Trump’s kidnapping of Maduro: Meaning and consequences
First published at Focus on the Global South.
On January 28, 2026, Focus on the Global South held an internet panel on developments in Venezuela, shortly after the United States kidnapped President Nicolás Maduro. Chairing the panel was Anuradha Chenoy from the Transnational Institute. The panelists were Peter Rosset, visiting scholar at the Chulalongkorn University Social research Institute, Lia Pinheiro Barbosa from the Universidade Estadual do Ceará, Edgardo Lander from the Central University of Venezuela, and Walden Bello, chair of the Board of Focus on the Global South.
The discussion was highly stimulating, though it was marked by sharp disagreements on the meaning of the US intervention in Venezuela and the character of the Maduro government. The full webinar can be viewed above. Rosset and Barbosa felt they had no chance to respond to the comments of Lander, who addressed at length the issues raised by the former in the first half of the program. In fairness to Rosset and Barbosa — as well as to deepen the discussion of the issues raised in the webinar — Focus decided to give them a chance to provide written responses to Lander’s comments. Lander was then provided Rosset and Barbosa’s responses to comment on.
What follows is presented in three parts. The first, “What does the kidnapping of Maduro mean?”, contains edited versions of the opening remarks from Rosset and Lander from the webinar. The second, “How should the left judge the Bolivarian project?”, presents the written responses from Rosset and Barbosa. The third, “Solidarity with whom?”, presents Lander’s rejoinder.
What does the kidnapping of Maduro mean?
Peter Rosset
Thank you, Focus, and thank you to the other speakers. It’s a pleasure to be here. I am obviously very concerned about what has happened in Venezuela. I am also concerned about how the very justifiable outrage over ICE in Minnesota has completely displaced Venezuela and the kidnapping of a sovereign sitting president from the news media around the world.
It is very important that we discuss this and that we fight against any tendency for short-term memory or complacency, because I do believe that we have inaugurated — or reinaugurated — a new phase of old imperialism, as our moderator said at the beginning and as Lia also insisted. As Walden said, we have a return to a spheres-of-influence policy: America for the Americans, the Monroe Doctrine. That, combined with new low-cost military methods — which we have seen several times recently, notably as Walden said with Obama, but now with Trump — is deeply concerning. We should also remember the kidnapping of Aristide from Haiti, and of Manuel Noriega from Panama, though there was much more loss of life in those cases. Although there was also much more loss of life in Venezuela than the news media would lead us to believe.
This is very concerning because, as Lia said, every government in Latin America is wondering whether their security apparatus could protect them from what Trump called the “discombobulating machine” — which shut off all military and civilian communications and electricity in Caracas at the moment of the invasion.
One of the most concerning elements to me is the relative silence of Latin American governments. There have been a few governments speaking out — notably Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Chile, and Cuba — but not speaking out very often, and being cowed. All the other governments have been very quiet. You get the feeling that every Latin American president is nervously checking their personal security apparatus rather than building any kind of common front against this new offensive of American imperialism in the Americas.
I am very concerned about Cuba, because we have now seen that Trump immediately cut off Venezuelan oil to Cuba and has put heavy pressure on President Sheinbaum of Mexico. He called her on the phone last week to ask her to stop petroleum shipments. She then stopped the petroleum shipment two days ago, refuses to confirm or deny it, but made quite clear in her press conference yesterday that she did stop it, without saying why or how permanent this is. No country in the 21st century can survive on zero petroleum. It does not matter whether you have good or bad administration of your government — you cannot survive. That could be the end of Cuba as we know it if Trump effectively cuts off all petroleum. He is also considering a naval blockade. It is imperialism without putting US troops at risk, if he can achieve it just by pressuring Latin American presidents.
If China and Russia do not live up to any kind of anti-imperialist history and supply that petroleum, what is going to happen to Cuba? The silence of countries around the world is amazing and extremely worrisome. As Lia said, I think it is important that we retake the discussion of imperialism and neocolonialism.
Since I have been in Southeast Asia, I have been a little worried to see that many people think these are passé arguments — that US imperialism is very 20th century, not very 21st century. Some people believe that there is economic imperialism and neocolonial structures from China in this region; other people defend China as a progressive anti-imperialist country. But we will see to what extent China and Russia are willing to do something about Venezuela, to do something about Cuba — or is this going to be the new free hand for US imperialism, anywhere it wants, in any way that it wants?
