General /Venezuela/ thread
From what I've read here I see people don't have a clear view of what is happening in Venezuela, the line of the goverment, and in general what has been changing for the past 15 years, I think this is probably because lots of people started to hear of Venezuela when the US started to really fuck them, so they don't have a clear view.
In my country even before the Bolivarian goverment took office there had been hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans as well as lots of my compatriots there, so Venezuelan politics have been followed since the start, with every party, media outlet or political group talking about it on a regular basis (sometimes to ridiculus levels, were people now everything about what's happening in Venezuela and can't even mention the name of the president of our neighbouring countries)
So first of all, the Bolivarian goverment with Chavez at it's head did not present itself as even revolutionary at first, they presented themselves as moderate socialists,to give you an example something even less radical than the Uruguayan government.
They were harsh critics of the Communist movement and even of the Cuban goverment, with Chavez publically denouncing it and Marxism-Leninism in general: youtu.be
When Chavez reached power he had neutral relations with the US, and despite the attacks to him on public, he had some friendly approaches with the Colombian goverment, even promising them to help them fight the FARC and ELN that used the Venezuelan borders for moving around sometimes.
The goverment even had bad relations with the historical Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV) wich is a Marxist-Leninist party, but good ones with Trotskist and in general more moderate left-wing groups
Still Chavez as one of his election promises he called for nationalization of oil, so this sparked reaction from the owners of PDVSA they organized a coup with maybe the aprobation of the US but not their support as you probably know the coup failed, as some sectors of the Venezuelan capitalists friendly to the Bolivarian goverment called dor the army to not support it, not to mention Chavez was really popular within it ,in my country nearly all media outlets supported it, but in general there was a neutral reaction to it from most Western countries.
This coup can be called what really started the Bolivarian revolution, the Chavez goverment made a left wing turn, calling for inmediate nationalization of PVDSA as well of some sectors of the economy (specially the ones wich were suspect of supporting the coup).
This made the Colombian goverment to start having an agressive position towards Chavez , as well as the US to start paying attention to what was happening and cut some economic ties, still the EU had a good relation with Venezuela.
On the other hand this made the relation of Chavez goverment with other progressive ones to get closer, specially with Cuba as well as to have a more friendly relation with the PCV.
(Continues inside thread)