The main panel at the PCV grassroots congress organized this Sunday, May 21, in Caracas, Venezuela. Photo: Twitter/@PCV_Patriotico.
This Sunday, a dissident faction of the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV) held a grassroots congress in Caracas, creating controversy within the PCV. While formal leaders stated that this congress intended to assault the political party, others opposed the position of party leaders.
The leadership of the PCV, represented by the general secretary of the Central Committee, Oscar Figuera, claimed that the Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) wants to “assault” the PCV to “subordinate it to the interests of the government of Nicolás Maduro.”
“The PSUV leadership wants to usurp the legal personality of the Communist Party of Venezuela. They want to put their hand on the PCV’s capacity for action and neutralize its role in the country’s social struggles,” Figuera said in an interview. He did not clarify that the PCV’s role in social movements in Venezuela is marginal and has been strongly affected by the party’s leadership taking an opposition stance.
#ReporteVTV🗣️| En el Teatro Principal Bolívar, en Caracas, se desarrolló el Congreso Extraordinario de Bases del Partido Comunista de Venezuela (PCV), donde los militantes rechazan las cúpulas que se oponen a las políticas del Estado.
Reportó: Sasha Zapata#UnidosSomosMejores pic.twitter.com/ilCNyPZtUH
— VTV CANAL 8 (@VTVcanal8) May 21, 2023
Given the PCV’s opposition position, participants in the controversial congress organized by PCV alternative groups stated they reject the party leadership, which opposes the Venezuelan government’s policies.
“We want to rescue the party’s acronym from the leadership that divorced itself from its base, from the revolutionary line of the left and repositioned the party to the right,” said congress leader Darío Fermín during the event.
Likewise, he confirmed his support for the revolutionary government led by President Nicolás Maduro and rejected the PCV’s current political bureau.
Who are the dissident leaders?
Seven people presided over the PCV Extraordinary Congress of Grassroots. One by one, they were accused by the PCV leadership of being Venezuelan state officials and PSUV militants. Below we include the PCV Central Committee description of the movement’s most visible leaders along with available online information:
Griseldis Herrera: National Electoral Council (CNE) official on secondment to the Monagas governorate, providing services as a legal consultant. According to PCV Central Committee, she is also a PSUV militant. She is a militant of the Gustavo Machado cell of the PCV and the Clara Zetkin Women’s Front, as well as a member of the Monagas delegation and the National Patriotic PCV Movement.
Jorge Rodríguez (PSUV) to Oscar Figuera (PCV): You Can’t be Leftist and Agree with Elliott Abrams
Johan Coraspe: PSUV militant and official at the Ministry of Communes. According to the PCV, he also works for the CNE as coordinator of the electoral center in the Altos de los Godos Parish, Maturín, Monagas state. Coraspe was identified as a PCV member on April 26 in La Nación’s announcement of the organization of the now-controversial congress.
Robinson García: Member and councilor of the Somos Venezuela political movement, affiliated with PSUV, in the Obispos municipality of Barinas state. Past Instagram and Twitter posts show Garcia as a PCV candidate for the Obispo municipality in 2017. A news piece by PCV Tribuna Popular from October 2018 describes him as a peasant leader and PCV member.
Carlos Figueroa: Popular Political Unity 89 (UPP89) party candidate in the 2021 regional elections. Criticism against the Venezuelan government and the UPP89 can be seen on his Instagram account. On right-wing outlet Infobae, Figueroa is mentioned in February, labeling himself as a PCV coordinator in Miranda state. However, the statement was rejected by PCV leadership.
Zoilo Arosteguí: He belonged to the team of Raúl Brazón, former PSUV mayor of Ezequiel Zamora Municipality, Monagas state. Argentinian website Que Paso specifically names Arosteguí as Raúl Brazón’s chauffeur and a PSUV militant. He is a political coordinator of the PSUV regional organization in Monagas. In February, the Monagas state governorship published a news piece about PCV bases supporting Nicolás Maduro’s government, naming Zoilo Arosteguí. His name appears in Supreme Court documentation as an individual suing the Nation Institute for Lands (INTI) in 2008. Que Paso indicates that Arosteguí may have been rejected by the PCV due to alleged misogynistic behavior against a regional PCV leader.