And what is the message to Russia and China? If the United States can do it and get away with it at zero political cost, does that mean China can do whatever it wants? Does that mean Russia can? If I were the premier of China, I would invade Taiwan tomorrow. If I were Putin, I would escalate against Ukraine. If this is really going to be the way things are — the three superpowers operating with impunity — what is to stop them? It is so outrageous and so obviously illegal.
I think it is interesting that people with political positions as different as those of Lander — whose work I greatly admire on the coloniality of knowledge — and myself and Lia, can find broad agreement here. As far as Venezuela goes, Lander is an opponent of the Maduro government and of the Bolivarian Revolution. Myself, I am highly critical of all of the progressive governments in Latin America for some of the same reasons that Lander is, such as their inability, unwillingness, or lack of interest in breaking away from the extractivist model and really taking any kind of anti-capitalist stance.
But on the other hand, I feel — and it is not a question of “Venezuela good or bad” or “Maduro good or bad” — that some straightening of the record is in order. I have always felt that Venezuela was the least bad, or you might call it the best, of the so-called progressive governments, who have turned out to be some kind of populist neoliberalism by and large. Venezuela has very interesting ongoing experiments, such as the communes and the communal councils, of which there are now more than three or four thousand. Obviously only about a quarter of them may be functioning very well.
But there is a huge debate around Latin America about autonomy for civil society to run its own affairs — whether it be indigenous people in rural areas, peasants, or people in urban slums. We have both de facto radical autonomies, like the Zapatistas or what the Mapuche are calling for, as well as juridical, constitutional forms of partial autonomy. In that sense, I can say they have mostly failed in countries like Bolivia and Ecuador. But I think that the experiment with communal power in Venezuela — I cannot call it successful yet, but it is in a process of being built as a different possible route towards socialism today, in a very different world from the last century’s socialist revolutions. It is something that I believe should be treasured by the global Left, and something that we should be outraged is being put into danger by the action of US imperialism.
We have to resist going along with the easy neoliberal commercial media caricaturing of the Maduro government or the Bolivarian Revolution, and have to look more closely at the grey areas — the hopeful aspects as well as the more negative ones. We should not forget that, certainly in my opinion, as is the case with Cuba — as Lia said — over 800 different sanctions against Venezuela, a media war, numerous attempts at Color Revolutions, the training of street gangs to oppose the government, all of the National Endowment for Democracy, all of the CIA, all of the State Department work for years, means to me that regarding the economic crisis in Venezuela, the least important factor has been whether the Maduro government was a good administrator or a bad administrator.
Just as the least important factor in the Cuban economic crisis is whether President Díaz-Canel has been a good or bad administrator. I would say that no government in the world could be a good administrator under those circumstances. While I disagree with a number of the policies of the Venezuelan government, and even of the Cuban government, and certainly of my own government in Mexico, we have to put things in their fair, just proportion. No government can be expected to survive in terms of managing an economy under the conditions to which Venezuela and Cuba have been subjected. It is not fair to judge them by that standard.
In fact, if we look at the other so-called progressive and non-progressive governments in Latin America, we can see political polarization growing under almost all of them. We can see violence growing all over Latin America. We can see very few, if any, presidents who we could say are doing a good job. This is why I question the imperialist narrative that singles out one or two leaders — Nicolás Maduro — to be demonized to the point where it almost passes without comment that he is kidnapped and taken to the United States to be tried in a foreign court, against all international law.
So I guess that is what I wanted to lay out here: that I am not fully in agreement with Edgardo’s characterization of Venezuela, but I do agree with him — and I am glad that people with different points of view can agree — on the illegal and outrageous nature of what the United States did. I agree with Lia that we really have to look closely at the new forms of imperialism, neocolonialism, and fascism in the 21st century.
In that sense, we have to look very critically at how US power is being reconfigured under the resuscitation of spheres of influence. If there is some kind of concession under that framework to China in Asia, or to Russia in its sphere, then we should be concerned about Russian and Chinese imperialism or neocolonialism as well. For example, the way China has repeatedly intervened in the Myanmar revolution — not in favor of revolutionaries, but in favor of the reactionary fascist government carrying out a war against the population of Myanmar.
These questions that have been considered passé, or have dropped out of academic policy analysis and public political debate, have to come very much back. This is a much-needed call to attention: that we have to refocus on imperialism, militarism, neocolonialism, and fascism in the world today. It is not going to be just a western hemisphere phenomenon. There is no way that this does not have major implications — as Walden has already spelled out — for Europe, for Iran, certainly for Asia, and for Africa as well.
