Active international solidarity of the Latin American and world peoples! No confidence in Maduro!
The International Socialist League (ISL) and its organizations, such as Marea Socialista of Venezuela, Uníos of Colombia and other comrades of Latin America and the Caribbean, strongly reject the imperialist military siege ordered by Trump against Venezuela, which is at the same time, an extensive threat to all our countries in the region.
The excuse of fighting against drug trafficking, which the US fails to control within its own hyper-consumer country, in no way justifies the violation of Venezuelan sovereignty. The United States cannot have any prerogative to impose itself as an international gendarme over national sovereignties, agreements between countries and multilateral treaties or conventions. The threatening actions off the coast of Venezuela and in the Caribbean, whether for intimidation, or as a possible prelude to an armed intervention, are exclusively due to the nefarious imperial interest of the United States to subjugate the Latin American and Caribbean peoples, to appropriate their resources and common goods, or to put and remove governments at their whim and pleasure. Latin America is not the ”backyard” of US imperialism.
We repudiate the threats of imperialism and the rewards offered by Trump for assistance to capture members of the Venezuelan government, which incidentally serve Maduro to victimize himself and come up with “reasons” for more repression within the country or to take advantage of Venezuelan national sentiment in favor of the normalization of his regime. The double take of Trump’s government is also deeply suspicious. While laying a maritime siege to Venezuela and attacking vessels or killing their crew members (in an absolutely illegitimate, extrajudicial and criminal way), on the other hand, despite the unacceptable unilateral sanctions it has continued to impose on Venezuela, it approves of the business of the North American transnational Chevron with the oil it extracts from Venezuelan soil, without taxes or royalties.
Where throughout history the United States has intervened in an abusive and arbitrary way, their intervention has worsened the peoples situation and have not contributed to solving the issues they use to justify their incursions or invasions. In multiple cases the lie of their pretexts was exposed, such as Iraq’s “weapons of mass destruction”, false positives and self-provocations. This is also exemplified by the situations of countries such as Afghanistan where, after withdrawing, US left control to Taliban, again. In many other places his intervention caused more destruction, humanitarian crises, massacres, rights violations and chaos, as in Haiti, Iraq or Syria. Trump’s intentions to reappropriate the Panama Canal are well known along the fact that his military bases in Colombia have not really contributed to guaranteeing peace or dealing with the drug business.
The Venezuelan people will not be saved by naval aviation forces or Marines sent by Donald Trump, who has already shown what Venezuelan migrants in the United States mean to him, with expulsions and imprisonments without trial, confining them to El Salvador’s CECOT. A reactionary and anti-migratory policy that is also carried out against the human rights of workers and young people from different countries of our continent. Nothing good can come for Venezuela, not for Colombia or for any country in the region, with interference or a possible occupation of part of our Latin American territories by the US government and army. We repudiate this imperialist and provocative action, of which the genocidal Netanyahu is also a collaborator and accomplice in the extermination of the Palestinian people of Gaza, with plans as dark and immoral as the one to establish tourist businesses for the capitalists of the US or Trump himself together with Zionists, over the corpses of the Palestinian people and the ruins of their homes, schools or hospitals.
We are for the defense of Venezuela and any country attacked by imperialism, this does not mean that we support governments like Maduro’s, which will not be able to consistently defend the country from a foreign power like the US while at the same time subjecting the Venezuelan people to miserable conditions of hunger, calamities and rights violations; while the government bureaucracy embezzles public funds, holds rude privileges and commits vile outrages. The corrupt bureaucracy does not defend the people of Venezuela, but plunders, oppresses, exploits and represses them, for the benefit of their own affairs as a new oligarchy established in the country, which clings to its positions of power. It is the capitalist and counterrevolutionary policies of this government (not only the imperialist sanctions and the sabotage of the right), which have led workers to lose in fact almost all the constitutional and material benefits that were obtained between 1999 and 2012, and to have today the worst salary in the world, less than one dollar a month. A government like Maduro’s cannot offer a credible and solid capacity for resistance to imperialism, while it is the government itself that attacks its people with more than miserable salaries and inflicts the most indolent mistreatment on them, as if the workers and the popular classes were an internal enemy.
The business sector politically represented by the opposition, pro-imperialist and interventionist right-wing parties, although they dispute the direct administration of the state apparatus to the Madurista bureaucracy, benefits at the same time and profits from anti-worker and anti-union policies, which allow the working class to be superexploited with zero labor costs, as do foreign transnationals, whether American, European, Chinese or Russian. They take advantage of a government that rhetorically pretends to be “left-wing” or “socialist”, but that has applied capitalist adjustment policies even deeper and more terrible than the classic governments of the neoliberal right.
