark
9/4/08
MERIDA, Venezuela. Steel workers and the trade union Sutiss have won their fight for the nationalisation of the steel industry firm Ternium-Sidor after months of strikes, confrontations and repression by the National Guard. This morning, at 1.22am, vice-president Ramón Carrizales, the envoy of the National Executive, finally opened a way forward to a solution in the conflict between the trade union alliance and the trans-national corporation’s management. During this conflict the workers had denounced before the Minister of Labour the multiple contractual irregularities and the prevailing conditions of capitalist exploitation, but in spite of all this they were not listened to by the Minister.
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Report on Venezuela forum at Canterbury University
March 19, 2008Byron Clark
On March 17 Nelson Davila, Venezuela’s charge d’Affaires for Australia and the Pacific, spoke at a student forum at the University of Canterbury. Organised at short notice the meeting was attended by a small but highly interested group of people.
A day earlier Davila had also spoken at a public meeting in the inner city which some 20-25 socialist and trade union activists attended. Following on from that meeting a decision was made to establish a Venezuela solidarity group in Christchurch.
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Venezuela: the revolution in danger?
February 4, 2008Tim Bowron
(first published on Socialist Democracy blog)
Having suffered a narrow defeat in the constitutional referendum held last December, Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez has signalled that plans to accelerate his Bolivarian socialist project will have to be placed temporarily on hold.
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