"The Venezuelan revolution continues to make progress in the face of constant challenges and some setbacks”, said Coral Wynter, a Latin America solidarity activist recently returned from six months working in Venezuela.
She addressed a November 18 Green Left Weekly forum on the Bolivarian Revolution. Under the leadership of socialist President Hugo Chavez, Venezuela has been transformed over the past 10 years.
Wynter described practical problems facing the government, such as public health and tertiary education, and the difficulties caused by propaganda from right-wing media in Venezuela and abroad.
She said these distortions and attacks, and real issues of bureaucracy and corruption, contributed to the mixed results of the pro-Chavez United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) in the September National Assembly elections.
The PSUV won a majority of seats but not the two-thirds majority needed to pass new laws. But Wynter said the government was strengthening the popular power process central to the Bolivarian Revolution.
"The problems confronting the revolution serve to emphasise the objective difficulties facing any social transformation, especially in a Third World country, under imperialist attack and destabilisation”, she said.
"But you can daily see the spirit and determination of the Venezuelan people to ensure that there will be 'no return to the past'."