On the 31st January 2025 Maduro’s dictadorship sealed an agreement with Richard Grenell, representative of the new U.S. government of Donald Trump, by which, instead of continuing to exploit venezuelan oil, Trump wll support the dictasdorship. the workers and people of Venezuela together with the peoples of the world we must reject this sell- out and imperialist agreement made by the dictadorship for the benefit of the millonaire owners of the multinationals imperialist.
While the opposition representative of the democratic unity roundtable (MUD) the opposition, María Corina Machado, is silent about the agreement, we denounce the chavismo of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela ( in Spanish, PSUV) and the 99% of the world left, the socialdemocrats, stalinists, former guerrillas and bourgois nationalists who are silent about this agreement because they defend the dictadorship. Enough of chavismo and the traitorous left! From La Marx Venezuela we come denouncing that Maduro and the PSUV is not “socialist”, nor “anti- imperialist”, it is a capitalist dictadorship, and now this Trump-Maduro Agreement confirm it.
We call the workers and the people of Venezuela and the world to unite under the cry of: Down with the Trump- Maduro Agreement! Out with the Dictadorship & Chevron from Venezuela!
By La Marx Internacional and La Marx Venezuela
An imperialist agreement against the people of Venezuela
On Monday January 20, upon assuming his second term, the President of the United States United States, Donald Trump, expressed his commitment to the departure of dictator Nicolás Maduro from power. In response to the question of journalists, the president Republican said that “we’re probably going to stop buying oil from Venezuela. We don’t need it.”
Eleven days then, on Friday, January 31, the Venezuelan dictator received Richard Richard in Caracas Grenell, special envoy of the new government. After this meeting, the Donald Trump’s government, gives a twist to its discourse and through the Office The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) automatically renewed license number 41.
This license, which we will talk about later, allows the oil company Chevron continue to operate in Venezuela. In this way the company it can continue with the five oil projects it has in the country together with Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA).
For Maduro, it is very important that Chevron continues to operate in Venezuela. This oil company it gives the dictatorship hundreds of millions of dollars every year. If Chevron and Repsol left Venezuela by decision of the Trump administration, the blow to the dictatorship and its foreign exchange income from the sale of oil to the world, would be terrible.
The press Venezuelan supporters of the regime, such as Globovisión and El Universal, was delighted, they were celebrating that Trump had automatically renewed the Chevron’s oil license. For the state-owned Venezolana de Televisión (VTV), it is a “historic moment” for “Bolivarian diplomacy”. According to VTV, it is proposed to “resume the dialogue again” and establish a “sheet of route” with a view to an “open” relationship.
Although the renewal is automatic until the month of April, the action takes place within the framework of an agreement where Maduro’s dictatorship unconditionally commits to receive all flights with Venezuelan deportees, and not only receive them but also he is going to send planes to pick them up. In addition, Maduro undertakes to to release, as it has already freed six, the Americans detained in Venezuela. If Maduro does his part, Trump, for his “good behavior,” will give him renews the license on the first day of each month to Chevron.
Nothing good Venezuelans can offer Venezuelans this agreement between the oligarchs of the Maduro’s dictatorship, and the millionaire oligarchs of Texas who run Chevron. As long as these millionaires continue to fatten their wallets with the looting of the Venezuela’s wealth, the Venezuelan people will continue to earn salaries miserable, suffering brutal repression and torture to crush those who oppose the hunger and poverty to which the dictatorship condemns them.
Canceling the extension of the program TPS
There is another element behind this agreement that is also extremely serious; since the U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem overturned the expansion of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) made by his predecessor in the previous government, Alexander Mayorkas, before leaving office.
TPS is a program that was created in 2021 during the Joe Biden administration to protect hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan migrants from deportation in U.S., guaranteeing their legal stay in the country and granting permits for work. By then, they argued that the country was experiencing a “severe humanitarian emergency” generated by the government of Nicolás Maduro. The extension of TPS for 18 months of the previous government guaranteed the stay legal in the country and work permits for some 600,000 Venezuelans.
