https://iclfi.org/pubs/wv/1187/venezuela
We reprint below a translation of an article originally appearing in El Antiimperialista No. 4 (October 2025), publication of the Grupo Espartaquista de México. Since then, the U.S. imperialists have intensified their threats against Mexico (whose president is Claudia Sheinbaum) and Venezuela (whose president is Nicolás Maduro). On October 14, the Pentagon announced a fifth attack against a boat in international waters in the Caribbean, bringing the official tally of victims of these attacks to 27 dead.
The U.S. imperialists, who are tightening their grip on Latin America and the Caribbean, are the same ones putting this country’s multiracial working class through the grinder in order to shore themselves up. Forging an anti-imperialist alliance of workers in the Americas is essential to increase their capacity to fight back to the fullest extent against the common enemy. By opposing the imperialist subjugation of Mexico, Venezuela and the rest of Latin America and championing the national rights of Quebec, workers in the U.S. would be strengthening the defense of their own interests. As part of its provocations against Venezuela, the U.S. military has moved advanced F-35 fighter jets to a reopened military base in Puerto Rico, underlining the importance of the fight for the independence of the U.S. colony to the struggle against imperialism in the region.
Under the pretext of a war on foreign “narco-terrorists,” Trump has deployed eight warships, several Navy P-8 aircraft and an attack submarine near the Venezuelan coast. This enormous military force has already claimed its first victims. According to the U.S. government, three small boats and their crews have been extrajudicially destroyed. Trump is threatening similar actions by land and air and has set a $50 million bounty for the capture of Nicolás Maduro.
The purpose of this mobilization is to overthrow a regime that has not blatantly subordinated itself to the will of the U.S. and that has ties to China and Russia. It is the duty of all workers organizations to defend Venezuela with a program based on independence from the Maduro regime and other populists. The military encirclement is also a measure of control over the entire Caribbean, as well as a warning to all Latin American countries that they must align themselves with Trump or face the consequences. These aggressions are in addition to the terrible sanctions against Cuba, tariffs, mass deportations, the “reconquest” of the Panama Canal, etc. U.S.: Hands off Venezuela, the Caribbean and all of Latin America!
The classification of Mexican drug cartels as terrorist organizations is a measure that will be used against anyone who even minimally stands up to the imperialists. The president proclaims that she will not accept U.S. interference in security matters and that this is all about cooperation. Meanwhile, more than 10,000 U.S. troops have been mobilized to the border, drones and aircraft are flying over our airspace, ships are being deployed to Mexican territorial waters and imperialist security agencies are operating here as if it were business as usual. Trump has Sheinbaum’s government by the throat, and he has made it very clear that he can accuse Mexican politicians—including members of Morena—of links to organized crime if they do not accept his conditions. The memorandum of understanding signed during Marco Rubio’s visit tramples on Mexico’s sovereignty and undermines the country’s defense against Trump’s attacks. All of Sheinbaum’s rhetoric about “collaboration without subordination” actually serves as a fig leaf for the imperialists’ ongoing operations. The labor movement and all anti-imperialist militants must speak out and demand: DEA, CIA and all imperialist agencies out of Mexico!
The national bourgeoisies of Latin America, including those seeking to resist (albeit timidly) the diktats of the U.S., are incapable of consistently fighting the imperialist boot and ending their country’s subordination. Sheinbaum, Petro, Lula and Maduro limit the struggle against imperialism to their own goals and methods, so as not to threaten private property—that is, they reject those measures that could deal a bigger and more effective blow to the imperialists. For now, they have political hegemony over the struggle for national liberation, and the oppressed of the region look to them with hope. But in the end, they will seek to accommodate themselves to the new order at the expense of the masses.
It is necessary for revolutionaries to enter the fray as the best anti-imperialist fighters. This includes reaching temporary agreements with the national bourgeoisie—such as for the defense of Maduro against the current onslaught—in order to expose, in the struggle, its vacillations and capitulations. Only a communist leadership of the anti-imperialist struggle can unify the Latin American working masses and forge an invincible collaboration with the proletariat of the U.S., Canada and Quebec, which are also suffering under the attacks of U.S. imperialism. For an anti-imperialist united front of the Americas to fight against Trump! For a socialist federation of Latin America!
