Today, the people of Venezuela, the heir of the emancipating ideas of Simón Bolívar, El Libertador, is the protagonist of a revolution, led by President Hugo Chávez Frías, that is a hope for that nation and for all the peoples of Latin America.

In the last few years, in spite of facing the constant aggressions of US imperialism and the destabilizing and subversive activity of an internal opposition that has been defeated in the ten popular referendums held up to now, the triumphant Bolivarian Revolution can show a vast social work that has benefited millions of citizens who used to live sunk into poverty and neglect.

As part of the numerous programs that are being carried out by the Bolivarian Revolution, last October Venezuela declared itself as a Territory Free of Illiteracy and 1.5 million Venezuelans learned how to read and write. Many of them are studying now in higher educational levels. The health system has been extended to the whole country, thus benefiting over 17 million people who were totally excluded earlier from this elementary social service that is being expanded now with the improvement of public hospitals and the construction of new health facilities. Unemployment has decreased considerably and a wide network of markets has been opened so that 12 million people can buy staple food at low prices.

Notwithstanding the strong resistance of the local bourgeoisie and the landowners, the implementation of the Act of the Land is making progress. Hundreds of thousands of hectares have been recovered and are being allotted among thousands of families. The country works speedily to expand its road infrastructure, its industrial development and its agricultural self-sufficiency. Oil, the main export commodity of the Venezuelan economy, is really state-owned now and its earnings are mainly allotted for the country’s development and social programs.

In the international arena, President Chávez promotes the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), a project for the integration of Latin America, on the basis of solidarity, social justice and cooperation, that is being implemented in the relations between Cuba and Venezuela and is present in the agreements signed with other South American and Caribbean nations.

As part of the ALBA, the governments of Venezuela and Cuba have approved a program so that, in the next ten years, six million Latin American and Caribbean people will receive ophthalmologic health care, while two hundred thousand students from this region will receive free training as doctors who will be willing to provide health services for the excluded and marginalized people, who are the vast majorities of the population in the region.

For all the above-mentioned reasons, the Bolivarian Revolution is an example for the peoples of the region and of all the Third World because it is carrying out an alternative program to the poverty, neglect, inequality and injustice sown in the region by the neo-liberal model brutally applied by imperialism.

The process promoted by President Hugo Chávez and his efforts to attain regional unity and integration create new conditions for facing the policy of domination and annexation that has characterized the relations of the USA with the continent and the neo-fascist projection of the present US Administration.

All these factors determine the media campaign that is being carried out by US imperialism with the aim of presenting the Bolivarian process and President Chávez as evil, the constant threats uttered by the main leaders of the ultra-right in that country and the activity of subversion and the support provided by the special agencies of the Empire and the Miami mob to the internal counterrevolution. In the face of this situation, the Venezuelan people are increasingly and firmly determined to defend their right to sovereignty, self-determination and to the construction of a future of dignity and equality for their nation.

We, the Communist and workers’ parties gathered here in Athens, Greece, express our rejection of the present US Administration’s policy of aggressions against the Bolivarian Revolution and reaffirm our solidarity with the struggle of the noble and courageous people of Venezuela.