I have frequently written about Venezuelan politics, the Occupy movement, participatory budgeting, and popular education for a number of publicly oriented outlets including the Washington Post, The Guardian, The Independent, The Nation, Jacobin, Le Monde Diplomatique, In These Times, NACLA and Dollars and Sense.
2025. “How María Corina Machado’s Nobel Peace Prize Could Lead to War.” The Nation. Oct 14.
https://www.thenation.com/article/world/nobel-peace-prize-venezeuala-war/
2025. “Murder in the Caribbean: The campaign against Venezuela.” Sidecar-New Left Review. Oct 16.
(translated into German, Greek, Spanish, and French)
https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/murder-in-the-caribbean
2025 (forthcoming). “The Power to Kill” (solicited piece on US-Venezuela relations). The Intercept.
2025. “Mamdani Can Learn from Latin American Municipal Socialism.” Jacobin. November 1.
https://jacobin.com/2025/11/mamdani-chavez-torres-municipal-democracy-socialism
2025. “Closing the Extractive Frontier.” Phenomenal World (online). June 13.
2025. “US Sanctions Have Decimated Venezuela, but the Left Should Still Oppose Maduro’s Brutal
Authoritarianism.” Links: International Journal of Socialist Renewal (Online). July 4.
2025. “Zohran Mamdani Tackles Climate Change and New York City’s Cost of Living Crisis.” The
Nation (online). April 22.
https://www.thenation.com/article/environment/zohran-mamdani-green-schools-plan-climate/
2025. “Will Maduro Finish His New Six-Year Term in Venezuela? Q&A.” Latin America Advisor.
January 14.
2024. “This Solar Panel Kills Fascists.” The Nation (online). December 9.
https://www.thenation.com/article/environment/build-public-renewable-act-draft-strategic-plan/
2024. “Fraud Foretold? Elections in Venezuela.” Sidecar-New Left Review. August 21.
https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/fraud-foretold
2024. “It’s Hard to Be a Leftist Leader in Colombia.” The Nation (online). August 15.
[3rd most read article (August 15-16).]
https://www.thenation.com/article/world/gustavo-petro-colombia/
2024. “Bolivia’s Failed Coup Is the Symptom of a Growing Political Crisis.” Jacobin. July 3.
https://jacobin.com/2024/07/bolivia-failed-coup-political-crisis
2024. “Is Hugo Chávez to Blame for Venezuela’s Collapse?” NACLA. March 5.
https://dev.nacla.org/is-hugo-chavez-to-blame-for-venezuelas-collapse
2022. “Killing Tigers.” Sidecar-New Left Review. December 23. https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/killing-tigers
- “Nicaragua’s Unfair Election.” Le Monde Diplomatique (English edition). November.
– Also published in French in LMD’s November 2021 issue. (Translated to Spanish and German (coming soon)
- “Bolivia reclaimed its democracy, but big challenges remain for the victorious socialists.” Washington Post. October 20.
2020. “If democracy is restored in Bolivia, thank protesters and not the U.S. or the OAS.” Washington Post. August 26.
2020. “The OAS helped undermine, not restore, democracy in Bolivia.” Washington Post. March 7.
- “Critique, Solidarity and Movement Building: A Reply to Lucas Koerner.” FAIR. February 12. (Reprinted by NACLA and Jacobin.)
2019. “Bolivia Falls Into the Grips of a Brutal Rightwing Regime.” Washington Post. November 20.
2019. “Many wanted Morales out. But what happened in Bolivia was a military coup.” The Guardian. November 13. [5th on ‘most read’ list for US opinion pieces]
2019. “Understanding Bolivia’s Nightmare.” NACLA and Jacobin co-publication. November 20.
2019. “The Risk of a Catastrophic US Intervention in Venezuela is Real.” The Guardian. January 24. (16k shares on social media; fourth on ‘most read’ list for all Guardian articles)
2019. “What the UN Report Gets Right—and Wrong—About the Crisis in Venezuela.” The Nation. July 24.
2019. “Venezuela’s Deadly Blackout Highlights the Need for a Negotiated Resolution of the Crisis.” The Nation. March 13.
2019. “Eleven Theses on Venezuela.” Jacobin. May 23.
