[Audio] Revolution “Betrayed”? What’s Really Happening in Venezuela? w/Cira Marquina & Chris Gilbert

***Producer’s note: Trying a little experiment. This is the audio-only edition of the latest episode posted here for your convenience. If having this edition is helpful to you, please comment under this video and we will start releasing them alongside our regular video edition***

Since the illegal U.S. abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and First Combatant Cilia Flores, Global North commentators have rushed to declare the Bolivarian Revolution betrayed or defeated. The recent extradition of Alex Saab has only intensified these accusations.

In this episode, Chavista intellectuals Cira Pascual and Chris Gilbert discuss Venezuela’s new reality and the tendency of Global North observers to interpret the Bolivarian process through abstract ideological schemas rather than its concrete historical development.

Read: “A Great Leap into Reality: Venezuela Today” by Chris Gilbert and Cira Pascual Marquina: https://mronline.org/2026/05/28/a-great-leap-into-reality-venezuela-today/

Cira Pascual Marquina is a popular educator at the Pluriversidad, El Panal Commune’s educational initiative in the working-class barrio of 23 de Enero in Caracas. She is also a founder and member of the Communal Democracy Network.

Chris Gilbert is a professor of political studies at the Universidad Bolivariana de Venezuela, contributing editor at Monthly Review magazine, and the author of Commune or Nothing!: Venezuela’s Communal Movement and Its Socialist Project (Monthly Review, 2023), among other books and articles.

Gilbert and Pascual Marquina are the creators and hosts of Escuela de Cuadros, a Marxist educational television program and podcast. They are coauthors of Venezuela, the Present as Struggle: Voices from the Bolivarian Revolution (Monthly Review, 2020) and the book series Resistencia comunal frente al bloqueo imperialista (Observatorio Venezolano Antibloqueo, 2021–2026).

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