In July 2024, we published an article analyzing scenarios for the Venezuelan presidential elections. In that text, we examined the nature of the government and the prevailing political regime in Venezuela in light of a series of facts that already pointed to the definitive exhaustion of any remaining democratic features of Nicolás Maduro’s regime. The systematic banning of left-wing organizations and parties, as well as the then recent direct intervention in the Venezuelan Communist Party, made clear that the regime had definitively broken with elementary political freedoms, advancing toward an openly authoritarian form of domination—the concrete negation of what the Bolivarian Revolution was at its origin.

In the same vein, the imposition of Special Economic Zones, supported by the so-called Anti-Blockade Laws, represented a qualitative leap in the dismantling of the Bolivarian project. These measures trampled on the 1999 Constitution, which enshrined national sovereignty over the entire Venezuelan territory, opening the way for the handover of strategic wealth to international capital, especially imperialism, under the direct management of a state bureaucracy profoundly divorced from popular interests.

The concentration of oil revenues in the hands of a new social class, formed within the very heart of the Bolivarian Revolution, combined with the government’s inability to meet the most basic needs of the Venezuelan population, progressively eroded the social base that had sustained Hugo Chávez. Without Chávez and under the impact of the economic blockade, popular demands for better living conditions began to be met with repression, deepening social discontent and paving the way for the strengthening of the far right. This set of factors created the conditions for the final blow by U.S. imperialism.

It would be a mistake, however, to attribute the defeat of the Bolivarian Revolution exclusively to U.S. military intervention. Beyond the internal factors that led to the failure of the program promoted by Hugo Chávez, the international conjuncture also contributed to the progressive isolation of the Bolivarian process and its subsequent retreat. Chávez defended a program of confrontation with imperialism and a policy of Latin American unity around this project, materialized in ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America) and in a new model of regional integration. On the domestic front, even though he never advanced toward the expropriation of the financial system, he maintained a policy of confrontation with the national bourgeoisie and of redistribution of oil revenues.

The victories of Evo Morales in Bolivia and Rafael Correa in Ecuador represented, to a certain extent, a continuation of Bolivarianism in Latin America. The PT (Worker’s Party) governments in Brazil, however, moved in the opposite direction. Lula and the PT came to power with a program of class conciliation, based on a project of integration subordinated to the liberal-bourgeois order and neoliberal globalization. In opposition to ALBA, MERCOSUR (Southern Common Market) expressed a form of capitalist integration of the continent. Lula’s governments never had an anti-imperialist orientation; on the contrary, they consolidated Brazil’s subimperialist condition in relation to other Latin American nations. This position clashed head-on with Chávez’s Bolivarian Venezuela. For this reason, from the outset, the role of the PT governments vis-à-vis the Bolivarian Revolution was one of containment of its possible expansion.

In other words, the defeat of the Bolivarian Revolution resulted from a combination of factors: the failure to deepen the revolutionary process, the non-nationalization of the financial system, the inability to extend the revolution across the continent, as well as the action of bureaucratic elements that hijacked the process. Added to this was the caudillismo that characterized both Hugo Chávez’s government and Nicolás Maduro’s, marked by distrust of the mass movement and the absence of a policy of popular self-organization.

In this sense, our understanding diverges profoundly from campist positions. This, however, does not alter a fundamental point: it is necessary to denounce, without ambiguities, the imperialist aggression against Venezuela. The invasion of a sovereign country constitutes a flagrant violation of international law and represents a direct threat to the sovereignty of other Latin American countries, particularly Cuba. Likewise, the United States has no legitimacy whatsoever to kidnap, try, or condemn President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Deputy Cilia Flores. We demand their immediate release. We also condemn the economic blockade imposed on Venezuela, which brutally punishes the working people, deepens misery, and serves as a justification for strengthening the repressive apparatus and social control exercised by the regime.

However, the defense of Venezuelan sovereignty cannot serve as a smokescreen to conceal the concrete reality of the regime. It must be stated clearly: for a long time now, the Venezuelan state bureaucracy, associated with a new social class that emerged within the Bolivarian process itself—the so-called bolibourgeoisie—has appropriated the state apparatus to satisfy its material interests, promoting the degeneration of the process initiated by Hugo Chávez in 1998.