His cancellation affects migrants who entered from 2023 onwards, according to The Washington Post is about 350,000 Venezuelans (*). Once the TPS only 50 days pass and they can already be captured and deported. As he clarified Department of Homeland Security (DHS) this measure does not affect those who entered designated TPS in 2021 and that they will be protected until end of its date (September 10, 2025).
In 2022, when he was a senator, the now Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, He said in a letter that forcing Venezuelans to return to their country would be “a real death sentence.”
The Trump administration uses as a banner to justify deportations of the members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. But according to a report by NBC News, the Department of Homeland Security has only identified the insignificant Between 100 and 600 migrants with possible connections to the gang Venezuelan.
The U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, referenced this group in an interview with Fox News. “Yesterday I was in New York and the people of this country want this garbage out. They want their communities are safe. It was amazing to see people walking alongside we on the street early in the morning and thank each other,” he said Noem.
If once this order is finalized, the direct consequence will be that Trump begins to rule Venezuelans deported in flood numbers, it will not be a few thousand, there are going to be hundreds of thousands. And he also sends them, as Maduro has offered, on Venezuelan planes. In the face of this fact, which can become a real humanitarian crisis, there is a real complicity of both governments, There are no differences here. Both leaders have agreed on a an action that tramples on the Venezuelan people.
As we can see, the Trump-Maduro agreement not only deepens poverty and inequality capitalist, but promotes the repression of the Venezuelan people. This lays bare the lies of “clowns” like Argentina’s president, Javier Milei, Trump ally, who claims to be in favor of the “freedom” of the people of Venezuela. Thousands of Venezuelans are going to be deported without having committed any crime in the U.S., just because they don’t have their papers in order, because they are, as they say, Trump’s spokesmen, “illegal,” to be repressed and imprisoned for Maduro’s dictatorship.
(*) https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2025/02/02/venezuela-tps-immigration-trump-noem/
The economic sanctions of imperialism
The imperialism and the ruling classes accommodate their policy according to the different moments of the class struggle. When the Venezuelan people turn to to the streets in large mobilizations against the dictatorship, the governments The imperialists claim to “support” their demands, but behind the scenes they agree with the dictatorship trying to stop the revolution of the people.
Such is the case that the sanctions against oil and gas began at one of the highest peaks of the mobilizations: the protests of 2017. These sanctions were carried out by the first government of Donald Trump, in August of 2017, and were sectoral measures that prohibited U.S. banks from buying bonds of the Venezuelan government and its state oil company PDVSA. In turn limited transactions with existing bonds owned by the public sector Venezuelan. That year Venezuela defaulted on its debt payments.
In January of 2019, massive mobilizations were unleashed again against the already consolidated Maduro’s dictatorship. These protests were used by Juan Guaidó to proclaim himself president of the country, while Washington recognized him as interim president. In response, the Trump administration announced sanctions against PDVSA, so any purchase of Venezuelan oil by U.S. entities would have all money deposited into U.S. accounts Blocked. For the first time, the oil exchange between Venezuela and the U.S., a traditional client and payer of the oil company South American that then shipped about 500,000 barrels a day.
To these Sanctions known as “primary” were added to the so-called “sanctions secondary institutions” that vetoed citizens and foreign entities that “materially assist, sponsor or provide financial, material or technological support, or goods or services to the sanctioned person Government of Venezuela” (*). This sanction further complicated PDVSA and led to the country to resort to the black market for oil, trading crude oil with large discounts and tricks such as the use of ghost ships to ensure the sale or barter for goods or hydrocarbon derivatives. It is in this period that the Chinese capitalist dictatorship became the main partner allowing the regime to survive. By 2023, China represented 68% of exports and the United States 23%.
All the Guaidó’s policy and the bourgeois opposition failed, just as it fails in at this moment the politics of María Corina Machado. This is due to the fear that these bourgeois sectors have in developing a forceful mobilization against dictatorship, for fear that it will end up exceeding the limits of capitalism and lead to a workers’ and people’s revolution, which they cannot stop and wear them too. The “pacifist” and “demobilizing” policy of Guaidó helped the dictatorship to overcome the mobilizations, with which the imperialism had to negotiate with the regime.
