The Deputy Minister of Anti-Blockade Policies, William Castillo, spoke exclusively to Sputnik at the latest edition of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, where he outlined the keys to the Caribbean nation's success in defeating Western sanctions, while also advocating the formation of a common front among the affected nations.
Interviewed after the end of the forum's plenary session -which was led by Russian President Vladimir Putin- Castillo agreed with the Kremlin chief's words that the new world order “appears as the rising of the sun”.
"The sun appears, even if you don't want it to, every morning. And that new sun is the pluripolar world, the world of equality, the world of respect for sovereignty, the world of economic cooperation relations, which is not a world of cannibalization, nor of aggression, nor of sanctions," the deputy minister commented.
“So I found it very interesting that an important time was dedicated in this final plenary to discuss this issue of sanctions and to demonstrate that sanctions can be defeated, that if countries organize themselves, that if countries respect international law, that if they have commercial partners and allies that respect international law, a world without sanctions can be created in this new pluripolar world”, he said.
According to Castillo, this is illustrated by the case of Russia -the most sanctioned country in history, with tens of thousands of restrictions- which "has been adapting and has been defeating the impacts that were sought, which was to collapse the national economy".
Venezuela comes out ahead
This is also the case of Venezuela, said the director of the Venezuelan Anti-Blockade Observatory.
"Venezuela has up to this moment 1,039 sanctions, we are practically the fifth country in the world with more sanctioned ships, more sanctioned airplanes, more public officials and more companies. Venezuela has almost 200 sanctioned companies, Venezuelan and foreign, for doing business with Venezuela, including some Russian companies", he pointed out.
However, the country “is showing that it can face sanctions and that it can move forward and that it can offer economic answers to its people, welfare, despite the fact that sanctions are still in force”.
"We have been under these measures for 10 years. Of course, the first 6 years impacted us hard, but also after the pandemic the Venezuelan economy is growing and today it is the most dynamic economy in South America. We have had four consecutive years of economic growth, an average of over 6%, similar to the figures that the Russian economy has today, between 5% and 7% growth", he stressed.
The keys to the anti-blockade policy
According to Castillo, working for food sovereignty was among the main lines of action of the Venezuelan government, previously "highly dependent on food imports".
"When imports were closed, we lived some two or three years of very acute shortages. President Nicolás Maduro designed an economic recovery strategy, designed a set of productive alliances with the private sector, with small producers, with peasants and also with the communes - which are organizations, grassroots communities - to turn the economic recovery, to focus it on the recovery of food production. Today Venezuela produces more food than in 2014, than before the sanctions. We produce more rice, more corn flour, more potatoes. We have practically recovered the supply of basic foodstuffs, 97% is produced today in Venezuela", he emphasized.
The Caribbean country is also expanding its food supply for international markets.
"We are increasing non-traditional exports. In addition to oil, cocoa and coffee, which is what we are known for, we are exporting shrimp, today we are exporting blue crab, we are exporting fruits to several countries. That is to say, the country united around the need to defend the right of Venezuelans to live, and that started with the food sector", he reiterated.
In fact, the other line of action of Caracas is to diversify its commercial partners, developing “very important productive projects” with nations such as Russia or China.
"For example, in Venezuela we are building right now, with Russian technology, through a Russian investment, an insulin manufacturing plant, which will allow us to free ourselves from insulin imports. So, there are pharmaceutical projects, there are tourism projects, there are industrial projects, there are production projects and there are alliances between businessmen from these countries and Venezuelan businessmen, or the Venezuelan public sector, to recover factories, to recover production in certain sectors. So, this tells you that the response of sovereign countries to coercive measures is creativity, union, shared work, and this can be seen in the different projects that Venezuela has been signing, particularly with what we call this BRICS world, this world of equals, this world that they are making", he stated.
“All the countries -there are 30 nations that have unilateral coercive measures- are learning from the experience of other countries and are creating antibodies against this attempt to introduce and inoculate an economic epidemic”, remarked Castillo.
Venezuela and Russia will hold the first anti-blockade meeting
The Deputy Minister for Anti-blockade Policies also announced "the first Russia-Venezuela meeting on unilateral coercive measures, in accordance with the memorandum signed by the foreign ministers of our countries a year ago". He added that the document includes cooperation in "fighting and overcoming sanctions".
According to Castillo, the Western unilateral coercive measures -which are an "economic aggression" because they do not have the approval of the UN Security Council- are presented as "an instrument that supposedly defends democracy and human rights, but which seeks to control countries through devastation".
“This is a policy of neo-colonization through the economy, which has pathetically demonstrated that it failed, both in the case of Russia and in the case of Venezuela,” he explained.
Venezuela highlights Sputnik's communication work
The Venezuelan Vice Minister opposed the efforts to "cancel" Sputnik, describing the Western censorship campaign as "brutal". At the same time, he stressed that, nevertheless, its audience is growing globally.
"In Venezuela, for example, a lot of international information is now consumed through Russian media, because we have the experience of what Western media are, with their news bias. So, we have a source of information. But I believe -and I have seen some statistics- that also in other parts of the world, including Europe, Russian media such as Sputnik and others are being watched with great force", he highlighted.
"These countries and their media are giving an important response in terms of the cultural battle, the battle of ideas, of information, of people's right to access information. I think they are using the platforms intelligently -which must be done, you cannot reject the platforms, even if they are Western platforms- but they are also creating new media, new platforms, and they are opening the opportunity for our people to see balanced information, balanced, and not to stay with Western narratives," Castillo concluded.
To reach that world socialist revolution, there is a process that has to be taken in order for that to happen. Lots of comrades here have shared good answers to explain that throughout this thread.
Just as I described for Russia, the same is true for the rest of the countries in the global south. In a multipolar world, their interests are directly aligned with their mutual development and fair trade. This is a far cry to what the west offered through imperialism which exploited the global south.
Please, don't dismiss the comrades that have eloquently explained why it is important to have a multipolar world first to jump to socialist world revolution.