No to the naval blockade against Venezuela
The US government, led by the far-right Donald Trump, continues to increase its warmongering and interventionist offensive in Latin America in general and against Venezuela in particular.
On December 16, the U.S. declared a total blockade on oil tankers entering or leaving the country. This comes after issuing warnings about the dangers of flying to and from Venezuela, arbitrarily confiscating (hijacking) the oil tanker Skipper, appropriating tons of Venezuelan oil, and threatening to launch a ground offensive, warning Gustavo Petro, president of neighboring Colombia, that he would be the next target. This is in addition to attaackingnearly three dozen ships in the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific, leaving nearly a hundred dead.
This is extremely serious for a country that is highly dependent on oil export revenues, whose economy will be significantly damaged by the loss of these resources, especially in a context where basic and strategic industries have been destroyed and plundered by the dictatorship itself. Such is the objective of this measure by US imperialism: to suffocate the already battered Venezuelan economy, mainly affecting the workers and the humble people of the country who are already suffering the rigors of brutal austerity measures imposed by the capitalist and dictatorial government of Nicolás Maduro.
The wages of Venezuelan workers have been pulverized by inflation and the permanent devaluation of the bolivar against the US dollar. Labor and union rights have been violated as part of Maduro’s pro-employer and anti-worker austerity policy. The country has been impoverished as a result of the dictatorship’s policy of surrendering our sovereignty. Consequently, basic services are in complete disrepair. The imperialist sanctions and now this warmongering and interventionist offensive only aggravate this situation and will bring no benefit to the workers and the inhabitants of the popular sectors of the country, further deteriorating the already dramatic living conditions of the working people.
The Socialist Workers’ Unity (UST) expresses its strongest condemnation of this aggressive act by US imperialism against Venezuela and its entire warmongering and interventionist offensive. We condemn the U.S. without giving an ounce of support to Maduro’s capitalist dictatorship and the brutal austerity measures it is imposing on workers. We continue to denounce tthe government’s repressive policies, as expressed, for example, in the recent arrests (kidnappings) of José Elías Torres (President of the Venezuelan Workers’ Union -CTV-) and political scientist Nicmer Evans (Director of the independent news and opinion website Punto de Corte), among others.
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 the U.S. The truth is that it is U.S. imperialism that has historically plundered energy, oil, mineral, land, and other resources, in collusion with the Venezuelan governments of the day, both those of the Punto Fijo era and the Chavistas, and even more so under the current Maduro government. What Trump intends, in his inter-imperialist dispute on the continent, is to reinforce and reassure this plundering with a partner of his choice, in this case María Corina Machado and the bourgeois sector she represents.
In this regard, we repudiate the shameful support that she and other representatives of the Venezuelan opposition have expressed for the imperialist measures led by Donald Trump, as well as for his entire policy of aggression against Venezuela and the rest of the continent, their support of the Israeli genocide in Gaza, and the austerity and repression policies of the continent’s far-right governments.
The Maduro government, for its part, with its austerity and repressive policies, is only facilitating a possible intervention by increasing the repudiation of his regime among the working population and the mistaken “justification” for intervention.
In this sense, we believe that a consistent confrontation with imperialism requires unifying the workers and the Venezuelan people around a program that starts with demanding increases in wages and pensions at the level of the basic basket of goods, indexed to inflation, the restoration of curtailed labor, contractual, and union rights, the defense of democratic freedoms, the release of political prisoners, 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 threats of intervention.
It is necessary that we, as left-wing organizations, promote the broadest unity of action to reject and confront a possible intervention, and that we, as revolutionary organizations that repudiate intervention and do not support Maduro, build spaces of unity to explain the need to confront intervention while mobilizing against Maduro and his anti-worker policies, as well as denouncing the continental governments and their austerity plans.
We must demand that continental governments such as those of Lula, Petro, and Claudia Sheinbaum take a clear stand against imperialist intervention in Venezuela and the rest of the continent and call for concrete actions to repudiate it.
We call on the workers and peoples of Latin America to unite and mobilize against the actions being carried out by U.S. 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.
Total and categorical rejection of the naval blockade against Venezuela and its oil!
No to the theft of Venezuelan oil and the hijacking of oil transport ships!
Stop the bombings and murders in the Caribbean and the Pacific!
No to the war threats and interference of US imperialism in Venezuela, Colombia, Mexico, and all of Latin America!
Total rejection of Donald Trump’s acts of war on the continent!
Trump and US imperialism out of Latin America and the Caribbean!
