By Luis Britto Garcia on August 7, 2021
La Lecheria Venezuela, photo: Bill Hackwell
In 1919, the young José Rafael Pocaterra, imprisoned in the Rotunda for opposing the dictatorship of Juan Vicente Gómez, wrote with pencil stubs two books that are fundamental to understand Venezuela: Memoirs of a Venezuelan in the decadence, and the premonitory novel The House of the Abila Family. The latter tells the story of a family with vast properties. The heirs are incompetents, and leave the management of the estate to a son-in-law, who loads it with fictitious debts and phantom imports. A fire breaks out in a hacienda, and the son-in-law calls a family council: “We are broke! We must liquidate everything! We must surrender without conditions to the creditors! In secret! And without thinking about it! Of course, we will give a big party to hide it”. Only the youngest brother, Juan de Abila, would object that the burning of a few cane planks could not wipe out a fortune like that of the family. The relatives insulted him; the profiteering son-in-law, the administrator, transferred all the assets to his individual patrimony for pittance, and it was up to Juancito to fight against ruin in a distant herd stricken by African horse sickness in whose entrails a lake of black oil gushed forth.
87% of the world’s energy consumption is covered by hydrocarbons. Venezuela is the country with the largest proven oil reserves, with 302.81 billion barrels, 25% of the total. It is followed in decreasing order by Saudi Arabia, Canada, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Russia, Libya, Nigeria, Kazakhstan, and the United States, in a melancholic 12th place, with 36.52 billion, a little more than a tenth of Venezuela’s reserves, insufficient for the world’s largest consumer of fossil energy. OPEC estimated that by 2014 there would be 1.65 trillion barrels on the planet if the production of 83 million barrels per day were maintained, there would only be enough oil left for 54 years. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_proven_oil_reserves). US hydrocarbons will be depleted in one or two decades; already the production costs of fracking are rising to more than eighty dollars per barrel; to remain an industrial power, it depends on our subsoil. Whoever controls our reserves will dominate the world. It is up to us to decide whether it will be Venezuela or the transnational capital to which we give them away.
Up to now, the United States has obtained the vital hydrocarbons by forcing the producers to sell them in exchange for green paper without backing: the so-called petrodollar. China, the world’s leading power, is preparing to replace it with a gold-backed currency. In this regard, we quote again from Victor Cano, 2018 Minister of Ecological Mining Development, who then stated “In area four of the Orinoco Mining Arc alone we are estimating that there are 8,000 tons of inferred gold. We have certified 2,300 tons of those 8,000. That would place us as the second largest gold reserve in the world, but we could be the first”. (https://www.conelmazodando.com.ve/venezuela-podria-tener-la-reserva-de-oro-mas-grande-del-planeta)
It is up to us to decide whether the future world currency depends on our gold, or to hand it over in exchange for the hope of receiving some green paper handout without backing.
Let us abbreviate the catalog of our resources, starting with the hydroelectric energy of Guayana, followed by fresh water, iron, aluminum, coltan, copper, thorium, biodiversity, marine fauna. Let’s move on to the largest of all, the splendid labor force of 14,167,281 people, almost half of the population, of which 6,274,817 are intellectual workers, and 2,267,003, almost one fifth, qualify as professionals, technicians and related workers. They are the source of labor, the origin of all value and wealth. It is up to us to use their creative powers to develop the country, or to bury them in special zones where neither laws nor courts, labor rights nor Venezuelan trade union rights will govern, exploited by transnationals that will take away our resources without paying taxes.
Venezuela is not bankrupt: it is the powers that cannot survive without our resources, nor can they take them away from us by brute force, because that would unleash a world conflict of incalculable consequences. If bombs are not raining on our country, it is due to a tense balance of threats between geopolitical blocs where world hegemony is at stake. With brutal clumsiness, the bloc governed by the United States, instead of reaching an agreement with Venezuela on reasonable, sensible and equitable terms, chose a policy of confrontation that can only widen distances and differences that cannot be solved by direct force, and force our country to strengthen ties with the competing blocs.
So the United States has moved its international alliances in vain, without achieving either the diplomatic isolation of Venezuela, or its expulsion from the UN, or decisive actions or condemnations from the international community against it. It sponsored a puppet government, with no other result than a succession of larcenies and embezzlements that have discredited sponsors and sponsored. It has pushed its military allies to support failed attacks, disarticulated infiltrations, mutinies, farcical invasions, policies that have not been successful, nor seem likely to intensify, given the delicate internal situation in Colombia, whose government is fighting for its own survival.
The blockade and embargoes of Venezuelan assets abroad are nothing more than a clear confession of the failure of all policies of direct aggression and, like them, they force Venezuela to get closer and closer to the group led by China, to increase its trade relations and its public debt with it. Venezuela’s wealth is sufficient and surplus to more than pay off any debt without handing us over to anyone. The only certainty is that the longer the coercive measures of the Northern power last, the more we will distance ourselves from it. In this confrontation, it is our turn to be faithful to a balance that we all have the power to tip in our favor.
Source: Ultimas Noticias translation, Resumen Latinoamericano – English