Venezuela's working people reaffirmed their support for the Bolivarian revolution ushered in by late president Hugo Chavez yesterday, marching in their tens of thousands across the country.

While they have taken to heart their hero's call to back his chosen successor Nicolas Maduro, the US-financed opposition has failed to draw up a coherent response.

The revolution's close allies, such as President Evo Morales of Bolivia and his Cuban and Nicaraguan counterparts Raul Castro and Daniel Ortega, attended to offer their solidarity.

"It's our duty to defend elected presidents ... we do not accept coup attempts," declared Morales, standing alongside Maduro and proclaiming "our solidarity for the Venezuelan people, the Bolivarian revolution."

Twice-defeated presidential candidate Henrique Capriles has tried to fool the electorate, posing as a Venezuelan Lula character, pledging to continue Chavez's social programme and attempting to divide him from his protégé Maduro.

In consequence, some opposition elements drew the conclusion that there should be no street mobilisations, involving barricades and assaults on police and Chavistas, on the anniversary of the president's death.

However, extremists such as Leopoldo Lopez of the Voluntad Popular (People's Will) party, who is in jail facing charges of arson, criminal damage and organising illegal gatherings, and National Assembly member Maria Colina Machado are determined to press ahead with the opposition campaign of violence.

They stress their commitment to peaceful protests, but both have form, having been involved in the 2002 coup against Chavez.

US-educated Lopez led an opposition march to the presidential palace then, where violence broke out, providing the pretext for Chavez's arrest and short-lived removal from office.

Machado, who founded the far-right Sumate organisation prior to being elected to the National Assembly for the Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD) opposition coalition, was so deeply implicated as to have been a signatory to the Carmona Decree that legitimated Chavez's replacement by a US-approved gaggle of business executives and right-wing politicians.

These supposed democrats dissolved the National Assembly and the Supreme Court, suspending senior law officers and all governors and mayors elected during Chavez's presidency.

Her subsequent "defence" was that she had made a mistake, thinking that she was signing an attendance sheet, which must merit an award for creative thinking.

While Venezuelans paid tribute to Chavez, Machado organised an anti-government mobilisation in the western city of San Cristobal, which has witnessed some of the worst opposition violence.

Her far-right cohorts set up roadblocks in wealthy eastern Caracas and other cities to continue the Lopez-Machado strategy, called La Salida (Exit), of building tension as a means of forcing the elected president's resignation.

They are transparent in their intention of overthrowing Maduro, having failed to win an electoral majority in a dozen and a half national elections.

And despite US Secretary of State John Kerry's whining claim that Washington is being blamed for things it hasn't done, evidence is clear of US interference, including funding the inveterate coup plotters through the misnamed National Endowment for Democracy.

President Maduro is doing everything possible to reduce the endemic violence that has plagued Venezuela for decades, but his government cannot do it alone.

The opposition must play its part too, but it appears wedded to a strategy of violence to create such a level of chaos as to provoke a mass anti-government uprising or open the way to outside intervention.

Our Venezuelan comrades must be able to count on heightened solidarity from Britain's labour movement.