Thus, on 17 October 2023, at a meeting in Bridgetown, Barbados, the Agreement was signed on the promotion of political rights and electoral guarantees for all Venezuelans, known as the Barbados Agreement, between the government and the opposition of the Unitary Platform of Venezuela. This It had two fundamental points:
1.- The Promotion of political rights and electoral guarantees for the next 2024 presidential election process.
2.- The protection of the vital interests of the nation in relation to the assets of the republic abroad (Citgo’s assets) and the defense of integrity Venezuelan territorial and national sovereignty (Essequibo dispute).
In response to this multilateral commitment, to make progress in the “restoration of The U.S. Department of the Treasury announced the suspension of some sanctions, including oil sanctions. This became known as the license 44 that allowed most U.S. oil companies doing business in Venezuela, as well as authorizing PDVSA to sell its oil in the United States and use its financial system to pay and collect debts. A few days after the agreement, the government of Venezuela granted 30-year licenses to Shell and NGC to produce gas off the Venezuelan coast.
But the reality is that it was a maneuver to deepen the business of the Yankee and European oil companies in Venezuela, because the (Biden) government of The United States knew perfectly well that it was impossible for the United States to corroded and discredited dictatorship of Maduro, granted clean elections or a democratic opening.
It is a Starting from the Barbados Agreement that the “oligarchy” re-entered with force Texas oil company,” to recover lost ground and save the Biden administration. This was confirmed by the president of the Association Latin American Association of Oil Entrepreneurs of Texas (ALEP), Alejandro Terán, declaring to a news agency that “The coming winter of 2024 may therefore become the winter of 1971, when the Americans really had a very cold Christmas. The increase in consumption of Texas and the state apparatus with a view to elections at the end of the year. This year, puts the U.S. in an economic boom and needs to cover its quota oil company.” And in that sense “we are going to make an investment in more than 16,000 oil wells so that in the next three years Venezuela reaches production of 3,250,000 bpd, thus recovering 80% of its capacity” (**).
(*) https://ve.usembassy.gov/es/orden-ejecutiva-bloqueo-de-bienes-del-gobierno-de-venezuela/
(**) https://www.eluniversal.com/economia/184055/empresarios-petroleros-de-texas-firmaron-acuerdo-con-pdvsa-para-incrementar-produccion
The lucrative benefits of the License 41
On 18 December April 2024 license 44 expires and the Biden administration does not allow its renewal, because there was no progress in the “democratic restoration” agreed in Barbados. In this way, it reinstated sanctions on oil and gas (suspended for six months). Despite the expiration of License 44, the Chevron, the main oil company operating in the country, can continue to working for a while longer, as it does so under another authorization, the License 41 (granted in November 2022 and renewed every 6 months), of the that the Treasury Department did not provide specific statements about its future.
The License 41 states that Chevron is prohibited from paying royalties and taxes to the government of Venezuela, however the Maduro government receives benefits Millionaires. The reason this happens is because tax payments and royalties are not made by Chevron but by the joint ventures in which it is associated with PDVSA. Joint venture moves operation to Chevron, Chevron exports oil to obtain an oil income that is then transferred to the company and this is the one that pays the royalties and extraction taxes.
These operations are under the protection of the Anti-Blockade Law approved in 2020 by the Constituent Assembly. Let us clarify that this body is a “parallel parliament” that responds completely to Chavismo and that was created in 2017 to replace the National Assembly, at which time it was he implants the dictatorship. The Anti-Blockade Law concentrates powers in the presidency and has as fundamental aspects the possibility of disapplying other laws and conduct transactions confidentially. In this way, the Chevron’s contracts are entered into under this confidentiality and by therefore, all files are confidential and there is no transparency in the operations.
All of this under the complicity of the U.S. government, since from the beginning, the Joe Biden’s administration, considered the Constituent Assembly, which approved the Anti-Blockade Law, as “the illegitimate product of an irregular process, which was conceived by Maduro’s dictatorship to advance with its subjugation of democracy” (*).
The License 41 is not a minor permit. By August 2024, exports of oil prices reached their highest level in more than 4 years. PDVSA and joint ventures with Chevron and Spain’s Repsol, exported an average of almost 885,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil and fuel, up 50% from the month and 62% above the same month in 2023, according to data based on the tanker movements (**).