Edgardo Lander
As you all know — but I think it is important to repeat — Venezuela has experienced a very deep economic crisis for more than a decade. In one decade, the economy shrank by approximately 80%, without a war having occurred. This was a consequence of both external and internal factors. During his first term, Trump imposed severe economic sanctions on Venezuela, particularly on two crucial sectors of the economy: oil and finance.
For a country where oil represents 95% of its export value, the loss of its main market, its source of inputs and spare parts, and access to external financing contributed to the collapse of the economy. This was precisely the purpose of the sanctions. A core aspect of the sanctions is their extraterritorial nature — that is, their imposition affected not only Venezuela’s relationship with the United States but also with multilateral organizations, companies, corporations, and countries worldwide. These sanctions have constituted a flagrant violation of international law and can properly be spoken of as acts of war.
However, the sanctions are only part of the determinants of this profound crisis. Internal factors were equally — and, according to some interpretations, even more — decisive. Political instability; an economic policy based on spending oil revenue without any systematic productive investment programs; inefficient public management; widespread corruption; the massive nationalization of companies that, under Cuban influence, equated socialism with statism without the required management capacities; and, very significantly, military control of a high proportion of the most important economic activities.
When the economic sanctions began to be applied for the first time during the first Trump administration, the Venezuelan economy was already in significant decline. Oil production had already shown a marked downward trend. There has been much debate in Venezuela about which of these two sets of factors has had more impact on the crisis, but there is no doubt that their combined effect has been catastrophic.
As I said in my presentation, the way Venezuelan society, political actors, and movements have reacted to the US military intervention is quite strange and in many ways unexpected. The way the United States carried out this overwhelming demonstration of power left everybody surprised. There is, of course, discussion of whether there was treason — whether there was some negotiation by sectors of the government to allow the United States to remove Maduro. There are doubts as to why there was no possibility of effective resistance against this intervention. Why was it possible for helicopters — so easily attacked from the ground if you have missiles — to operate without a single one being destroyed? It is a very strange situation on the whole.
The fact that the Chavista government, military, and party reacted in such a unified way, with no public fractures, is quite amazing. How can you turn a radical anti-imperialist government into one that is willing to negotiate with the United States, willing to accept its demands, calling for people to be calm, and beginning to do every single thing that the United States is asking for? That is quite surprising, and I am sure it is going to lead to fractures and divisions.
But the thing that is important to understand is the level of desperation that existed in Venezuelan society. I clearly disagree with Peter’s interpretation of what the Maduro government represented. This was a government that had incredibly massive levels of corruption. A very repressive government. Thousands of political prisoners, many of them tortured, many people simply disappeared. It took months for families to know whether their loved ones were alive or not. Quite a few political prisoners have died in prison with no explanation.
The transformation of the expectations, dreams, and experiences of the first years of the Chávez government are a long memory that people have just left behind, because it has nothing to do with present Venezuelan reality. In the first few years — before the Chavista revolution was declared to be socialist — in the context of the current Venezuelan constitution, which is a very progressive and advanced social-democratic constitution with extensive rights and new methods of participation and modes of organizing, there was an incredibly vigorous, dynamic process, with grassroots organizations of all sorts relating to water, education, literacy, and land rights. It was an incredible dynamic.
But as the government became more and more state-centered, and in many ways Leninist in its conception of power and the role of the state and the political party, it became increasingly centralized. It created a political party which in no way incorporated any reflection on the experience of one-party systems in actually existing socialism. There was this gradual trend towards a more state-centered, state-controlled system — this fusion of state, party, and military, and eventually the police. In his last years, Maduro talked about the “civic-military-police alliance.” The incredible transformation and potential of the grassroots organization and autonomy that was created during the first few years was systematically cut down by the government’s increasing control.
It created a massive institutional and legal structure for popular power, which established detailed norms for how people should organize, what they should do, how they took decisions, and — most importantly — where their resources came from. And the resources came from the central government. The resources came from oil while oil prices were high, and it was possible to subsidize this massive array of popular organization. But this led to incredibly severe problems.
On one hand, the communes and the communal councils were seen as Chavista structures — not as structures for the construction of a democratic society in which the whole of society was getting involved in self-organizing and autonomy. The fact that the party and the state became, in practice, the same thing meant that, as resources came from the state, the party always decided and imposed its politics on every single form of popular organization. These popular organizations, these communes and councils, had no autonomous economic base — except for some very wonderful but small, scattered experiences in rural areas that were an exception, not the rule.