U.S. intervention, the economic blockade, and the military siege have not solved—nor will they solve—the problems faced by the people in the streets of Caracas. Recent history is eloquent: Iraq, Afghanistan, Panama, among many other examples, demonstrate that imperialist intervention only deepens chaos, violence, and dependency. In the Venezuelan case, these external aggressions were instrumentalized by the government to expand the police state, intensify repression, and further restrict the political freedoms of a population already deprived of the most basic rights. It is false, however, to attribute the social crisis exclusively to the blockade: even before its imposition in 2014, the population was already suffering the effects of an economic policy designed to benefit a privileged minority.

In the 2024 article, we pointed to two possible electoral scenarios. Today, it is not even possible to state which one was realized, since the electoral results were never fully disclosed. The National Electoral Council never published the precinct-level tallies. Even so, Maduro was sworn in as president, despite numerous allegations of fraud and doubts raised even by allied governments, such as that of President Lula in Brazil, which did not officially recognize the results.

At that time, we already stated that Maduro’s loss of legitimacy was profound and stemmed largely from his inability to respond to the most basic needs of the working population. Subsequent events confirmed this analysis. Trump inaugurated a new stage of the imperialist offensive in Latin America by kidnapping the president of a sovereign country. In 2002, when Hugo Chávez was kidnapped, the popular response was immediate: hundreds of thousands took to the streets, marched on Caracas, paralyzed the country, and imposed his restoration. There was no room for negotiation or capitulation.

On January 5, 2026, however, just hours after the success of the U.S. special forces operation, the Rodríguez siblings—Delcy and Jorge Rodríguez—backed by Diosdado Cabello, had already begun negotiations with the White House. One week later, a U.S. diplomatic delegation landed in Caracas to reopen the U.S. embassy. Thus, the transformation of the Venezuelan government into the political manager of a U.S. protectorate was consolidated.

There are no easy solutions in Venezuela. But any way out necessarily requires a concrete analysis of concrete reality. There was no democracy under Maduro, and imperialist intervention only tends to deepen authoritarianism. The social crisis has worsened since 2014, both as a result of the economic blockade unilaterally imposed by the United States and of the bureaucratic, corrupt, and anti-popular management of the government. Since the death of Hugo Chávez, the Bolivarian Revolution has been systematically dismantled, with the suppression of historic social rights. Despite Chávez’s efforts and the struggles of workers and peasants, Venezuela did not break with its productive structure dependent on oil revenues.

Over recent years, Venezuela—once a reference for the world political vanguard—has lost prominence and mobilizing capacity. This loss of political and social centrality was one of the factors that opened space for Trump’s imperialist offensive.

Faced with this new situation, in which Trump’s imperialist and neocolonial offensive presents itself without disguise, it becomes necessary to initiate a continental struggle against imperialism, taking advantage of the contradictions that this offensive will generate within the national bourgeoisies themselves. Fundamentally, it will be necessary to build the broadest possible anti-imperialist unity in action to confront this new period, which all indications suggest will be long. Joining the various initiatives of solidarity with the Venezuelan people will be a central part of this effort for unity in action, and the First International Antifascist Conference, to be held in Porto Alegre in March 2026, will be a strategic moment to assess these initiatives, deepen international coordination, and promote new actions in the struggle against U.S. imperialism.

I am Antonio Neto, a member of MES (Socialist Left Movement) and a member of its International Commission. I lived in Venezuela between 2007 and 2009, being part of Marea Socialista (Socialist Tide), a political tendency affiliated with the PSUV (United Socialist Party of Venezuela). I was a member of the editorial board of the newspaper Marea Socialista, participated in the founding congress of the PSUV Youth, and in the plenaries convened by Hugo Chávez for the construction of the Fifth International. I witnessed Chávez’s victories in recall referendums and took part in the victorious campaign by the workers of SIDOR for the nationalization of one of the largest steel plants in the Americas.

The MES, the political tendency in which I have been active since 2002, was at the forefront of the struggle in solidarity with Venezuela. Together with ATTAC Brazil, the office of Luciana Genro was responsible for Hugo Chávez’s first visit to Brazil, during the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre in January 2003, just a few months after the failed coup attempt and while the country was still recovering from the oil lockout organized by the right-wing opposition.

In the name of the revolutionary internationalism that inspires us, I returned to Venezuela several times between 2005 and 2014 and was able to closely follow the deepening rupture between the government and the interests of the majority of the working population.