Henry Parra: Expelled from the PCV in 2021 after publicly supporting PSUV member Freddy Bernal’s candidacy for governor of Táchira state, which was outside of the electoral alliance policy approved by PCV’s Congress. On Freddy Bernal’s official website, a post from 2021 can be found with Henry Parra’s coherent position in support of Bernal’s candidacy.
Sixto Rodríguez: He left the PCV over a decade ago./ A 2010 post by Mi Parroquia Full Blog reports that, as PCV regional legislator, Rodríguez worked with PSUV regional legislators in a proceeding to form the Carabobo state parliament board.
What is happening in the PCV?
Amid the controversy, sociologist and analyst Franco Vielma explained that the PCV’s internal division began three years ago when the leadership went over to the “opposition, practically without consultation.” Vielma added that the PCV leadership bureau does not consult its base on each decision.
“It is not true that what is said below emerges at the top. If that were the case, there would be the mobility of cadres to the leadership… Therein lies the fault of origin of what is happening in the PCV,” Vielma wrote on social media.
He also stated that the PCV leadership in Caracas is one thing, and the militants in the regions and interior of Venezuela are another, alleging that they have different realities.
Aunque estos dirigentes y militantes tenían molestias y críticas al gobierno nacional, una cosa era la crítica y otra era estar en la oposición, porque eso implicaba cambios en sus condiciones para el trabajo e incluso en ciertas condiciones de vida para lo cotidiano.
— FRANCO VIELMA (@franco_vielma) May 21, 2023
Vielma explained that many PCV members in the regions have felt resentful for the last three years, seeing that the PCV became the “red opposition.” This caused “the mutilation of their aspirations and conditions for their political work.”
“Although these leaders and party members had discomfort and criticisms of the national government, criticism was one thing and being in the opposition was another. As that implied changes in their working conditions and even in certain daily life conditions,” Vielma added.
According to the report, the PCV Central Committee’s new stand generated frustration “because a feeling that there is no future for PCV was imposed.” In addition, the “Figuera line” hardened, exacerbating the “immobility” in the regional and municipal leaderships.
For many Venezuelan communists, not all of them being PCV members, the PCV Central Committee’s position does not represent Marxist-Leninist positions, tending to favor imperialist narratives against the Bolivarian Revolution from an ultra-left perspective similar to those alleged to Leon Trotsky.
Despite the differences of opinion among communists regarding the positions taken by the PCV Central Committee, many see this move as an anti-democratic and unnecessary step to replicate initiatives previously used by other opposition parties such as Homeland for All (PPT), Democratic Action (AD) and Justice First (PJ), among other actions that have factionalized differences within those parties with results that fail to elevate Venezuela’s political debate.
Violation of PCV charter
In an interview with Radio del Sur, Griseldis Herrera explained that “the decision corresponds to the fact that on November 22, 2022, the questioned leadership convened in an irritating manner and systematically violated the statutes and guiding principles of the PCV… leaving the bases outside the vote and preventing the participation of the bases and the majorities in the election of its authorities.”
“In that illegitimate Congress, the same political bureau was ratified for the 27th time, reelected with the participation of only 89 delegates who do not represent the bases of the PCV qualitatively nor quantitatively,” she stated.
“We are here today,” said Herrera, “ignoring the political line decided in that 27th Congress in November, which proposes the dissociation of the PCV and the cessation of accompaniment to the Venezuelan revolution,” so that now, the bureau is seen flirting with the imperialist right.
“We are even ignoring the convening of that Congress, and therefore, all the decisions that were made there and the election of authorities that today hold the party’s leadership,” she stated.
(RedRadioVE) by José Manuel Blanco Díaz, with Orinoco Tribune content
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/JRE/SF
bla 5.24.23 14:15 EST