We are in favor of accompanying the unity of action of the Venezuelan people against North American interventionism, with all possible solidarity at the international level and especially from Latin America and the Caribbean peoples, as well as migrants, Latinos, workers and progressive youth in the United States. But we do not grant any confidence or support to the political regime maintained by Maduro with his government of military and the bureaucracy of the PSUV.
The people who make up the constituent and original power, instead of allowing themselves to be led into a military confrontation with imperialism under the reins of an anti-democratic government and bureaucratic or capitalist elites, can only exercise the effective defense of their national interests with will and high morale, but not subjected, starved and oppressed. It needs to be organized with a political approach that is built collectively. In this way, the people and the working class will be able to gather the energies that will allow them to confront the threat that is looming over Venezuela today. Therefore, a response is needed that aims to mobilize the bulk of the Venezuelan people in a democratic, convincing, enthusiastic and sustainable way, which cannot be left solely to the criteria of a highly questioned national government. That is why, in order to form the country’s defensive framework, all anti-imperialist and popular voices must be heard with their proposals and guarantee full freedom of opinion and organization without any restrictions. In this way, it will be possible, in the midst of this national contingency, the articulation between different political, social and struggle instances, to forge together a solidarity and thorough mobilization that will contain and defeat the enemies of the sovereign nation.
Therefore, at the same time that we accompany the resistance against imperialism and the ultra-right complicit in interventionism, we continue to emphatically demand that the government cease the persecution and repression of working class fighters, those who disagree and criticize the government trying to assert their democratic rights, whatever their political sign. This includes in particular the dissident or opposition left, against which the Maduro government has been attacking more and more intensely.
We support the demand that the democratic and trade union rights of the working class and citizens in general be restored, convinced of the need to do so both for the fulfillment of rights and for a more effective defense against imperialism. This must be coupled with the suppression of the unconstitutional laws and measures that have been implemented in favor of transnational capital, in opposition to the interests of the people.
The United States does not want governments that agree with their economic and geopolitical enemies (China, Russia) and also wants their most trusted politicians to govern, such as María Corina Machado, Edmundo González and those parties of the traditional right, who have been advocating intervention and of whom we are also fervent political and class opponents. We are for self-determination, for the integral and economic sovereignty of Venezuela. That its economy is not in the hands of capitalist exploiters nor is it managed by corrupt and authoritarian bureaucrats or military who steal and subjugate the people. We believe that Venezuela needs a government that promotes the development of prosperous and clean national public industries, not parasitized by bureaucracies or capital, that are under real social and democratic control, with the participation of workers, to guarantee their placement at the service of the general welfare of the Venezuelan people, without subjection to any foreign power. Greater resources to deal with the social emergency and the military threat could be freed up if the illegitimate and corrupt foreign debt contracted by the bureaucracy responsible for embezzling the country is stopped being paid (for which that debt should be subjected to a citizen, public and democratic audit). And, on the other hand, the funds and assets stolen by the rapine of bureaucratic-capitalist corruption should be recovered (with expropriations, repatriations or compensation).
From a principled position, our call, then, remains that we support the autonomous organization of the people’s liberating struggle, without bosses and without imperialists, to get rid of the oppression of the corrupt and rights-violating bureaucracy.
At the international level, we propose that the governments of our entire continent be required to issue statements calling for the immediate withdrawal of the US navy that patrols the coasts of Venezuela, as well as the suspension of any support for unilateral sanctions imposed by the US.The U.S., thus rejecting the coercive measures of external powers that aggravate the humanitarian crisis, harm the country’s defense and give the Venezuelan government excuses to “justify” its failures and outbursts. As well as promoting united actions in our countries to repudiate this action and threat of the US government and all its political accomplices in the region.
We say: No to imperialist interventionism! No to the pro-imperialist policy of María Corina and other right-wing opponents! No to Maduro’s ruling authoritarianism and bureaucracy! United and coordinated anti-imperialist defense in Venezuela, together with the peoples of the entire region, with democratic self-organization and without any trust in the Maduro regime.
Latin Americans and Caribbean (including migrants in the U.S.)With the solidarity of the peoples of the world, we must reject the US military threat facing the sea of Venezuela or the commercial and armed pressure on any other nation, without therefore giving any support to the capitalist or bureaucratic governments of our countries.
For international solidarity with Venezuela and its people, against the Yankee military siege and the pro-interventionist right!