Most of the communal councils had no alternative source of income. They were political organizations. They could not possibly be autonomous organizations because they had no source of wealth creation that they carried out themselves. They were political organizations with no economic base except for state financing — resources coming from above.
As a consequence, the dynamic of this process — which depended on oil income — was all of a sudden cut off by the fact that first oil prices collapsed, and then sanctions had a huge impact on the oil industry and on state income. The fact that the impact was so immediate shows that these organizations really had very small levels of autonomy and were highly dependent on being subsidized by oil income. When this disappeared, most of these organizations simply withered away. Even if the government continues to talk about communes and councils, there is really very little that actually exists in Venezuela today. The main organization that exists at the grassroots level is the one that distributes food in poor communities — and this is just a state giveaway that does not really imply any autonomy or participation whatsoever.
The fact that the great majority of the population of Venezuela today rejects the government; the fact that the Right wing has increased its presence and voting power so rapidly; the fact that, after years of a wonderful, fully automated electoral system in which there was no doubt that the results corresponded to the people’s will — and then the fact that, in front of people’s direct experiences, where they knew the results in their community, in their voting centers, and shared this information, the results presented by the voting machines were kept by many, many people, and they completely contradicted what the government claimed had happened — this was, as I said before, a breaking point.
At this breaking point, people realized that the electoral option to change the government was no longer available — that the government had decided to remain in power no matter what, and it increased repression. So the fact that so many people in Venezuela — unfortunately, I think this is really incredibly unfortunate — in some way welcome or assume as inevitable that the United States intervened is deplorable. It is going to have long-term political consequences for Venezuelan political culture.
But in spite of the fact that I feel so strongly that the ways Venezuelan society is reacting are reprehensible, it is something that has to be recognized. It is happening. No matter what we think of it, no matter what our opinions, it is really happening. And it is a result of the fact that the majority of the Venezuelan population came to see the Maduro government as a corrupt government, a repressive government, a non-democratic government — a government that pretended, or pretends, to remain in power no matter what.
So the fact that there is still some anti-imperialist discourse and some discourse related to communes and communal councils — this is really marginal in relation to the main facts of Venezuelans’ experience with this government. A third of the population has left the country. For young people in Venezuela there is a deep sense of having no future.
One of the things that I find quite amazing is the fact that, before the US intervention, when there were threats, people within the Left who did not agree with the Maduro government faced two evils, and it was difficult to decide which was worse: on one hand, a very repressive, authoritarian, corrupt government; and on the other, the threat of an intervention. It was really impossible to choose sides. Now we have a new situation in which the authoritarian, corrupt regime is intact—but under the orders of Trump. Both evils have fused into a single block, which makes it extremely difficult for Venezuelan society to react.
The social fabric has been to a great degree destroyed. Autonomous social organizations have been repressed. There is very little free press. Human rights organizations have to be very careful in what they say. So it is a completely new and unexpected situation.
I think it is extremely important for the Left globally to express solidarity with Venezuela in relation to both dimensions of the conflict. People have a right to decide their own government. This right has been denied both by the Maduro government and by the Trump intervention. Neither one allows sovereignty, democracy, or the Venezuelan people to decide their own future. We need solidarity that deals with both issues, not just one. Of course, Trump’s intervention is obviously the main issue we have to deal with. But it is not as if getting rid of Trump’s intervention would allow the country to recover democracy. That is simply not the case.
How should the left judge the Bolivarian project?
Peter Rosset
Just as Edgardo said he “clearly disagrees with my interpretation of what the Maduro government represented,” I want to be on the record as disagreeing with many of his affirmations.
In some cases I simply do not agree at all, while in others I feel that he presents issues as black and white when in fact they are grey. Because of time limitations I cannot address them all, but here are some illustrative points.
On intensifying authoritarianism and repression, and thousands of political prisoners: Edgardo presents as unequivocal fact that Maduro was authoritarian and repressive, and that there were thousands of political prisoners. I believe these points to be more nuanced. First, there were several kinds of prisoners in Venezuela, prior to the recent releases, that the West has characterized as political. The longest-tenured ones were those tried and sentenced for their participation in the 2002 massacre and coup attempt against Chávez. The second group were those sentenced for violence, and inciting violence, during the fascistoid guarimba movement of 2014, when Chavista civilians were chased, savagely beaten, and sometimes brutally murdered by Right-wing mobs. The third group were mercenaries captured during acts of sabotage and similar operations. A more recent group are those who were detained after the disputed 2024 elections, when ample audiovisual material, testimonies, and documents were presented to prove: (a) the financing of violence by the Far Right and the USA, and (b) the involvement of the imprisoned individuals.
