Dear Venezuelan People,

Thirty years after the defeat of Allende’s government and Popular Unity in Chile, the first socialist government of the region, Venezuela welcomed me as my third homeland. Cuba, my second homeland, had received me with open arms to shelter me from the persecution of Pinochet’s dictatorship.

In Venezuela, joined to Hugo Chávez, I saw my hopes reborn and I received immense love from many of you who thanked me for accompanying your president in the exciting struggle to build a homeland free and sovereign, fraternal and solidarian, especially with the poorest inside and outside the country.

Today, the continuity of the process is threatened. That is what we should all see with great clarity. There are many weaknesses that must be overcome. There are many errors that must be rectified. There are many offended to whom amends must be made. But that should not prevent us from all joining in this wonderful project that unites us more than any differences, in order to achieve the victory of those candidates in each place that will assure the continuation of this project.

I hope with all my heart that in the coming election the Venezuelan people will not make the same errors that we Chileans made. In our homeland, while the conservative forces became unified to defeat Allende, the progressive forces and the left were divided.

I also hope that the progressive sectors and the left of the world understand what is at stake today in this country and that they form an international protective cordon around this process.

Venezuela should continue being a torch that illuminates the road!

Venezuela should continues building the hopes of so many men and women inside and outside of its frontiers who struggle for a better world!

Marta Harnecker

Marta Harnecker is a sociologist, political scientist, journalist and activist. After studying with Louis Althusser in Paris she returned to her native Chile, but was forced into exile following the military coup against Salvador Allende’s government. In Cuba she ran the research institute Memoria Popular Latinoamerica (MEPLA) and continues to write. She has published over 60 books to date, from her classic The Basic Concepts of Historical Materialism to the more recent The Left after Seattle. An ardent defender of the Bolivarian revolution, Harnecker’s most recent books are Hugo Chávez Frias: un hombre, un pueblo; Venezuela: Militares junto al pueblo and Venezuela: una revolución sui generis. [Source: Zed Books, publisher of Rebuilding the Left (London, 2007)]