Venezuelan socialist groups: Stop imperialist aggression against Venezuela! Trump’s troops out of the Caribbean and Latin America!

First published in Spanish at Laclase.info. Translation from Venezuelan Voices.

The US has deployed warships, surveillance aircraft, helicopters, and special operations troops in the southern Caribbean Sea and openly targeted our country under the pretext of the “war on drugs.” This is a military deployment that opens the door to possible armed intervention by the US.

The goal of this military deployment is to reaffirm that Latin America is the “backyard” of US capitalism, to renew its dominance in the region in the face of competition from other capitalist powers such as Russia and, above all, China. Through militaristic threat, Donald Trump is bringing back “gunboat diplomacy” to subdue our peoples, and this is what looms over Venezuela and other countries on our continent.

Trump is not only responsible for imposing sanctions to pursue his goals of imperialist domination in our country, but also for the most brutal contempt and criminal treatment of Venezuelan immigrant working families in the US, in addition to the recent murder of several people in attacks on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

Sectors of the right-wing opposition, such as that led by Trump supporter María Corina Machado, support this new imperialist aggression against Venezuela, just as they have supported economic sanctions and constantly called for the US to invade our country.

Confronting the external aggression of a government as reactionary as Trump’s is in the interests of the working class and the vast popular majority in our country. We, the signatories of this statement, conceive of the defense of our national interests in an active, organized manner, independent of the Maduro government and the bosses’ opposition, which allows us to understand the role that the US plays globally and what its predatory interests are.

For the left-wing organizations that call for the repudiation of this aggression by the US, this in no way implies endorsing the Maduro government; on the contrary, we reject it and openly confront it. We believe that in the face of the repressive and anti-worker policies that Maduro brutally unleashes against the working and poor people, only the Venezuelan working people have the duty of settling accounts with him, not any imperialist power.

But state repression and the violation of the fundamental rights of workers and the popular sectors is not the best way to stand up to a possible foreign invasion. With wages below a dollar a month and the imprisonment of critical voices and those who protest, we believe that this actually facilitates the work of US imperialism. To confront imperialism, workers and the people need the fullest freedom of action and organization.

While the government engages in supposedly anti-imperialist propaganda, it continues to do business with Chevron and Sunergon Oil, a US company that has just begun operating in the Orinoco Oil Belt. That is why we say that confronting imperialism is not only a military problem, but also involves taking a series of basic measures against imperialist economic interests and their mechanisms of domination, such as eliminating joint venture contracts in the oil sector, ensuring that oil is managed by PDVSA workers and professionals without transnationals or joint ventures; to cease recognition of the usurious foreign debt; nationalizing without compensation the multiple properties owned by US capitals in the country, to place them under the control of the workers and the people, not the state bureaucracy, which only knows how to impose control over the workers and is a source of all kinds of embezzlement of public property, as has been demonstrated numerous times.

Moreover, it is the government itself that guarantees imperialist capital, including that of the US, shameful conditions for the plundering of natural resources and the exploitation of the national workforce, guaranteeing one of the cheapest labor forces in the world, through the destruction of labor rights and repression.

The fight against imperialist ambitions must also be a fight against the destruction of the economic and political rights of the working majorities.

Unleashing a force capable of confronting any imperialist military adventure to the end requires the deployment of workers’ and popular initiative, creativity, and energy, as well as the ability to fight against all enemies and for all rights. That is what we are committed to, from our anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist position.

Furthermore, we propose that it is necessary for the people and workers to mobilize to impose a workers’ and popular emergency plan for wages and pensions equal to the basic basket of goods, in defense of collective contracts, for greater investment in health, education, and public services, in defense of democratic freedoms, and for the full freedom of political prisoners.

Signed:

Homeland for All/Popular Revolutionary Alliance (PPT/APR)

Socialism and Freedom Party (PSL)

League of Workers for Socialism (LTS)

Socialist Tide (MS)

Communist Revolution (RC)

Caracas, October 3, 2025.