2019. “Venezuela and the Left.” Jacobin and NACLA co-published. February 2.
2018. “Stop Talking About Coups.” Jacobin. September 17.
2018. “After Maduro’s re-election, Trump has made some extremely unwise decisions about Venezuela.” The Independent (UK). May 22.
2018. “The Venezuelan Labyrinth.” NACLA. May 18 (Reprinted in Jacobin.)
2017. “Venezuela’s Agony.” The Nation. August 28/September 4: 4,8. [3rd on daily ‘most read’ list]
2017. “Why is Venezuela Spiraling Out of Control?” NACLA. April 29. [6th most-read article all-time on NACLA website; on NACLA “Best Articles of 2017” list; reprinted in Jacobin]
2016. “A History of Violence: What Mainstream Accounts of Venezuela’s ‘Peaceful’ Opposition Leave Out.’ Jacobin. September 11.
2016. “Saving Chavismo in Venezuela.” Invited Op-Ed. teleSUR. September 2. (On teleSUR’s ‘most-read opinion’ list for multiple days.)
2016. “Why is Venezuela in Crisis.” The Nation. August 17. (14k page views; made Nation’s top-5 ‘most read articles’ list)
2016. “How Severe is Venezuela’s Crisis.” The Nation. June 22. (30k-plus page views; on Nation’s top-5 ‘most read articles’ list for 3 days; reprinted in venezuelanalysis.com and elsewhere)
2016. “Paul Krugman is Wrong about Bernie Sanders-And About How Change Works.” In These Times. January 25 (2.5k shares on social media).
2015. “The End of Chavismo? Why Venezuela’s Ruling Party Lost Big and What Comes Next“. The Nation. December 10. (Solicited for re-print by Progress in Political Economy Blog, Department of Political Economy, University of Sydney. Reprinted in venezuelanalysis.com; 9k page views)
2015. “The Truth About Chávez“. Jacobin. September 20. (Reprinted in NACLA, Telésur English and venezuelanalysis.com; 6k shares on social media)
2015. “Press Doublespeak at the Summit of the Americas“. Nacla. April 20.
2013. “What’s Next for Venezuela, After Chávez?“, The Nation, March 8.
2012. “Grassroots Democracy in Venezuela.” The Nation. January 30.
2012. “A New Way to Occupy City Hall: Participatory Budgeting.” The Nation. March 15.
2012. “Reading Tea Leaves in Venezuela: How to Interpret the Results of Sunday’s Regional Election”. Nacla. December 21.
2012. “The End of the Chávez Era?” NACLA. December 14.
2012. “Why Chávez Won”. CounterPunch. October 15.
2012. “Occupying Democracy”. In We Are Many: Critical Reflections on Movement Strategy from Occupation to Liberation, edited by Kate Khatib Margaret Killjoy and Mike McGuire. Oakland: AK Press.
2007. “Making Sense of Venezuela’s Referendum.” NACLA. December 6.
2007. “Venezuela’s Hopes and Contradictions.” ZNET. November 16.
2002. “Popular Educators Gather”. Dollars and Sense. November-December.
2002. “Unions and Workers in Venezuela.” Dollars and Sense. September-October.
I also engage with the public through my work with the Participatory Budgeting Project, an organization that works to bring participatory budgeting to cities in the US and Canada, and that has provided technical support to PB processes in Vallejo, Richmond, Chicago, New York and many other cities. I am on the PBP Advisory Board.
In 2012 I worked with community organizations, local governments and ordinary citizens on initiatives to bring participatory budgeting to several cities in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2012 the city of Vallejo (the largest city in California to ever declare bankruptcy) made history by becoming the first city in the United States to implement participatory budgeting on a citywide basis. In 2012-2013, I was a lead member of the PB Vallejo Research Advisory Board. I helped coordinate a collaborative research process involving over fifteen government officials, community organizers, professors and students. I conducted trainings, supervised research by masters and bachelors students from the University of California, Berkeley, helped design and implement two surveys of PB participants, conducted a year of ethnographic research and helped analyze and write-up the results of this process. Information about PB Vallejo, which has been extended for a second year, can be found here. I have also been involved in efforts to bring participatory budgeting to Richmond, which is the largest city in the US with a Green Party mayor.
Gabriel Hetland 