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[TEASER] Venezuela Pt. 1: A Socialist Introduction w/ Vijay Prashad

Upstream

Upstream

Politics, Society & Culture, News

4.9 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 2 September 2025

⏱️ 15 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This is a free preview of the episode "Venezuela Pt. 1: A Socialist Introduction w/ Vijay Prashad." You can listen to the full episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast

As a Patreon subscriber you'll get access to at least one bonus episode a month (usually two or three), our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, early access to certain episodes, and other benefits like stickers and bumper stickers—depending on which tier you subscribe to. access to bi-weekly bonus episodes ranging from conversations to readings and more. Signing up for Patreon is a great way to make Upstream a weekly show, and it will also give you access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes along with stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. You’ll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going.

In Part 1 of our new, ongoing series on Venezuela, Vijay Prashad joins us to discuss Venezuela’s history, politics, and its ongoing fight against US imperialism. Vijay Prashad is a journalist, political commentator, and Executive Director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He’s the author of many books, including The Darker Nations, Washington Bullets: The History of the CIA, Coups, and Assassinations, and Red Star Over the Third World.

In this episode, we discuss Venezuela's political and economic conditions prior to the Bolivarian Revolution of 1999 when Hugo Chávez came to power. We discuss how oil colonialism kept Venezuela in a state of underdevelopment and poverty. Vijay tells us about the promise of the Bolivarian Revolution and how it was delivered, the obstacles that Venezuela continues to face in its fight against imperialism, the hybrid war of coup attempts, sanctions, and propaganda campaigns imposed by the US, what socialism in Venezuela actually looks like, the most recent escalation by the Trump administration, and much more.  

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Artwork: Political Repression in Latin America Poster printed by La Raza Silkscreen, 1975.

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Transcript

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0:00.0

A quick note before we jump into this Patreon episode.

0:03.7

Thank you to all of our Patreon subscribers for making upstream possible.

0:08.3

We genuinely couldn't do this without you.

0:10.6

Your support allows us to create bonus content like this and provide most of our content for free

0:17.1

so we can continue to offer political education media to the public and help to build

0:22.8

our movement. Thank you, comrades. We hope you enjoy this conversation.

1:00.0

Oh, ah. You know, because the structure of the oil economy in Venezuela was such that U.S. oil companies were not building refining capacity within Venezuela. They were taking out crude oil from Venezuela, refining it abroad.

1:05.0

Because of that, Venezuela actually couldn't sell oil at high market prices. It could only sell it at the crude price.

1:13.6

And Venezuela never really developed refining capacity.

1:16.6

So it was always at the mercy of oil companies.

1:20.6

And when the sanctions hit, it couldn't refine the oil,

1:24.6

couldn't sell the oil to international markets.

1:26.6

You know, it became very hard.

1:28.3

Ships wouldn't carry Venezuelan oil.

1:31.3

So it was in that sense blockaded into misery.

1:34.3

Again, it's not socialism that produces the crisis in Venezuela.

1:39.3

It's actually the blockade, the financial blockade of Venezuela imposed by the U.S. government illegally.

1:46.3

That's what actually creates the problem in Venezuela. It's nothing other than that.

1:51.7

You're listening to Upstream. Upstream. Upstream. Upstream.

1:57.3

A show about political economy and society that invites you to unlearn everything you thought you knew about the world around you.

2:05.5

I'm Della Duncan.

2:06.9

And I'm Robert Raymond.

...

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