Vijay Prashad’s insightful post (“Notes from the Streets of Venezuela: The People Are Resilient in the Face of Intervention,” Feb. 26, 2019, Independent Media Institute via CommonDreams) reveals some vital on-the-ground realities in Venezuela today. It almost perfectly reflects my own interviews, interactions, and subsequent writings during my visit there a year or so ago. I was not mainly in Caracas and was almost never speaking with even low-level government officials.

The Bolivarian Revolution is neither over nor embodied in a man or a moment. It is, first and foremost, a process, one being moved forward by grassroots, working-class people, often mainly women and all people of Indigenous or Afro-Venezuelan descent.

No one says that Nicolas Maduro is the greatest president of all time, and criticisms of him might be on the increase. But those who suggest or imply that Maduro is fundamentally a brutal military dictator — especially those who use the cover of “nonviolence” to justify this position — are callous at best.

At worst, it is a dangerous implication that, like it or not, opens the door to the idea that “Lima Group”-type negotiations are legitimate, when nothing could be further from the truth. The Lima Group offers positions which undermine every essential sovereignty right guaranteed by international law and monitored by the United Nations — which is why the U.N., the Roman Catholic Church, and others discount this Mike Pence-led grouping.

Read Vijay’s piece, and work for true peace: No Military, Economic, Political, or Any Type of Intervention in Venezuela!