Caracas, November 14, 2023 (Mincomunas Press) – This Tuesday, at the 19th International Book Fair of Venezuela (Filven) 2023, the book “Venezuela in the Struggles: Colonial Past, Revolutionary Legacy and Community Regeneration” was christened.
The christening of this significant work took place in the Miguel Acosta Saignes hall, in the spaces of El Laguito in the Military Circle of Caracas, and counted with the presence of the Vice Minister of Communal Economy, Hernan Vargas, the founder and executive director of the Global University for Global Sustainability, Kin Chi Lau, the executive director of the Simon Bolivar Institute for Peace and Solidarity among Peoples, Carmen Navas and the Operational Secretary of ALBA Movements, Laura Capote.
Vice Minister Vargas, during his speech, pointed out that the book “Venezuela en las luchas” is a cohesion between several firms such as the Simon Bolivar Institute, ALBA Movimientos, and the Global University for Sustainability.
“This work tells what Venezuela is, its struggles from the popular movements and the Communes of the country, its history, and its recent process. The objective is to make known throughout the world, the process of the Bolivarian Revolution but in first voice, that is to say, told from the people who have built it from the Popular Power.”
He added that during the COVID-19 pandemic, comrades from other countries raised the need to know the testimonies of the people who militated in the Bolivarian Revolution, about how the process of construction of the Popular Power, of the Communes, its historical roots, the legacy that has been built from the Revolution and the current challenges.
“From this, specifically in 2020, we made a total of 18 working sessions, of virtual seminars, with the militants and communards of the Revolution from different areas, for them to expose their processes of struggle. This initiative is an expression of the militant forces and is available in the YouTube channels, the page of Comunas, and now, we have it in this book, in Spanish version, and soon it will have a version in English and Chinese”.
He detailed that the book contains significant contributions from professors Iraida Vargas and Mario Sanoja and comrades Reinaldo Iturriza and Germanía Fernández,
who spoke about how the historical processes of struggles of the Bolivarian Revolution are constituted. “In this work, we also find the experiences of important and interesting Communes such as El Maizal, Ciudad Simon Bolivar of the Bolívar and Zamora current, Altos de Lídice and Luisa Caceres de Arismendi, among others.”
For her part, the executive director of the Simon Bolivar Institute for Peace and Solidarity among Peoples, Carmen Navas, emphasized that in this book the Venezuelan people exposed what they were living through due to the imperialist sanctions and their permanent struggles with vision of the future. “We managed that during the sessions via online 20 thousand people from China and 200 from Venezuela were connected (…), now with this book we have a reference of contemporary Venezuela that has a historical past and a glorious future”.
Similarly, ALBA Movimientos’ Operational Secretary, Laura Capote, explained that this tool has many concrete economic, cultural, social, and communicational elements of the social movements. “Through this work, we can learn about the process and construction of the communal State, popular and protagonist democracy, the civic-military project, as well as the sense and concept of homeland, sovereignty, and independence.”
Meanwhile, the founder and executive director of the Global University for Sustainability, Lau Kin Chi, added that it was an honor for them to participate in the publication of the book “Venezuela in the Struggles: Colonial Past, Revolutionary Legacy, and Communal Regeneration.”
“We were able to learn first-hand about the experiences of the 23 de Enero Commune, El Panal 2021 Commune, and Altos de Lidice, which allowed us to understand how the idea of “Comuna o Nada” (Commune or nothing) was put into practice.
Finally, he thanked all the support received from the hosts, the Continental Platform of ALBA Movements, the Francisco de Miranda Front, the Indio Rangel Socialist Agro-ecological Training Center, and the Center for Higher Studies on Development and Emerging Countries,
in the logistics, conferences, and seminars to learn about successful communal experiences in Venezuela.
