Marea Socialista (Venezuelan section of the ISL) rejects the imperialist military siege ordered by Trump against the Venezuelan nation. The excuse of fighting drug trafficking, which he is unable to control within his own consuming country, in no way justifies the violation of Venezuelan sovereignty. The threatening actions off our coasts, whether intended for intimidation or as a possible prelude to an armed intervention, serve exclusively the imperial interest of the U.S. to subjugate the Latin American and Caribbean peoples.

We strongly repudiate the threats of imperialism and the rewards offered by Trump for helping to capture members of the Venezuelan government, which also serve Maduro to victimize himself and “justify” more repression inside our country.

Wherever the US has meddled, things have gotten much worse. This is shown by the situation in countries like Afghanistan where, after withdrawing, they left control back in the hands of the retrograde and terrible Taliban. The Venezuelan people will not be saved by the naval-air forces and the gringo marines sent by the capitalist Donald Trump, who has already demonstrated his treatment of Venezuelan migrants in the United States, and is a collaborator of the genocidal Netanyahu in the extermination of the Palestinian people of Gaza.

At the same time, we say that a government like Maduro’s cannot defend the country from a foreign power like the U.S. with a people subjected to hunger, calamities and violations of rights, while the government bureaucracy holds gross privileges and commits vile outrages. The corrupt bureaucracy does not defend the people of Venezuela, it has plundered them. The bureaucrats only defend their own skin and positions of power. It is the policies of this government that have led us to have the worst salary in the world, less than one dollar a month. Can we offer resistance to imperialism while attacking our own people with the most miserable salaries and the most indolent mistreatment, as if the workers and the popular classes were an internal enemy?

For its part, the business sector, politically represented by the opposition and interventionist right-wing parties, benefits and profits from those anti-worker policies supported by the Maduro-Military-PSUV government, such as the zero salary (in violation of Art. 91 of the CRBV), which together with the anti-union measures, allow them to super-exploit the Venezuelan working class at a labor cost that is also zero. And this is also the case for foreign transnationals, which take advantage of the misnamed nationalist and socialist government. It is not one or the other at all.

We stand for the unity of action of the Venezuelan people against U.S. interventionism, without this implying any confidence or any kind of support to the political regime that Maduro maintains with the government of the military and the PSUV.

And in this context, we continue to emphatically demand that the government cease its repression of working class fighters, of those who disagree with the government in democratic terms, regardless of their political sign, and of the dissident or opposition left with which it has been so cruel in recent times.

Let us also demand as necessities to be able to defend ourselves from imperialism, that the democratic and union rights of the working class and of citizens in general be restored, that wages be established in accordance with the cost of the basic food basket (Art. 91) and that an end be put to the unconstitutional laws and measures that have been implemented in favor of transnational capital and against the interests of the Venezuelan people.

The United States does not want governments that agree with its economic and geopolitical enemies (China, Russia) and also wants its most trusted politicians (such as Maria Corina and Edmundo and the parties of the classic right) in the Venezuelan government. Someone who persecutes and throws Venezuelans out of the USA and imprisons them for being migrants, or who helps the genocide being committed in Gaza, is obviously not interested in democracy or the welfare of the Venezuelan people.

We stand for the economic sovereignty of Venezuela, for its economy to not be in the hands of greedy capitalists or be managed by corrupt and authoritarian bureaucrats and military, who steal from and subjugate the people. We stand for the development of prosperous and clean national industries under real social and workers’ control, to guarantee that they be at the service of the general welfare of the Venezuelan people.

We reiterate our call to organize ourselves the liberating struggle of our own people, without bosses and imperialists, to put an end to the oppression of the corrupt and rights-violating bureaucracy.

No to imperialist interventionism and no to the ruling authoritarianism! Neither Maduro’s bureaucracy nor María Corina’s pro-imperialism!

Latin Americans and Caribbeans, with the solidarity of the peoples of the world, must reject the U.S. military’s harassment in the waters of Venezuela’s territorial sea or the intimidation of any other nation, without giving any support to Maduro’s government.

For international solidarity with Venezuela and its people, against the Yankee military siege and the pro-interventionist right wing!