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INTERVIEW WITH ADAN CHAVEZ FRIAS, VENEZUELAN
AMBASSADOR IN HAVANA
The
opposition’s latest maneuver is electoral fraud
• Bolívar’s
dream of liberation is starting to become a reality
• Relations between Venezuela and Cuba are a model
of Latin American integration
BY
MIREYA CASTAÑEDA—Granma International staff writer—
VENEZUELA is a country with a
rich history. What is being read and studied and
what is being written every day. Two things, an
anniversary and the charged present, have
propitiated a meeting with Adán Chávez Frías,
ambassador of the Bolivarian republic in Havana.
Venezuelan independence was
declared on July 15, 1811. What is the meaning of
this celebration for you?
Effectively, independence was
declared on July 5, 1811, what historians refer to
as the formation of the First Republic in Venezuela,
which was very quickly lost. Then came the wars of
independence headed by General Simón Bolívar. There
were various failures before the consolidation of
liberation from the Spanish government, which was
attained above all with the battle of Carabobo in
1821. Then came the conformation of Gran Colombia
and, after the betrayals of Bolívar and after his
death, that was dissolved. My particular opinion is
that a very sad stage for Venezuelan history began
at that moment. In his final days, Bolívar himself
stated: “I have ploughed through the sea.” There
were many years of the deterioration of the
Venezuelan nation, of oligarchic governments in the
service of the foreign power – specifically the
United States – to the detriment of the vast
majority in a nations so rich in terms of natural
resources and from the human point of view, because
it is a people who have always had a strong fighting
spirit. It is a nation with vast resources and when
President Chávez won the elections we obtained a
country with approximately 80% poverty and, within
that 80%, a serious percentage of what is known as
acute poverty, people virtually surviving in
infra-human conditions. Thus we have to celebrate
July 5 to recall that the Bolivarian dream is still
to be realized. At this moment we are in a process
of transition in Venezuela. We believe that the
Fifth Republic began from the moment that Hugo
Chávez Frías won the elections with the support of
the vast majority of the Venezuelan people. We have
commenced to make Bolívar’s dream a reality, but we
are just setting out on the way.
Could you update us on the
August (recall) referendum?
Information reaching us is that
the Revolutionary Command that has designated the
president to confront this new battle that is the
referendum has been fully conformed. The first stage
of the process has been completed and now we are at
the point of mobilization and waiting for the
National Electoral Council to officially announce
the beginning of the campaign to defend as we must
the revolutionary process and confront what we have
to confront. With the backing of the U.S.
government, the opposition is trying to implement a
new maneuver: electoral fraud. As we know, with that
international support the opposition has engaged in
various destabilization attempts to defeat the
government of President Chávez: the April 2002 coup
d’état, the oil sabotage, infiltrating
paramilitaries into the country to try and unleash
acts of terrorism. All that has failed for them, and
now we are certain that they are also going to fail
in the electoral fraud attempt and in trying to
create a matrix of opinion unfavorable to the
government internationally. Attacks directed by the
U.S. government. What they are doing is launching
distorted information on the media with any
argumentation. Nothing is going to work for them.
Internationally we have been demonstrating that all
those charges are false and internally, we are
prepared to detect and avoid electoral fraud.
In the Angostura Congress Bolívar
addressed Latin American cooperation. Could you
comment on this issue and specifically on relations
with Cuba?
Effectively, we are defenders of
Latin American integration and cooperation and with
all the nations of the world; however, the
integration of this part of the world is fundamental
in order to able to confront with the necessary
strength attempts by other powers to continue
imposing their criteria from the commercial,
political and even cultural points of view. We have
established those principles of integration in our
own Constitution, following the teachings of Bolívar
and other Venezuelan and Latin American thinkers.
One example – not the only one but an important one
– of the form in which we are putting that into
practice is the bilateral Cuba-Venezuela agreement.
We have important achievements that we can show to
our sister nations and that also serve to exemplify
that that integration is both possible and
necessary. Achievements such as advances in
scientific-technical cooperation, we have students
here in Cuba at undergraduate and post-graduate
level in important areas for development in
Venezuela. Likewise, in consultation with Cuban
technical personnel we are re-firing some of the
country’s sugarcane refineries. We are constructing
a new refinery in Barinas state, in the region that
we come from, the president and myself, as a family.
Equally, we have achievements related to the great
social debt that we inherited on assuming government
and which we have to continue resolving, but we have
already made advances on the social plane, which we
have called missions, such as those related to the
education of the people. And all that, via the same
agreement, with the support of the Cuban government
and people. I have mentioned certain things rapidly,
which serve to demonstrate to the countries nearest
to us and the world in general how important it is
to unite. Attaining that integration at all levels
is going to allow us to continue constructing the
Bolivarian dream of Latin American and Caribbean
integration.
Any other idea that is dearly
held by you and you would like to express?
Well, I will take this
opportunity to send warm greetings to all the
readers of Granma International and highlight
that need for all of us to fight with greater force
and awareness for the integration of our peoples.
Only via that integration will we become invincible
and we have to continue along that road in order to
carry on resisting – as Cuba has demonstrated over
so many years – the onslaughts of the empire, and
continue constructing and consolidating the dreams
of liberation of Bolívar, Martí, Sandino, Che and
many others.
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