WITH house 4,400,000 handed over on December 29 to another happy family, President Nicolas Maduro gave tangible confirmation that 2022 was a positive year for Bolivarian Venezuela.

Between 1999 and 2010 Venezuela’s government built 593,198 homes and for the 2011-15 period 701,250 more, making a total of 1,294,448 new houses for the poor.

This means 3,105,552 houses were built between 2015-22, double the amount built in the preceding 1999-2015 period in half the number of years.

The latter period coincides both, exactly with the years when US and EU sanctions rained down on the Venezuelan economy, which led to a 99 per cent fall in oil revenues, and almost exactly with the presidencies of Maduro (2013-22).

The impressive success of the housing programme symbolises both resistance to imperialist aggression and a continuation of late president Hugo Chavez’s ethos: the people’s needs are a top priority.

Any suggestion that Maduro represents a neoliberal break from Chavismo is either malicious (as posited by the mainstream media), doctrinaire nonsense or both.  

A decisive achievement in the domestic sphere is the remarkable recovery of the Venezuelan economy that not only managed to bring inflation down from 1.5 million per cent to single monthly digits but also a no less remarkable rate of economic growth for 2022 than international institutions (the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean among them) calculates to be between 5 to 20 per cent, the highest in Latin America.

Nevertheless US economic warfare created distortions that have not yet been completely overcome and nor have the problems associated with an economy focused on the export of oil to the detriment and neglect of just about everything else. 

In comparison to 2021, there has been a hefty increase in exports; in domestic economic commercial activity with thousands of new small, medium-sized private, co-operative and communal enterprises being established; substantial growth in manufacturing; and about 90 per cent self-sufficiency in food, among the most important indexes.

The recovery led the government to prioritise social needs in the budget for the 2023 fiscal year in which 77.1 per cent is devoted to social expenditure (health 23 per cent and education 20 per cent) that was almost unanimously approved by the national assembly (with only one vote against).

And Maduro extended the law of labour security — for the third time — for two years until December 31 2024, which means workers cannot be sacked, demoted or transferred without a justified reason and authorised by the Labour Inspectorate — some “neoliberal” he is.

The economic revival is vigorous. Dozens of international airlines that had stopped flights to Venezuela have now restarted; trade with many countries has either resumed or intensified (China, Russia, Iran Turkey, India, Portugal, the Caribbean, African nations and many more).

The EU derecognised Juan Guaido as “interim president”; sent an observation mission to the November 2021 elections; plus a flood of European countries have appointed ambassadors to Caracas (the latest, in December 2022, Spain, appointed an ambassador after two years without representation).

Maduro has also received the credentials of ambassadors from Africa, Asia, the Middle East, the Caribbean, and Latin America, and has also welcomed delegations from the US government.

Thus, US economic efforts notwithstanding, Venezuela is no longer isolated — politically or economically.

The exception to this normalisation of relations with Maduro’s government is the US.

James Story serves as US ambassador to Venezuela — but does so located in the Venezuela Affairs Unit of the Department of State, located at the US embassy in Colombia since 2018, rather than in Caracas.

Donald Trump unleashed the non-recognition of Maduro in 2019, a strategy that has been defeated and that, after the election of Gustavo Petro as Colombia’s president in June 2022, has utterly collapsed.

Although the US still has 10 military bases in Colombia, Petro’s election substantially diminished the continuous economic, political and military pressure against Venezuela, emanating from Colombia’s far-right governments since 1998.

It led both, to the full normalisation of economic and political relations with Venezuela and the strengthening of the peace process in Colombia.

Furthermore, in 2022 Venezuela’s national guard seized tons of drugs, dozens of laboratories plus 118 clandestine airstrips were destroyed, 45 aircraft involved in drug-trafficking were downed, and Colombian narco-paramilitary gangs were robustly dismantled.

Petro allowed Venezuela to recover the chemical company Monomeros that had been illegally confiscated by Guaido’s “government” with the complicity of Ivan Duque’s administration.

Recovering Monomeros has made Venezuela’s quest to recover all its illegally retained or confiscated assets (about $40 billion) by the US and the EU, a tangible possibility.

This applies especially to Britain’s Tory government that, unlike the EU, continues to recognise Guaido as “interim president” based on which it has refused to return 32 tons of Venezuelan gold in custody in the Bank of England.

This means we must redouble the campaign for the return of the gold to its rightful owners: the state and people of Venezuela. 

The political context in the region from 2018 has been dominated by the election of left-wing presidents in Mexico, Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Chile, Honduras, Colombia and Brazil that, complexities notwithstanding, have moved the region’s political gravity to the left.

They all oppose and have condemned the use of sanctions against nations and peoples in Latin America. Furthermore, the US-led Lima Group in the Organisation of American States, set up in 2017 with the single objective of bringing about regime change in Venezuela, is defunct.

All conditions exist for the region to support Venezuelan initiatives to recover its illegally retained resources through bodies such as the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States. These governments may also support Venezuela in its battle to free its diplomat Alex Saab, held prisoner in the US.

The biggest achievement, after the economic recovery and the generalised recognition of Maduro as the real and only government in Venezuela, has been the agreements with various strands of the opposition, including the extreme right.

These agreements commit them to abandon the US-led insurrectionary strategy to oust the government by a violent coup and instead embrace the electoral route.

That is, Maduro’s approach to engage in constructive dialogue has been successful: there is peace and tranquillity in Venezuela, and unlike the two previous decades, the bulk of the opposition is not involved in efforts aimed at the violent overthrow of the democratically elected government.

Though the thaw between Venezuela, the US and the right-wing opposition is to be welcomed, the latter two cannot be trusted. The solidarity movement must remain vigilant.

Thankfully, Bolivarian Venezuela is based on Chavez’s civil-military alliance and on participatory democracy that relies on the mobilisation of grassroots organisations.

In his end-of-the-year message, Maduro proudly reported that through democratic elections, 70 per cent of the leaderships of these grassroots mass organisations had been renewed.

Thus Venezuela is not only economically and politically strengthened but has droves of fresh leaders to face the challenges ahead.