The larger point is: what is a government to do when US imperialism spends tens of millions of dollars over several decades to destabilize your country and undermine your government — including training and paying for all kinds of violent dissent? Do not misunderstand me, but sometimes I wonder why those progressive governments in Latin America that the US has since removed via Color Revolutions, varied types of coups (military, judicial or “lawfare,” etc.), and other means, did not arrest more obvious agents of US imperialism while they still had a chance to.
On the insinuation of high-level treason, lack of resistance by the Venezuelan military and security forces, and subsequent submissive obedience to Trump’s dictates: of course there was treason, but we so far have absolutely no way to know if it was low-level (at the level of bodyguards or similar) or high-level. And there was far more resistance than the USA let on — not just dead Cubans but dozens of dead Venezuelans, and many believe the US to be covering up the ongoing treatment of US casualties at a military hospital in Florida.
As to why acting president Delcy Rodríguez appears to be toeing the line with Trump, it is important to note that she is essentially governing with a gun to her head. The fact that the Trump Administration is currently seeking to indict her in federal court lends support to the notion that, behind the scenes, she may not be “behaving” as well as it seems. She is also moving forward with the national consultation on participatory budgeting for the comunas (communes), one of the most exciting (to me) and most hated (by the US government) exercises in grassroots democracy and people’s autonomy underway in Latin America.
I completely disagree with Edgardo’s negative presentation of the comunas, as I have just alluded to. There is a vast body of academic research and political reportage available that backs up my very positive viewpoint.
Edgardo returns to the old trope that Maduro stole the 2024 presidential elections. Over the years of the Chavista Bolivarian Revolution, there have been more than 30 elections at different levels of government, with Chavismo having only lost a couple. As for the disputed 2024 elections, remember that the government and the opposition came up with wildly divergent claims. If we look back, the first thing to note is that the María Corina Machado (MCM) group made their projection of results using a statistical methodology known as Parallel Vote Tabulation (PVT). The same methodology has been used in other countries where Color Revolutions have been promoted by US imperialism. But they didn’t use anywhere near the statistically required number of samples, and they failed to provide more than a few polling station records.
Legally, the Venezuelan constitution has mechanisms in place to resolve disputes of this kind. The Supreme Court acted and asked all political forces to carry out a verification. The only force that did not participate was that of MCM/Edmundo González, while other opposition parties did participate, and the results were officially verified. Later, MCM never managed to mobilize a group larger than 300 people after that process, even though they claimed to have won with 80% of the votes. But 80% does not disappear overnight, especially in a country as politicized as Venezuela.
At the end of the day, if there are doubts about the election, they should be resolved by Venezuelans themselves according to their own internal mechanisms. Nothing authorizes or justifies foreign intervention. To fall into that debate is to accept that some countries have the right to exercise tutelage over others.
Edgardo repeatedly highlights corruption in the Maduro government. Of course there was corruption. Please tell me which government in the world does not house a goodly number of corrupt officials. Should the USA kidnap all their presidents? In that case, please begin with the White House!
I could go on, but this is a seminar and not a doctoral dissertation. So let me sum up my viewpoint. There were both good and bad things about the Maduro government. I personally would not vote for Nicolás Maduro, but then I would not vote for any current president in Latin America, with the possible exception of Díaz-Canel in Cuba. Despite my also being a from-the-Left critic of the so-called “Pink Tide” or “Progressive” governments in Latin America, I feel that their shortcomings in no way justify external intervention. And for someone like Edgardo to fall back on many or most of the same arguments used by US imperialism is, in my view, to tacitly endorse imperial action while claiming otherwise. I cannot go along with that. Finally, I mention the comunas again, as probably the most interesting ongoing experiment by any government in Latin America, outside of Cuba.
Lia Pinheiro Barbosa
I would like to thank Focus for inviting me to participate in this webinar. My role here is to talk about what this means for Latin America, rather than discuss exactly what happened in Venezuela or its internal politics. But before I do that, I want to register my profound disagreement with Edgardo’s characterization of the Maduro government. While there are no saints among governments, not even so-called progressive ones, the Venezuelan government was clearly the best — or at a minimum, the least bad — of all of Latin America’s Pink Tide governments. I assume that Peter will address that later on in this seminar.
