The grave threats facing Venezuela urgently require mass unity of action from anti-imperialist groups
STATEMENT BY INTERNATIONAL WORKERS LEAGUE (IWL), INTERNATIONAL WORKERS’ UNION (IWU, UIT) and REVOLUTIONARY COMMUNIST TENDENCY (RCIT)
The U.S. government, led by the far-right Donald Trump, is advancing its warmongering and interventionist offensive in the Caribbean, particularly against Venezuela.
In December, it declared a total blockade on oil tankers entering or leaving the country, after arbitrarily seizing several ships from Venezuela and appropriating tonnes of Venezuelan oil. This comes after having perpetrated nearly three dozen attacks against ships in the Caribbean and Pacific seas, leaving a hundred dead, under the false pretext of “combating drug trafficking.” This is extremely serious for a country that is highly dependent on oil export revenues.
Alongside this blockade, Trump is preparing a military intervention in Venezuela to remove Maduro and impose a far-right government. To this end, he has stationed a huge naval fleet in the Caribbean. Whether by invasion, air strike or economic suffocation, the objective is the same: to impose a puppet government on the country.
The excuse of the “war on drugs” is only a pretext for imperialist maneuvering. The history of U.S. interventions shows that its policies are not intended to stop drug trafficking. On the contrary, U.S. federal agencies have collaborated with drug cartels in Mexico and Colombia, and their interventions have not served to stop trafficking, but rather to reorganize it under U.S. control. Trump’s pardon of Juan Orlando Hernández, the former president of Honduras who was serving a 45-year prison sentence in the U.S. for drug trafficking, exposes the farce.
The Trump administration’s recently published document on National Security Strategy explicitly states its goal of having puppet governments in Latin America. Pro-imperialist governments that implement neoliberal plans and open the economy to multinationals are no longer enough. They want far-right governments that are completely subservient to Trump. To that end, they are even exerting economic and political pressure to influence elections. They are making progress with Milei, Kast, Bukele, Asfura and want to continue with Uribe in Colombia.
As part of this, Trump has rejected Maduro’s proposal to hand over all the country’s oil and minerals in exchange for remaining in power, as reported by The New York Times. Trump wants to impose María Corina Machado as a puppet government, by any means necessary. However, Trump does not have everything in his favor. More than 70 percent of Americans oppose the plan to invade and attack Venezuela.
This position of the U.S. government is extremely dangerous, as it will affect workers in Venezuela, Venezuelans living in other countries and the peoples of Latin America as a whole. It has been decades since there has been a military attack or direct invasion by the U.S. on the Latin American continent.
That is why we call for a broad united campaign with all those who oppose imperialism’s attacks on Venezuela and Latin America. So far, there has been no anti-imperialist mobilzation against Trump’s intervention that meets the magnitude of the existing threat. It is very important and urgent to change this and move forward in unity of action in view of the seriousness of the situation.
No confidence in Maduro
Fighting against Trump and his interventionism does not mean, under any circumstances, giving any kind of political support to Maduro. His government is not anti-imperialist, much less socialist. In fact, to this day, the U.S. transnational Chevron continues to operate in Venezuela and is the main exploiter and exporter of Venezuelan oil. It is a capitalist dictatorship that governs by imposing austerity measures on the working people, a government of doublespeak and fake socialism.
The wages of Venezuelan workers have been pulverized by inflation. Today, the minimum wage is less than one dollar per month. Labor and trade-union rights have been violated as part of Maduro’s pro-boss and anti-worker austerity policy. As a result of all this, basic services are in a state of complete disrepair.
Imperialist sanctions, and now this warmongering and interventionist offensive, only serve to aggravate the situation, further deteriorating the already dramatic living conditions of working people. That is why we will be at the forefront of the fight against Trump’s intervention in Venezuela, but without giving political support or placing our trust in Maduro.
We must wage a strong and united anti-imperialist campaign
We reject Donald Trump’s statements demanding that “all the oil, land and other assets stolen from the United States be returned,” as if these resources had ever belonged to him. The truth is that it is U.S. imperialism, in collusion with the Venezuelan governments of the day, both those of Punto Fijo and those of Chávez, and even more so the current Maduro government, that have historically plundered energy, oil, mineral, land and other resources. What Trump intends, in his inter-imperialist dispute on the continent, is to reinforce and reassure this plundering with a puppet government, such as that of María Corina Machado and the bourgeois sector she represents.
The Maduro government, for its part, with its austerity and repressive policies, is only facilitating an eventual intervention by increasing the unpopularity of his regime among the working population.
In this sense, we believe that to confront imperialism we need to unify workers and the Venezuelan people to demand that Maduro’s government implement a program that begins with the defense of democratic freedoms, the release of political prisoners who repudiate imperialist aggression, an increase in the minimum monthly wage and pensions to the level of the basic basket of goods, the restoration of curtailed labor, contractual and trade union rights; an end to the repression of workers’ organizations; the granting of political rights to left-wing parties such as the PCV, PPT, Marea Socialista, PSL, among others; the cessation of the surrender of resources from the Orinoco Mining Arc (AMO) and the Orinoco Oil Belt (FPO), and the rejection of imperialist interference and its threats of intervention.
It is essential that we, as labor and mass movement organizations, promote the broadest unity of action to reject and confront military aggression, the criminal bombings in the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific, the oil blockade––all of which are acts of war––as well as any further military intervention. In any confrontation between the armed forces of the United States and Venezuela, workers and popular organizations must advocate for the military victory of the latter and the defeat of U.S. imperialism.
In the United States, we recognize how these imperialist attacks are directly linked to the Trump administration’s attacks on the American working class, as well as to the long history of U.S. interventions against Latin America and the working class in general, and we encourage mass mobilization to stop this completely, including the cancellation without payment of all neocolonial debts controlled by the U.S.
Latin American governments that claim to oppose Trump’s intervention must call for mobilizations, something they have not done so far. Lula, Petro, Sheinbaum—who claim to reject Trump’s intervention—must call for days of mobilization and directly help Venezuela to evade sanctions, assisting in the export and import of goods and providing military support against U.S. aggression.
Our call is for the workers and peoples of the United States and Latin America to unite and mobilize against the actions being carried out by US imperialism on the continent, which must be denounced for what they are: acts of war against all the peoples of this continent in general and against the Venezuelan people in particular.
•We completely reject the naval blockade against Venezuela and its oil!
• No to the theft of Venezuelan oil and the hijacking of oil transport ships!
• Down with imperialist sanctions against Venezuela!
• Stop the bombings and assassinations in the Caribbean and the Pacific!
• No to the invasion of Venezuela!
• No confidence in Maduro!
• Arms for the workers! Full freedoms to mobilize against imperialism! Suspend debt payments and reverse the sell-out contracts for the resources of Orinoco!
• We completely reject Donald Trump’s acts of war on the continent!
• Lula, Petro, Sheinbaum—who say they reject Trump’s intervention—must directly help Venezuela to repel these actions militarily!
• Trump and U.S. imperialism out of Latin America and the Caribbean!
— International Workers’ League (IWL , www.litci.org)
— International Workers’ Union – Fourth International (IWU, www.uit-ci.org )
— Revolutionary Communist International Tendency ( RCIT , www.thecommunists.net)