The Chevron’s crude oil exports to its own U.S. refineries, and Other customers reached 227,000 bpd, the second-highest monthly average of 2024. Repsol, for its part, sent about 86,000 bpd to the United States and Europe, down from 102,000 bpd in July, the data showed. But in August of 2024, Spanish imports of Venezuelan oil had already exceeded the total for 2023, according to data published by the Ministry of Energy and Environment Spanish atmosphere All this thanks to the blessed License 41!
(*) https://cl.usembassy.gov/es/asamblea-nacional-constituyente-ilegitima-de-venezuela/
(**) https://www.lanacion.com.ar/agencias/exportaciones-petroleras-de-venezuela-suben-en-agosto-a-maximo-de-cuatro-anos-nid05092024/
Chevron: fuel for the dictatorship
In the recent history of the United States the governments of Democrats are exchanged and Republicans. The former with a “progressive” discourse and the seconds with a “reactionary” speech, seeming, from the words, to have opposing interests. But speeches are one thing and another thing It is objective reality: that which is observed in this complex network of economic and trade agreements, mainly around the activity oil company that constitutes more than 90% of Venezuela’s revenues. In this In reality, both sectors support the continuous looting of the Venezuelan country and both they are just as benevolent with Maduro’s dictatorship. The case of Chevron is the ABC of this action.
During the government of Hugo Chávez, oil companies were forced to migrate to a system of joint ventures, in which they could continue to operate in the country but protected by a majority shareholding of PDVSA. Chevron, British Petroleum, Statoil and Total agreed to the terms while that Conoco and Exxon Movil did not do so and as a result of this they were expropriated and withdrew from Venezuela.
In that At that time, PDVSA became the largest shareholder, with 60 percent, of the largest shareholder. all the projects of Chevron, a company that has been operating in Venezuela for 101 years (since 1923). They also demanded that they finance the state part of the PDVSA. But as international prices were still very high, Chevron agreed and continued in Venezuela.
In 2017 the Trump government sanctions mentioned above have begun previously and the company entered a period of stagnation in which it reduced drastically his operations, and devoted himself to the maintenance of the fields oil tankers and their own machinery.
Then came Joe Biden’s government at the same time as the War of Arms was unleashed. Ukraine. In response to the invasion, the U.S. government announced the ban on the import of Russian petroleum and refined products in U.S. ports and territories. On the measure, Biden declared that “This it is a step we are taking to inflict more pain on Putin. But there will also be costs here in the United States. Defending freedom is going to cost and it will cost us to defend freedom. we also in the United States” (*). And in a statement, the White House said that “Last year, the United States imported about 700,000 barrels per day of crude oil and refined petroleum products from Russia; this measure will deprive Russia of billions of dollars in revenue annually coming from U.S. consumers and drivers.” (**)
But the The new government feared the interruption of the world’s oil supply, with the result that the which took a lightning turn: at the same time that it sanctioned Russian oil the Biden administration was once again looking at Venezuelan crude oil with renewed interest. Herself he exchanged one oil-rich dictator for another.
Thus, in November 2022, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) granted Chevron a 6-month license, LG41, so that it could export crude oil only to the U.S., although it did not allow it to drill new wells. In a study of this disastrous license, a delivery of the management of primary activities to the transnational, including the oil production and marketing; this violates the Constitution and the Organic Law of Hydrocarbons (***). Despite the fact that anti-imperialist rhetoric, Maduro’s government was a direct participant in this negotiation.
This policy of “energy pragmatism” allowed Chevron to negotiate a new contract with PDVSA from which he was able to take full control of the operations of the company relegating the state-owned company. It is estimated that the company joint venture that Chevron has with the state-owned Petroleos de Venezuela SA. generates nearly one-third of the government’s total oil revenues, providing a financial support that the dictatorship desperately needs. Mounted on the head of such a lucrative business Chevron CEO Mike Wirth, declared on behalf of the oil company that “we continue to being apolitical in Venezuela and in other countries.”
This new “favors” in the endless history of the looting of Venezuela was presented to the world by the Biden administration under the excuse of the restart of the dialogue between the government of Nicolás Maduro and the opposition.