Now, for my assigned topic. Analyzing the consequences of the United States’ intervention in Venezuela is not just an analysis of a particular case. It is necessarily an analysis of regional and global geopolitics — of what is shaping up to be a dispute over hegemony on a global scale.
Firstly, the invasion of Venezuela brings to the forefront a historical problem that we experience not only in Latin America but throughout the Global South: the challenges of building and consolidating democracy on the one hand, and socialism as a revolutionary horizon on the other — especially in an environment in which imperialism inevitably tries to use the former to undermine the latter. So far, solutions to lawfare and Color Revolutions have been hard to come by.
Throughout the 20th century, this became more evident with the convergence of anti-imperialist, anti-colonial, and socialist revolutionary processes in Latin America. We could see a concrete revolutionary horizon, with broad popular participation, class consciousness, and critical political education. But after the Cuban Revolution of 1959, the United States’ strategy was to push hard for political and ideological intervention to prevent the advance of revolutionary movements and communism in the region. This culminated in military coups in South American countries, financed by the United States. Military dictatorships were violent processes of censorship, persecution, torture, and murder, with the clear objective of paralyzing revolutionary and democratic processes.
It was only in the mid-1980s that we were able to take up the process of re-democratization, with broad popular participation demanding direct elections. This allowed for a realignment of national Left political forces, such that at the beginning of the 21st century we had a correlation of forces favorable to the election of the progressive, Pink Tide governments. In the case of Venezuela — the most radical of that crop — Hugo Chávez’s rise to power came with a political commitment to 21st-century socialism.
At the beginning of the 21st century, there was a reconfiguration of the Left bloc, with progressive governments and a possible alliance with the socialist camp, paving the way for Latin American and Caribbean integration on the Left. The United States saw this as a real threat to its political influence in the region, even as it was also experiencing an energy crisis that threatened its technological and military hegemony and renewed its obsession with petroleum.
In the first decade of the 2000s, the United States resumed its imperialist policy of political intervention — no longer through military coups, but through hybrid warfare and parliamentary coups. That process began in countries with democratic governments. We can highlight a few concrete cases: the intensification of the blockade against Cuba, the coup in Honduras in 2009, and the constant and growing threats against Venezuela, to name a few examples.
The media war to construct a negative narrative about Venezuela—portraying it as a communist dictatorship — was one of the main strategies used to consolidate anti-Left public opinion among the social base of our Latin American countries.
There is also a new element: the formation of BRICS and the rise of China as an economic power, with the advance of its technological, military, and economic power. Today China has managed to extend its hegemony to Latin America and Africa with the Belt and Road Initiative and associated economic corridors, ensuring access to strategic minerals for its technological advantage. It is now the number one trade and investment partner of Latin America, having displaced the United States.
The United States, on the other hand, is experiencing a deepening political, economic, and social crisis, exacerbated by COVID under Donald Trump’s first administration. This crisis, which has been developing over the last 20 or 30 years, has generated an organic crisis in the United States with internal political polarization. And, as Gramsci told us, in contexts of deep crisis and the absence of a national project — whether from the Right or the Left — authoritarianism emerges; that is, fascism. This is the case with Donald Trump’s administration and the shift to the Far Right that we have seen in the United States and many other countries.
The trade war with China, threats of tariffs and economic sanctions against other countries, the policy of expelling migrants, and the intensification of the media war against Venezuela constituted a set of strategies to update the Monroe Doctrine. Today, with Trump’s second term in office, the United States’ intentions to deepen its domination in Latin America are becoming even clearer.
The military occupation of the Caribbean, the hijacking of oil tankers, and the invasion of Venezuela — with the kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores—are the current highlight of imperialist action in our region. From a geopolitical point of view, I see it as a particular type of imperialism: namely, fascist imperialism, which violates international norms of national sovereignty and imposes a narrative of fear that silences countries around the world.
Imperialist action in Venezuela — as an illegal and unpunished act — sets a dangerous precedent for other Latin American countries: namely, that any of them could be invaded. Behind a supposed moral mission to save Venezuela and the Venezuelan people, the foundations are being laid for the appropriation of Venezuelan oil as well as critical minerals. And it does not stop there.
Trump has made it very clear: he can do the same thing with Cuba, Colombia, Mexico, and Greenland. The invasion of Venezuela is a message of discipline in the dispute for hegemony, and a real threat to the sovereignty of peoples in national contexts.
