Communal project finished in Villa de Santa Maria, Cojedes state. Photo: Ciudad Cojedes/file photo.
Caracas (OrinocoTribune.com)—Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro marked the 13th anniversary of Commander Hugo Chávez’s historic “Strike at the Helm” speech on Monday, highlighting the completion of more than 20,000 communal projects nationwide.
Through social media, Maduro recalled that Chávez entrusted him with the most important mission of Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution. “At that crucial moment, he entrusted me with the Revolution’s most important mission, saying ‘Nicolás, I entrust the communes to you as my own life.’ That gesture was an act of profound education and supreme trust, which set the course for the new society,” the president stated.
He emphasized the enduring validity of the dreams, theory, and guidelines that Chávez left behind. The Comandante, Maduro said, planted the idea of People’s Power and citizen empowerment, transforming the innate rebellion against imperialism into a creative and emancipatory force. “That is why his mandate, ‘commune or nothing’, is the unavoidable horizon,” he said.
Chávez’s “Strike at the Helm” speech has been described as the masterful route to building a participatory and protagonist democracy, the 21st-century political model that is burying what Chavez referred to as the “failed and exhausted bourgeois representative democracy.” This mandate was extended by Chávez to his adminsitration in order to deepen Venezuela’s “socialism of the 21st century.”
20,000 communal projects
On Monday, President Maduro also announced the completion of 20,808 projects across the country carried out by Venezuelan communities and youth. He noted that this work is part of the youth and the government’s commitment to consolidate the communal state and respond promptly to the needs of communities.
The president inaugurated the self-government cabinets of the Las 8 Raíces Commune, located in the Los Mecedores sector of the Sucre parish in Caracas. This event is the result of various popular consultations held across the country which seek to promote the active, democratic, and leading participation of people in implementing projects aimed at solving collective problems and ensuring a better quality of life.
Strike at the Helm at Seven: Lessons and Challenges for Venezuela
Maduro reported on the progress of establishing 5,327 self-government cabinets, representing 99.8% of the total. Venezuela has 5,336 communal circuits and 3,652 communes in place as mechanisms to continue strengthening the people’s power. President Maduro emphasized that by 2027, there should be 6,000 communes nationwide.
During the address, President Maduro detailed some of the projects being completed in various parts of the country. These included a robotics workshop inaugurated at the Caracas Cathedral, a space offering training in science and technology to the nation’s new generations as part of a project proposed and approved at the First National Youth Consultation.
Special for Orinoco Tribune by staff
OT/JRE/SL