On 20 December September 2024 a hearing was held in the U.S. Congress with the objective of reviewing Chevron’s business licenses in Venezuela, entitled “Maduro stole the elections again: the answer to fraud in Venezuela”. In In this hearing, Republican legislator María Elvira Salazar denounced the Biden administration’s actions confronting the deputy assistant secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Kevin Sullivan. At one point the lawmaker asks him “Why did you, the State Department, renew Chevron’s license 33 days after Maduro did everything he had done. you described? There has to be a reason. Did the White House pressure him? Did they call and say, hey, we need free, cheap oil?” (****). In a technical table located behind Salazar showed the production of barrels of Chevron in Venezuela, it was established that in two years of license the company it had earned 4,999,680,000 million dollars.
In the currently the state-owned PDVSA alone produces just under half of the Venezuelan oil, the other half is concentrated in three large companies that are Chevron, China’s state-owned CNPC and the Russian state. Then there is a small participation of European companies such as Repsol. Chevron accounts for nearly a quarter of Chevron’s production crude oil in Venezuela.
When Chávez came to power Venezuela produced 3.4 million barrels per day. For at the time the sanctions were imposed (2017) it produced 1.3 million, which shows that at the time of the highest oil profits in history recently, and without sanctions, the management of the “Socialism of the Century” XXI” did not make investments in the sector, on the contrary, it destroyed it systematically. Then production fell at its worst with 500,000 barrels per day and after the pandemic it had a recovery going to 850,000 barrels. In recent years, production has risen by about 160,000 barrels, of that total, 80% is from Chevron, meaning an increase in the 100% production for the American multinational.
Despite the fact that the continuous ups and downs, profits and looting of Chevron continue sustaining in Venezuela, being a clear example of the hypocrisy of the discourses of the Maduro government and of Yankee imperialism. What’s behind it circus is a great agreement on the part of both countries to sustain a very lucrative capitalist business above all else. The U.S. only cares about stability and social policy of the country in the sense that it allows it to continue plundering its Resources. He does everything possible to support the Maduro government regardless of human rights violations, because he knows that, ultimately, his The iron control of the working class is the guarantee of its super-exploitation. Something that perhaps a hypothetical government of the Opposition Unity Roundtable would not can guarantee. And vice versa, Maduro’s government does not confront the Yankee multinationals because it depends on their investments.
Both governments sustain each other under a curtain of rhetorical theatricality that present us as a battle of left vs right, of socialism vs capitalism. But reality shows us something else, that on the one hand it is finds the world’s greatest imperialist and capitalist power supporting a dictatorial government and lackey at its service, representative of a capitalism semi-colonial and completely dependent; on the other side are the popular majorities strangled by the dictatorship, struggling to take a little of food to the table.
(*) https://econojournal.com.ar/2022/03/el-juego-a-dos-bandas-de-estados-unidos-prohibe-las-importaciones-de-crudo-ruso-mientras-se-acerca-a-venezuela-por-petroleo/
(**) https://cl.usembassy.gov/es/ficha-informativa-estados-unidos-prohibe-la-importacion-de-petroleo-gas-natural-licuado-y-carbon-de-rusia/
(***) https://www.elnacional.com/opinion/la-licencia-n-41-a-chevron-es-la-privatizacion-disfrazada-de-pdvsa/
(****) https://www.infobae.com/estados-unidos/2024/09/20/fuerte-debate-en-el-congreso-de-estados-unidos-por-los-negocios-petroleros-de-chevron-con-la-dictadura-de-maduro/
The Texas Oil Bourgeoisie
The Association Latin American Association of Oil Entrepreneurs in Texas (ALEP), an organization that brings together Latin American investors in the oil and gas sector of Texas anticipated Donald Trump’s second term to call for withdrawal of the economic sanctions imposed on Venezuela and Cuba. In the letter addressed to the president-elect they inform him that “the sanctions that have been imposed on countries such as Venezuela and Cuba have allowed organizations such as the BRICS, China, India, Russia among others take control of the matters premiums from these countries and have become major buyers of such materials.” And it continues saying that “The political problems of each country are of each country, we need to recover the oil business with Venezuela, with whom We have a relationship of more than 12 years.” (…) I think we should get closer to the government of Venezuela to its elected president Nicolás Maduro and create a energy agreement that allows the return of Venezuelan immigration, and the take back from our natural market, otherwise the Asian tigers They will do the same and we may lose that important energy supplier.” (*)
As we can see The U.S. oil bourgeoisie is not interested in them being violated systematically human rights, the important thing is to sustain business millionaires at the expense of the looting of Venezuela. Democrats or Republicans, no the clothing matters, this oil oligarchy had already been doing the same with the Biden administration, demanding that he reverse sanctions to “make a significant investment in more than 16,000 oil wells so that in the next few years three years ago Venezuela reached production of 3,250,000 bpd, thus recovering the 80% of its capacity” (**). That is why they did not have any problems in issue a statement addressed to Nicolás Maduro to congratulate him on the victory in the elections.