In this context, we have some important tasks in the process of developing our critical thinking in the Global South. First: to sociologically analyze the key political phenomena of the 21st century by naming them as what they are — imperialism, fascism, and neocolonialism. These three categories, which were extensively developed during the 20th century, disappeared from our analytical focus and discourse, especially during the first phase of progressive governments. This is now clearly a theoretical and analytical failure of the Left, which paved the way for a depoliticization of the social base and of political parties within the so-called Left itself, failing to update our collective analysis of the geopolitical conjuncture. It was a strategic mistake to think that democracy boils down to an electoral process, and that the election of progressive governments was, in itself, a true victory against imperialism.
Second: we need to demand a concrete response from international organizations regarding the intervention and kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro. No country has the right to invade another country militarily, drop bombs, kidnap a president, and take him to be tried in foreign courts.
Third: we need continually to express our international solidarity with the Venezuelan and Cuban peoples, who have suffered uninterrupted sanctions from the United States.
To close, I reaffirm my fundamental disagreement with Edgardo, and hope that the discussion that follows will help correct the record on Venezuela.
Solidarity with whom?
Edgardo Lander
I feel obliged to clarify some basic issues related to the characterization I have made of the Maduro government.
First, what I consider most serious. In his comments, Peter suggests that because I criticize what the Maduro government was, I am tacitly supporting this imperial intervention. This, in addition to seriously distorting what I stated categorically in my presentation, reflects a problem that has been present in broad sectors of the global Left in their characterization of progressive governments in Latin America, beginning with positions regarding Cuba and later Nicaragua.
Since Cuba has been subjected for more than six decades to a severe blockade, terrorist acts, and assassination attempts against its leaders by the United States government, a kind of pact of silence was established within the Latin American Left. One could not speak critically about the Cuban Revolution as long as the blockade remained in place. This ended up creating a historical debt of the Latin American Left toward the Cuban people. Unconditional solidarity with the Cuban process ultimately became a lack of solidarity with its population. The rich political debate of the early years, as expressed, for example, in the journal Pensamiento Crítico, basically came to an end in Cuba.
The unviability of an economic model in which the State sought to establish full control over all economic activity — even small-scale informal undertakings — became increasingly evident. Faced with this, most of the Latin American Left distanced itself from a crisis that was inexorably accumulating and did not assume as its own responsibility the task of contributing to thinking about how to move beyond that suffocating statist model in an autonomous and democratic way, without abandoning the ideals that had inspired the revolution and without replicating the experience of neoliberal transitions in Eastern European countries. In the absence of deep critical reflections on the forces at play, the crisis grew ever more severe.
In the Venezuelan case, unconditional solidarity with the Bolivarian process has had severe negative consequences. Left-wing intellectuals and politicians from all over the world — especially from Latin America and Europe — gathered time and again in Caracas to celebrate Hugo Chávez’s leadership. A critical reflection on core issues, which in light of the historical experience of actually existing socialism were becoming increasingly evident, was absent. With this seal of legitimacy granted by most of the international Left, some of the most negative tendencies of the Bolivarian Revolution were deepened and consolidated.
Among the most evident are the following: the authoritarian implications of the state–party fusion model; the deepening of extractivism through increased dependence on oil; the absence of a productive horizon beyond oil rents; the glaring contradiction between the logics of popular democratic participation and a military culture of verticality and obedience that was being strengthened; and the consequences of a systematic process of vertical control — from the state–party, through a dense legal-institutional network of the so-called Popular Power — over what in the early years of the Bolivarian process had been an extraordinarily rich, diverse, and widespread experience of grassroots democratic organization with high levels of autonomy.
This growing subordination of that participatory dynamic to increasing state control made Popular Power progressively less autonomous and increasingly dependent on the vertical direction of the state–party and the rentier resources it provided. With few exceptions in rural areas, these organizations have been political organizations without their own productive base. Once the period of oil abundance ended and, beginning in 2013, the prolonged crisis began, these state-provided resources dwindled. Most organizational structures of Popular Power — Communal Councils and Communes — were similarly weakened. The main grassroots organizational network that survived this crisis has been the Local Committees for Supply and Production (CLAP), a structure created by the national government to distribute food bags to low-income sectors.
Over the last decade, in spite of its discourse, corruption, the denial of basic human rights, and repression became the main defining characteristics of this government.
