On 19 April, the Venezuelan People’s Revolutionary Alternative (APR) organised the public launch of its founding congress period. This is an important step forward for the APR, which was established in August last year by socialist and revolutionary organisations, in response to the anti-working class course taken by the Venezuelan government of president Maduro. The congress will discuss the APR’s programme, a political document and its organisational structures.

Alan Woods, editor of marxist.com and leading member of the International Marxist Tendency appeared on a well known Venezuelan programme last week, to discuss Friedrich Engels’ work “The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man.”

In the last few weeks, there has been an escalation in the verbal attacks from the Venezuelan government against the revolutionary left. These attacks, by president Maduro and National Assembly speaker Jorge Rodríguez, have been directed particularly at the APR: the Popular Revolutionary Alternative, a political platform that gathers several parties and organisations to the left of Maduro’s government. Very serious allegations have been made, including the charge that the left opposition to the government is acting in cahoots with US imperialism.

The 6 December National Assembly elections in Venezuela were marked by a low turnout in the midst of imperialist aggression and a deep economic crisis. The US and the EU had already announced in advance they would not recognise the results, but the Guaidó card is exhausted. The PSUV victory announces a deepening of its rightward political shift.

Nineteen years after the approval of the Agricultural Land and Development Law promoted by Hugo Chavez in 2001, land reform remains an unfinished task in Venezuela, with tendencies seeking to reverse Chavez’s expropriations of large non-productive farms. These expropriations initiated the process of land socialisation and its transfer to those who work it.

On the morning of Thursday, 19 November, organisations that make up the People’s Revolutionary Alternative (APR) protested in repudiation of the media censorship of this left-wing coalition, carried out by public and private media during the electoral campaigns for the parliamentary elections on 6 December. This demonstration took place in front of the Venezuelan Television Corporation (VTV), and was attended by numerous candidates and leading figures of the alliance.

The Popular Revolutionary Alternative (APR) have published their slate of nominees for the upcoming Venezuelan elections in December. They have faced intimidation and aggression from the ruling party and authorities, as well as media smears. Defend democratic rights! For a Popular Revolutionary Alternative!

Worker activist Rodney Álvarez has been in jail since 2011 for a crime he did not commit. He is a victim of the corrupt justice system. Our Venezuelan comrades demand his immediate release!

On August 21, the Venezuelan Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ) ruled to depose the current leadership within the Patria Para Todos (PPT), giving them legal control of the party to a minority faction. This is yet another scandalous case of state intervention in the affairs of left wing organisations, which can only be interpreted as a response to the formation of the People's Revolutionary Alternative, which will stand in the December National Assembly election.

After years of arduous and heated discussions, tactical rearrangements, and adjustments in the political activity of the organisations, the Alternativa Popular Revolucionaria (Peoples’ Revolutionary Alternative) has finally been born in Venezuela. It is an alliance of leftist parties and movements that are determined to mark a decisive break from the anti-worker policies of the national government and to offer the country a new working class, peasant, and peoples’ point of reference for a revolutionary solution to the crisis of capitalism.

The leader of the Jóvenes Por Patria (Youth For Fatherland) JPP movement, a member of the Patria Para Todos Fatherland for All (PPT) party and close collaborator of the IMT in Venezuela, Luis Zapata, was arrested on Sunday 12 July at 4:00 PM, by officials of the Bolivarian National Police, near the town of Ospino, Portuguesa State. After 10:00 PM, and after the show of solidarity from a large number of leftist political organisations, the release of the comrade by the Attorney General of the Republic was announced.

The following letter is addressed by the leadership of our Venezuelan comrades to the Venezuelan Communist Party (PCV) and Fatherland for All (PPT) party, calling on them to establish a revolutionary alternative to the PSUV in the upcoming parliamentary elections, given the latter’s policies of privatisation, concessions to the capitalists and repression of workers’ and peasant struggle.

We condemn without reservation the outrageous decision of the UK High Court to deny Venezuela access to 31 tonnes of gold deposited at the Bank of England. This decision can only be described as daylight robbery and an act of piracy.

Documents obtained by The Canary under the Freedom of Information Act reveal the existence of a secretive “Venezuela Reconstruction Office” at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The existence of this office has not been acknowledged publicly and therefore is being kept beyond parliamentary scrutiny.

We said from the very beginning that the Venezuelan opposition and the US administration were responsible for the attempted mercenary coup foiled in Venezuela on 3 May. As days go by, more details emerge which confirm that assessment.