The Director General and Spokesperson of ALEP, Alejandro Terán Martínez, in a interview for the Sputnik network leaves us in enlightening words the real reasons why they are so interested in the oil business in the South American country. According to Martínez “The new Trump administration, with a Chris Wright [new Secretary of Energy] in power, is going to hit the market a balance that it needs, because the cost of barrel production in Texas is $45 and the cost of production in Venezuela is 7. So, you have a difference of more than $30 per barrel, but other than that, four days strategically placed from the gulf of Mexico and with a Venezuelan infrastructure of weight in the port of Galveston, which is capable of carrying up to $3 million a day of petroleum. So, that infrastructure, that tailor-made suit, as you put it whatever you want to call, was made exclusively for Texas. Disassemble that’s 10 years and almost 100 million dollars. There is no way to do it.” (***)
The Column of Venezuela’s low “production costs,” and which Terán prefers not naming, is a regime of brutal exploitation impossible to apply in U.S. soil, and is also completely secured by a control iron of the working class by a bloody dictatorship. It’s the business perfect for Texas oilmen and imperialism. While the left world (as well as the bourgeois media) lies by saying that Venezuela is “socialist” and “anti-imperialist”, the reality is that the bourgeoisie itself The Texan imperialist recognizes that Maduro’s dictatorship has been too much in extracting the highest rate of surplus value from the workers of the oil industry. All this, of course, on the basis of bestial repression, massacres, torture and the forced exile of millions of Venezuelans.
(*) https://observatorio.gob.ve/petroleros-de-texas-aconsejan-a-trump-levantar-sanciones-contra-venezuela-y-cuba/
(**) https://www.eluniversal.com/economia/184055/empresarios-petroleros-de-texas-firmaron-acuerdo-con-pdvsa-para-incrementar-produccion
(***) https://www.aporrea.org/venezuelaexterior/n398759.html
China and Russia: junior partners in looting imperialist
The capitalist dictatorships in China and Russia have advanced in business deals. exploitation, loans and investments in Venezuela, which are presented by the vast majority of the left as “anti-imperialist” acts of rebellion against the United States. But the reality is far from this, one could say which is diametrically opposed.
The ties that unite the dictatorial regimes of Russia and China with the dictatorship of Venezuela, are not ideological or humanistic. Nor are they strategic-military (due to its proximity to the US). These are lobbies used by “propagandists” of the Third World War”, the traitorous left that supports dictatorships and the spokesmen of the bourgeoisie and imperialism.
Do the Putin’s dictatorships or Xi Jinping have proposed to Maduro that he break relations with the U.S.? Have they proposed that he tear up the Texas and Chevron agreements? Nothing of the sort. The reality is that China and Russia have intervened as a junior partners of imperialism, advancing in exploitative businesses. They support the dictatorship to benefit themselves, just as the bourgeoisie does of Texas, of the high rate of exploitation. The intervention of these dictatorships it is at the service of consolidating Venezuelan capitalism by making up for the shortcomings loans, infrastructure, or business that you need to survive the continuous ups and downs of imperialism.
