The coup in Honduras and the stepping up of a US military presence in Colombia are serious warnings to the masses of Latin America. On top of this the present world economic crisis is having an impact on the Venezuelan economy. All this is posing very sharply the need for a turn to a genuine revolutionary programme on the part of the Bolivarian movement.

Mitsubishi, the Japanese multinational has launched a bosses' lockout in an attempt to smash the workers' union. The Venezuelan government must expropriate the company to be run under workers' and community control! The PSUV must mobilize for the nationalization of MMC!

The Second Latin American Meeting of Worker-Recovered Factories took place on June 25-27. Over two hundred workers gathered at the National Library in Caracas to discuss perspectives for the occupied factories movement internationally. Worker representatives were present from all over the world, including Paraguay, Bolivia, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, Turkey, Iraq and Canada.

One year ago the SIDOR plant was nationalised. Since then there has been ongoing battle between the workers who want to implement genuine workers’ control and those elements who are doing everything possible to make the attempts to build a ”socialist enterprsie” fail. This is part of the general struggle between revolution and reformism within the Venezuelan labour movement.

In a meeting on May 31 over 200 workers decided to take over URAPLAST. This is a factory which manufactures sewage pipes and wiring for homes, and is located in the city of Acarigua, in the state of Portuguesa.

At a recent gathering in the State of Guayana President Chavez announced a series of new nationalisations, but he also stressed the need for workers' control, planning and socialism. What now needs to be done is to act on these words and the only force that can do that is the working class. Otherwise all the good proposals can be buried by the myriad of reformists and bureaucrats who infest the movement.