Joint statement by revolutionary socialist workers from Venezuela, Colombia, and the United States
We, revolutionary socialist workers’ organizations from Venezuela, Colombia, and the United States, completely condemn the unjustifiable murders of sailors and fishermen from Venezuela, Colombia, and Trinidad by the U.S. Navy. Likewise, we condemn the disgusting, deadly threats and provocations by the Trump administration against the peoples of Venezuela and Colombia, which constitute an imperialist attack and a mortal danger to the entire Latin American region. The Trump administration has acknowledged 14 attacks on vessels suspected of drug smuggling from South America, in which, according to The New York Times, at least 57 people have died, including the attacks on Monday, Oct. 27, 2025, which left 14 people dead.
The claims that this is a “war on drugs” are just an excuse for a morally bankrupt imperialist maneuver. There has been no evidence that those killed by the U.S. in recent weeks were drug traffickers—and even if they were drug traffickers, it does not justify their random killing by a military fleet. The history of U.S. interventions shows that its policy has no intention of combating 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 to reorganize it under US control.
By accusing Nicolás Maduro, and more recently Gustavo Petro, of being involved in the drug trade without providing any evidence, Trump is clearly preparing an excuse for military intervention against Venezuela, and possibly also against Colombia. For his part, Trump’s attempt to portray Maduro and Petro as immoral and illegal “drug leaders” ignores his own government’s and previous U.S. administrations’ involvement in drug trafficking, as well as their personal connections to the notorious sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
Neither Trump nor any other U.S. president has the moral authority to denounce presidents or even entire countries in Latin America as traffickers of any kind. The U.S. government’s intent is to use “gunboat diplomacy”—which can lead to full-scale invasion—to advance an imperialist policy of plunder and oppression against all the peoples of the Americas.
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. We need mass mobilization to stop it in its tracks, and to cancel without compensation all the neocolonial debts controlled by the U.S.
As socialists organizing in the United States, Venezuela, and Colombia, we recognize that we need to mobilize to confront the imperialist war machine with the power of the organized working class. We owe no loyalty to the bourgeois governments of Maduro and Petro.
In Venezuela, we know that Maduro is not a socialist, that he keeps his people mired in poverty, and that he is even willing to hand over all of the country’s natural wealth to satisfy Trump’s demands. In Colombia, despite his correct denunciations of imperialist hypocrisy and interference, Petro remains committed to paying the foreign debt and being a global partner of NATO, bound by commitments that keep Colombia under the yoke of imperialism.
Our commitment is to the working classes of Venezuela and Colombia, recognizing that attempts to overthrow Maduro with imperialist military pressure will do nothing to improve the living conditions of the Venezuelan people; any sanctions by Trump against Colombia will affect workers; imperialist interference will only leave countries more impoverished and dominated by imperialism. This is demonstrated by the long history of U.S. military interventions on our continent and around the world.
A military intervention in Venezuela, Colombia, or any other country on the continent ultimately seeks to bring back “big stick” politics, normalizing direct military incursions to overrule our countries’ policies according to the whims of U.S. imperialism and to reinforce the protection of its political, economic, and military interests in a region that is historically strategic for U.S. imperialism, and which it considers its backyard.
For these reasons, in Venezuela, we call for unified political action to defeat the threat of imperialist attacks. The working people need to mobilize in this struggle, and from there move forward and organize to defeat the anti-worker austerity measures of the Maduro government. Meanwhile, in Colombia, we call for the non-payment of the imperialist foreign debt, withdrawal from NATO, and the rejection of any imperialist threats. Throughout Latin America and around the world, we reject imperialist military intervention and demand the withdrawal of the U.S. military presence in the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean.
We call for the broadest international unity of action, of the working class, the oppressed, and the masses in general, to defeat the imperialist offensive. It is a fact that in the U.S. people are already mobilizing against their government, with 7 million people taking to the streets on Oct. 18, and this popular sentiment needs to be deepened and organized so that it has the strength of the working class to bring about a general strike. In Latin American countries it is necessary to mobilize widely in the same way to defend ourselves both from Yankee attacks and from the masters of our countries who hand us over to these same imperialists. These struggles of our class must also be linked to the struggle of immigrants for the right to live in peace, to join a global struggle against imperialist plunder in general.
Yankee hands off Latin America!
Down with the foreign debt!
Trump must pay for all those killed!
The struggle against imperialism is won through the mobilization and leadership of the international working class!
— Socialist Workers Unity (Venezuela)
— Socialist Workers Party (Colombia)
— Workers’ Voice (USA)