Nor the Xi Jinping’s intervention, nor Putin’s was at the service of modifying the social structure of Venezuela, to favor the poor people, nor to confront to U.S. imperialism Like Yankee imperialism, these governments scoundrels are dedicated to plundering Venezuela’s natural resources and consolidating its status as a semi-colony, either by direct means of exploitation or by means of indirect through credits and investments.
To have one idea, by 2019, different sources assured that Venezuela had financial commitments to both dictatorships totaling 45,000 million dollars: 40,000 million to the Asian country and 5,000 million to the Kremlin. Other Sources indicated that the sum was higher and that it was over 67,000 millions. China and Russia want to keep Maduro in power, not only to be able to continue plundering the resources of the Caribbean country, but to be able to guarantee the payment of these commitments.
In what the bourgeois press calls “investments” we see looting. “progressive” or “anti-imperialist” is to encourage Chinese and Russian plunder because it is in the “detriment” of the United States? Is it the poor people of Venezuela who win three measly dollars a month does not suffer the consequences of raffling off the country to these dictatorships just as rogue as Maduro’s dictatorship? It is clear that for the vast majority of the world left, the working people of Venezuela do not It has no value, it is a secondary actor, a mere piece on a chessboard. world chess.
The debt with the capitalist dictatorship China
Between 2003 and 2017, Venezuela agreed with China on 17 projects that accounted for a investment of 22,000 million dollars (*). These projects were intended to the construction of trains, housing, distribution of drinking water, carrying out a satellite to space, rice processing, power plants, a refinery, an aqueduct, etc. All these projects were unsuccessful and unfinished, in at best, operating at less than half capacity. The overprice, incapacity, corruption and neglect in each of these projects has been so crazy that, to cite one example, the Simon satellite Bolívar (VENESAT-1) ended up literally lost in space.
In addition between 2008 and 2015, China has invested some 59,000 million dollars in oil-backed loans, becoming the largest creditor of Venezuela. To give you an idea, China invested twice as much in this country as it did invested in Brazil (32,000 million), according to 2023 data from the Center for Inter-American Dialogue.
This loan was squandered on pharaonic railway projects (in association with the Chinese company Railway Engineering Corporation), which were never finished and that today are ruins. At present, the debt with China is calculated around 15,000 million dollars, a commitment that the Venezuelan State it continues to pay with crude oil.
After that the U.S. imposed sanctions against Venezuela in 2019, the Chinese government took steps to reduce the risk to which their companies were exposed—especially of those that operate globally such as China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC)—, since they could be harmed. “So, China He tried to continue buying Venezuelan oil, but in a disguised way. Used independent companies that brought crude oil to and from the coast of Malaysia they transferred it to another ship before importing it into China.” (**)
According to the Reuters agency, after the introduction of sanctions in 2019, there were private companies and refiners that were dedicated to buying Venezuelan oil that they mixed and recertified to pass it off as Malaysian at the time of export it to China. “It has been a Ongoing help. China’s purchase of oil has given some liquidity to the Maduro regime, helping to ensure that it has some money.” (**)
And there is no we must stop pointing out that China is a supplier, like Russia, of weapons. Material that is not used to defend the national territory, but is centrally used in the repression and control of demonstrations. How for example, those known by the demonstrators as “hippos”, Chinese-made VN-4 light armored vehicles used by the Guard Bolivarian National Orchestra.
Also provides surveillance and cybersecurity technology that is used by the Maduro’s dictatorship to control opponents. Such as the “carnet de la patria”, which according to investigations by different media is part of information from numerous public institutions (Electoral Registry, tax office), as well as data on the ownership of bank accounts of the State, social media accounts and information on political affiliation.
(*) https://www.connectas.org/especiales/venezuela-alianza-fallida-china/
(**) https://www.bbc.com/mundo/articles/cewlv9xx0evo
Russia’s role
Mid-Rise In 2000 and during the government of Hugo Chávez, Venezuela became the main buyer of Russian weapons in Latin America. The bulk of these purchases took place between 2005 and 2013. By that year, they had already been fulfilled military contracts for 11 billion dollars and were about to be others for 2 billion will be completed, according to information published by the Russian state corporation Rostec.
