Venezuela has once again confirmed that it is on the road of revolution. It has moved to gain more control over oil, its most precious resource. It calls its revolution Bolivarian after the Great Liberator, Simón Bolívar, in order to stress that necessary social change requires the liberation of the country and the region from foreign domination.

Near the end of March, the National Assembly passed a law that gives the state oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela or PDVSA, at least a 60 percent stake in projects where foreign oil companies once got the lion’s share of the profits. The law applies to 32 oil fields that are pumping about one-fifth of the country’s production.

Foreign oil companies will still be making money in Venezuela—just not as much as before.

Sixteen companies, including Royal Dutch Shell, the Spanish-Argentine company Repsol YPF, Brazil’s Petrobras and China National Petroleum agreed to the new contracts. Italy’s Eni and France’s Total, however, refused to go along with the new terms.

For the first time ever, the government then seized their oil fields, putting them under PDVSA’s management.

“These two companies are refusing to abide by our laws,” said Energy Minister Rafael Ramírez in a press conference in Caracas on April 3. “They won’t accept state control over our resources, and they won’t accept the taxes and royalty rates.”

The U.S. oil giant ExxonMobil, on the other hand, got around the problem by selling off its stake in the 15,000-barrel-a-day Quiamare-La Ceiba field to a Spanish company rather than resist the new law. One reason it didn’t want to jeopardize its relations with the government is that it still holds a 42 percent stake in a much larger heavy-oil project at Cerro Negro, which is not affected by the new law.

These three oil companies are among the six largest in the world.

What does the Venezuelan government of President Hugo Chávez want to do with the money?

It is moving to transform Venezuela by lifting up the poor majority who in the past got virtually nothing from the country’s oil riches. The state’s enhanced revenue will go to the many social projects it has launched in recent years, with a priority on literacy and general education; medical clinics for the poor, many staffed by Cuban doctors; subsidized food in poor communities; new housing and land reform.

President Chávez recently announced that 150,000 new houses for the poor will be built by the end of the year. The mayor of Greater Caracas, Juan Barreto, has announced that to alleviate the housing problem and combat high rents, the government expects to expropriate about 400 apartment buildings in the city. To be seized, a building must be at least 10 years old and the owner must have collected at least five times the building’s value in rents.

Venezuela has also been helping poor people in other countries who have been hit by the worldwide increase in the price of heating oil. Many cities in the U.S. itself have now signed on to receive Venezuelan oil at a low cost—just at a time when the U.S. government has cut heating subsidies for the poor.

One of Venezuela’s major goals is the regional integration of Latin America as a giant economic bloc with its own powerful banks, telecommunications and developed infrastructure. All this has been impos sible ever since the Monroe Doc trine of 1823 declared all of Latin America to be under the domination of the United States.

Washington’s reaction to the ongoing revolution in Venezuela is deepening hostility—which should come as no surprise, considering the terrible war the Bush admin istration has launched in the Middle East, for no other reason than to control that oil-rich region. Venezuela has what some consider to be the largest recoverable oil reserves in the world.

The Virginian-Pilot, a newspaper from the Hampton Roads area where the U.S. Navy has an enormous base, reported on March 28 that: “The Navy will send an aircraft carrier strike group, with four ships, a 60-plane air wing and 6,500 sailors, to Caribbean and South American waters for a major training exercise, it was announced Monday.

“Some defense analysts suggested that the unusual two-month-long deployment, set to begin in early April, could be interpreted as a show of force by anti-American governments in Venezuela and Cuba.

“‘The presence of a U.S. carrier task force in the Caribbean will definitely be interpreted as some sort of signal by the governments of Cuba and Venezuela,’ said Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute, a pro-defense think-tank in Washington.

“‘If I was sitting in the Venezuela capital looking at this American task force, the message I would be getting is America still is not so distracted by Iraq that it is unable to enforce its interests in the Caribbean,’ Thompson said.”

The Venezuelan government is taking the threat seriously and has recently purchased military aircraft and small arms from Russia. It has gained enormous prestige in the region through its progressive policies and the masses of people at home are solidly behind the revolution, as shown in every election for the last seven years.

But the leaders, many of whom, like Chávez, come from the military, know that to defend themselves against imperialism the Venezuelan people need more than good will.