BREAKING: Political coup underway in Venezuela

After years of attempting to oust the late Bolivarian President Hugo Chavez, the foreign owned opposition continue to harass his successor. The model which the Venezuelan insurgents seek to ape is that of Brazil which recently used congressional powers to remove the democratically elected President Dilma Rousseff.

The move will likely fail, but it does demonstrate two important things. First of all, it shows how the right-wing forces in Latin America, so determined to push for US domination of their own countries, will stop at nothing to get their way, up to and including a total disregard for democracy.

Secondly, it demonstrates that under Barack Obama’s incompetent leadership, America can no longer control the destiny of the Latin American countries that Washington used to reign over like obedient right wing clients. Latin America is clearly going its own way from Ecuador to Venezuela to Uruguay. The way Latin America is choose is that of the left.

Even Brazil’s putative western puppet, the unelected Michel Temer hasn’t broken off his relations with the BRICS to which Brazil gives its first letter, in spite of many hopes in the west that he would do.

From Manilla to Caracas, America is losing her erstwhile colonial playground. What’s more is that whilst the current Venezuelan congress has been publically accused of buying votes, the election of President Maduro has been approved as democratically fair by all but the most far-right, agenda observers.

Venezuela has in many ways replaced Cuba as the perennial leftist thorn in America’s near-abroad. There may well be Maidan style unrest in Venezuela as the rightest grow ever more agitated at the national and international popularity of their president. But for the time being it seems that they will not succeed.

If Venezuela was not oil rich, the country would indeed be a less important prize for the neo-colonialists who seek to rape her of her resources, but as it stands things may well get worse before they get better.

I myself am not a leftist, though I’m reasonable enough to understand that in many cases left wing parties have the right idea. In Latin America however, left wing politics mean something rather different than what they mean in Europe. In Latin America, left wing politics have long been the rallying cry of sovereignty against both official and neo-colonialism.

They represent a way of people coming together to express resistance against those who seek to plunder the resources, discard the dignity and ignore the independence of countries who have had a long and complicated colonial relationship with the powers of south-western Europe and more recently with the United States.

By contrast most far-right governments in Latin America have been direct clients of American power. This was no clearer than it was under the fascist dictatorship of Leopoldo Galtieri whose Falklands/Malvinas adventure threatened to drive a wedge through the political love affair between Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.

Interestingly, President Maduro recently created an international peace prize named for Hugo Chavez. The first recipient was Vladimir Putin. It is unlikely this had a long term effect in respect of galvanising the far-right agitation against Maduro, but it is curious nevertheless.