The rerun of the election for the governor of the State of Barinas – home state of the late Hugo Chávez – produced an apparently surprising result: the defeat of the PSUV and the victory of the reactionary opposition candidate Sergio Garrido, of the Democratic Union Table (MUD) – the pro-imperialist, coup-plotting opposition that represents the old oligarchy.
For years the massive mobilisation of the Venezuelan masses cast aside the repression of the state apparatus. However, the failure to complete the socialist revolution has created economic chaos. As the Maduro government has attempted to make workers pay for the crisis and the bureaucracy has become bolder in asserting its own interests, it has met the resistance of working-class activists with increasing state repression, arrests, and victimisation.
On 19 April, the Venezuelan People’s Revolutionary Alternative (APR) organised the public launch of its founding congress period. This is an important step forward for the APR, which was established in August last year by socialist and revolutionary organisations, in response to the anti-working class course taken by the Venezuelan government of president Maduro. The congress will discuss the APR’s programme, a political document and its organisational structures.