The Venezuelan experience, which in its early years had sparked so much hope and expectation—not only in the region but in many parts of the world—ended up becoming a negative reference used by Right-wing forces across the continent as an example of what would happen in their own countries if voters supported even mildly progressive parties. To attribute this solely to corporate media or imperial campaigns is to deny the personal experiences that Latin American populations have had with the millions of migrants throughout the region who recount the reasons that forced them to leave Venezuela.
On the 2024 Presidential Elections
As I noted in my presentation, the Venezuelan electoral system has an extraordinarily robust automated technological platform, with multiple control and auditing mechanisms that, if protocols are followed, severely reduce the possibility of fraud. In all elections held over a quarter century — with the exception of two regional elections in which electoral norms were openly violated and some votes were removed from the automated count — the official results faithfully reflected the will of the voters. In parliamentary, regional, and municipal elections, as well as in the consultative referendum on constitutional reform, when the government lost, those defeats were acknowledged, even if by a narrow margin.
The July 2024 presidential elections were extraordinarily fraudulent — before, during, and after they took place. Acknowledging that the elections were being held under conditions in which most of the population rejected the government — as reflected in polls and in the relative size of government and opposition campaign mobilizations — the government used its power to ensure that the majority will of the population could not be expressed.
In the months prior to the 2024 elections, two main mechanisms were used. First, the government, through a National Electoral Council operating under absolute control of the Executive, decided which parties could participate and which could not. To do this, it blocked the registration of some parties and outlawed most opposition parties so they could not participate. This was done through simple administrative decisions by the Electoral Council, without any legal basis and with no right to appeal. In some cases, the government intervened in and took over political parties. By allying with a minority faction that sympathized with the government or sought to become salaried by the State, the government appointed and recognized this minority as the legitimate leadership of these organizations. In the case of the country’s oldest political party, the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV), since there was no faction with which to negotiate, the government appointed as party leaders individuals who were not even members. This new PCV endorsed Maduro in the presidential elections.
Another mechanism consisted of deciding which candidates would be accepted and which would not. Without legal justification and often without explanation, several candidates were simply rejected.
During the campaign, two main mechanisms operated. The first was the massive and illegal use of state media and resources for Maduro’s campaign. The second was the persecution, threats, and sabotage of opposition campaigns.
On election day, everything proceeded relatively normally until mid-afternoon, when, as results began arriving, the government realized the magnitude of its defeat and decided to disregard the results. Claiming that the electoral system had been hacked from North Macedonia, the vote count was suspended, and a few hours later — without even convening the rest of the Electoral Council’s board — the president of the body announced baseless figures and declared Nicolás Maduro the winner. More than a year and a half after the elections, the results have still not been released.
One of the most important control mechanisms of this electoral system works as follows: once the voter indicates their choice on the screen, the machine prints a paper receipt. The voter reviews it and, if it matches their vote, places it in a ballot box. After voting ends, approximately 50% of the boxes are randomly selected and counted at the polling station with the participation of party representatives and witnesses. These figures are compared with the machine’s printed tally. A record is drafted and signed. That record has a QR code. Some party representatives keep copies. Since the Electoral Council is required to publish results from the national tally down to each voting machine, it is possible to verify whether the official results match the signed records. Since the Council did not release the results, there was no way to know where the announced figures came from.
Expecting fraud, sectors of the opposition, through an extraordinary organizational effort, systematically collected records from a high percentage of voting machines and conducted their own tabulations. According to these, the opposition candidate, Edmundo González Urrutia, more than doubled Maduro’s vote count. These figures are consistent with results obtained from much smaller samples by some electoral organizations. They are also consistent with repeated reports that in most polling stations in popular areas of Caracas — where the government had long held large majorities — Maduro lost.
After the elections, two events are worth highlighting. Convinced that a major fraud had occurred, protests erupted in the two days following the vote, mainly in working-class areas. The government responded with violence, resulting in more than two dozen deaths. More than 2,000 people were detained.
Finally, since the government could not present results supporting the figures it had announced, it asked the Supreme Court to validate them. The Court, consistent with its history of full submission to the Executive, issued the decision requested.
The limited capacity for self-critical reflection on one’s own experiences and the limited ability to learn from them has historically been a problem for the Left. If the authoritarian, repressive, extractivist, and corrupt government of Nicolás Maduro is presented as the model to follow and as an example of what the Left and socialism have to offer for the future, this actively contributes to the Right-wing and far-Right shifts occurring around the world.