The Economic cooperation also extended to the agro-industrial and pharmaceutical fields. with agreements for the supply of wheat and medicines in response to the Venezuelan humanitarian crisis. Russian companies found in Venezuela a market for these products, mitigating the effects of economic sanctions imposed by the United States and the European Union on both countries.
In what with regard to the main raw material that concerns us for this report, the Russia has helped PDVSA keep its crude oil production afloat in the through sanctions, but this aid has not been free of charge or for Humanitarian.
In the 2014, when the Venezuelan economy was beginning to stagnate, the oil company Russia’s state-owned Rosneft gave PDVSA loans and credits worth about 6,500 million dollars, and, two years later, he gave him another 1,500 million. The The Venezuelan government promised to pay off the debt by sending crude oil to Russia also offered him 49.9% of Citgo, the company oil refiner that Venezuela has in the United States.
After the sanctions imposed by Washington against Maduro’s government in 2019, Rosneft became one of the main marketing channels for the Venezuelan crude oil sanctioned: up to 30% (Reuters agency).
For these reasons, operations, a branch of Rosneft that maintained operations in the foreign was sanctioned by the U.S. On March 28, 2020, the oil company announces the cessation of activity in Venezuela. On the same day, the Heritage Agency The Russian Federal (Rosimuschestvo) created the Roszarubezhneft oil company, which the following month was acquired by the Russian private security company RN-Okhrana-Ryazan. Rosneft transferred its operations to the newly created Roszarubezhneft to avoid sanctions and to be able to continue operating in Venezuela.
The five joint ventures in Venezuela in which Roszarubezhneft participates produce about 125,000 barrels of crude oil per day (bpd), and employs around 200 workers. The which is equivalent to 16% of the 788,000 bpd that Venezuela produced in February 2019. 2022. In this way, Putin consolidates himself as Chevron’s junior partner in the exploitation of Venezuela, as do Chinese companies, which act as U.S. junior partners cooperating in the depredation of PDVSA and the natives of Venezuela.
In the 2020, according to OPEC data, Venezuela produced 660,000 barrels of oil Daily. Of that total, PDVSA barely produced 105,000 with its own effort barrels. The rest of the barrels came out service contracts, 106,800 and joint ventures, 448,000 barrels per day.
Both in service contracts as in joint ventures PDVSA is a partner Majority. But it is private companies, such as Rosneft and Chevron, that they were – and are currently carrying out – the operations, since the diminished PDVSA left all activity in the hands of multinationals. By 2020 PDVSA contributed only 16% of production and multinationals and contracts services 84%.
Down with the Trump-Maduro agreement!
It is because all this that we have explained that the agreement, sealed between Grenell and Maduro on January 31, 2025, seeks to sustain the dictatorship. Donald Trump Doesn’t Act only by defending the businesses of Chevron and the Texas bourgeoisie, does it act, mainly, as the head of world capitalism, defending profits and interests of all the companies and capitalist groups that intervene in Venezuela. Putin and Xi Jinping will undoubtedly welcome this agreement that allows capitalist vampires to continue sucking up Venezuelan wealth.
We have Ahead is the task of facing this agreement. The first thing we need to do is to denounce it before all forums, assemblies and events of the working class and the people of Venezuela and the world. Defeating this agreement not only implies the mobilization and the struggle against the dictatorship, a task that we have been carrying out Not only to go forward since always, but also to turn our backs on the social, union and popular that have been support for Chavismo. These organizations, many of which claim to be “socialist”, “Anti-imperialists” or “Marxists” are silent about the agreement Trump-Maduro. They cannot report it because if they do they are exposed as traitors who have lied to the people for all these years.
From La Marx-Venezuela and La Marx Internacional we call for the regrouping of revolutionaries with the objective of confronting the Trump-Maduro agreement, denouncing it and beginning to to build a revolutionary organization capable of leading the struggle against the dictatorship to the end. The workers and people of Venezuela together with the Peoples and workers of the whole world must reject this agreement A sell-out and imperialist dictatorship made by the dictatorship for the benefit of the owners millionaires of the imperialist multinationals, in that struggle we will go building a new leadership of the workers and the people who struggle to impose a workers’ and people’s government in Venezuela as part of the of the struggle for global socialism.
Source By https://www.revolucion.org.es
