Beneficiaries of Venezuelan Missions March Against Threats by Opposition Governor-Elect

Friday, November 28^th,
2008 (Prensa Web YVKE, ABN) — Beneficiaries, teachers, adults, disabled
people, students and workers came out on Friday to defend the social missions
and programs of the national government in the face of threats to close them
down by the new governor-elect of the state of Miranda, Henrique Capriles
Radonski.

The action involved a
concentration in the entrance of the offices of Invetep, the technological arm
of the [state oil company] PDVSA, from which they marched through Avenida
Bicentenario de Los Teques
to the Plaza Bolivar of the capital in Miranda.

The march was lead by Mayor-Elect
of Guaicaipuro Municipality Alirio Mendoza, who joined with the people
demanding respect for the spaces won by the revolution. “We are here today
supporting the people in defense of their constitucional rights. We can not
allow the representative of capitalism, of fascism to violently sieze the
spaces that we have won with struggle and revolutionary committment,” the local
oficial said.

Mendoza
commented, as President Chavez said, that we’ll have to watch Capriles
Radonski: “From the mayor’s office we will be guarantors that in Guaicaipuro
all the missions will continue to benefit the people. We will work directly
with the national government and we will be alert to attacks that could come
from the opposition.”

He pointed out that Miranda is not only the metropolitan area, there are
also 15 municipalities and six seats in the Legislative Council that belong to
the Bolivarian Revolution: “We will continue fighting, Miranda continues to be
rojo rojito (really red), as the thousands of people that are here supporting
the government and its proposals show.”

Among those present were the
municipal coordinator in Guaicaipuro of Misión Ribas, Miriam Castellanos, who
denounced that the violent closure of public spaces where students receive
classes had begun since last Tuesday. “In the auditorium of the Miranda Police,
where classes were given to different students, including police functionaries,
groups from Justice First [Primero Justicia – Radonski’s political party], who
identified themselves as members of the new government, forced our students and
participants to abandon the classrooms.”

Enrique Briceño, a student in his seventh
semester of Social Communication in the Misión Sucre, said, “We can not allow
the spaces won by the revolution to be snatched away. We respect your victory
(of the opposition), as winner of the elections, but you cannot threaten our
missions of the people.”

During the march hundreds of people
joined from different parts of Miranda to support the initiative of the
participants Misión Ribas and Sucre.

Elena Istúriz, a spokesperson for the community council of Cartanal, in
Independencia de los Valles del Tuy Municipality, said that they would remain
in the streets until the new governor understands that the missions belong to
the people. “President Chavez created these missions for the people, but the
capitalists don’t understand this, they don’t know the people or their needs.
But we will continue here struggling because we deserve respect and because we
will not allow them to take away something that is beneficial for the poor,”
she stressed.

The march culminated with a massive concentration in Boulevard Danilo Anderson
in Los Teques,
where community spokespeople and political leaders invited people to remain in
the streets, in a peaceful but firm manner, in defense of the revolution.

Translated by Kiraz Janicke