Trump’s speech

The objectives of the brutal attack against Venezuela — and the kidnapping of President Maduro — were made explicit in the speech and press conference that Trump, his ministers, and the high military command held in Washington hours after bombing Caracas. Trump spoke with blatant cynicism, without euphemisms or diplomatic disguises.

“We carried out a large-scale attack,” he declared. “We showed that we have the infinitely most powerful military force in the world.” And he went even further: “We will govern Venezuela,” “we will recover the oil they stole from us.” This is not just a threat: Trump intends to transform Venezuela into a direct colonial protectorate, even disregarding subordinate and servile figures like Corina Machado.

It was a deliberate display of force, a message directed not only at Venezuela but at the entire world: to terrorize, discipline, punish. When Trump states that “peace is achieved through war,” he is bluntly stating the historical logic of imperial domination and, specifically, the decline of Yankee hegemony itself. Force and war are neither an excess nor a mistake: they are the very core of the empire’s policy to recover lost ground to Chinese neo-imperialism in Latin America.

Therefore, the immediate task is to unite all possible forces on a global scale to reject this aggression and curb Trump’s neo-colonial objectives. In Venezuela, it is not only the fate of one country that is at stake: what awaits Latin America in the coming years is being defined if this policy manages to consolidate.

The only way to stop it is through popular mobilization and international solidarity, which are already beginning to manifest in several countries. And also through support for the resistance that will inevitably arise in Venezuela when broad sectors of the population understand what imperial occupation truly means. Recent history is clear: Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and so many other countries show that imperial “order” legacy is no more than devastation, dependence, and death.

The Monroe Doctrine in Trump’s Version

Trump doesn’t improvise. His imperial objectives are already clearly formulated in writing in the National Security Doctrine. It states unambiguously:

“After years of neglect, the United States will reaffirm and apply the Monroe Doctrine to restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere.”

Venezuela is the first laboratory of this renewed neocolonial policy. Others will follow: Cuba, Colombia, not forgetting that he wants to appropriate Greenland and Canada. It is no coincidence that Trump has sent a gigantic military fleet and the largest aircraft carrier in the world: this is not a simple show of force, but the preparation for a new phase of open interventionism.

With this policy, Trump is even undermining the very rules of the international order that American imperialism built after the Second World War, as well as the basic principles of its internal legality. It is not surprising that sectors of the establishment express alarm. The New York Times rightly warns that Trump “risks justifying the authoritarians of China, Russia and other countries that seek to dominate their own neighbors.” In fact, Trump is doing nothing more than saying without masks to the peripheral and semi-peripheral Latin American countries of some higher development, such as Brazil and Mexico, that this threat is present.

Yes, it is possible to stop Trump

It is true that the United States has an overwhelming military and technological superiority over Latin American countries. The desperation of millions of exiled Venezuelans and the profound wear and tear and discredit of the Maduro regime are also a fact. But these conditions do not guarantee the stability of imperial domination. Quite the contrary: they will turn against Trump when it becomes clear what a colonial protectorate implies for the daily lives of the Venezuelan people and the implications of the dispossession, expropriation, and extraction of their resources that Yankee imperialism will impose.

An imperial occupation regime is unsustainable in a Latin American country of Venezuela’s size and history. For this reason, even broad sectors of the imperialist bourgeoisie and the continent’s ruling classes view this course with apprehension, aware that it will only bring more chaos, polarization, and social confrontations. Added to this is a key factor: internal resistance within the United States itself, where opposition to Trump’s authoritarian and militaristic drift is growing.

Anti-Imperialist Unity of Action

The unfinished historical task of Latin American unity is once again a strategic necessity in the face of the global crisis. Starting from active solidarity with Venezuela, it is necessary to consider the need for the common defense of sovereignty, popular control of strategic resources, and the coordination of struggles against transnational capital and imperial militarism. Trump’s denialism – which has unconditional allies in Milei, Katz, and Bukele – not only leads to more exploitation of workers but also to the expropriation of natural resources, the devastation of the Amazon, the contamination of rivers, and greater climate crises.

Only a solidarity-based federation of Latin American nations, built from below and in service of the workers and the popular majorities, can offer a real alternative to the plunder, dependency, war, and environmental devastation. Such integration will cease to be an abstract utopia, for it is the material condition for Latin America to cease being a territory of dispute between empires and to be able to sovereignly decide its own destiny, free from imperial yoke.

The task of the day is clear: the central focus is the unity of anti-imperialist action, capable of articulating the peoples, social movements, trade union organizations, and political forces of the continent to curb aggression and defend the future of Latin America. To demand that all governments repudiate Trump’s actions. For the anti-imperialist and revolutionary left, this is not merely an immediate response to Trump’s offensive, but a strategic orientation in the face of a new stage of open and violent imperial domination. The Anti-Fascist Conference to be held in Porto Alegre from March 26 to 29 will be an important space for action and proposals for the future of our continent.

Freedom for Maduro!

Stop the imperialist aggression!

Anti-imperialist Unity of Action!

Pedro Fuentes is a national leader of PSOL and the Socialist Left Movement (MES) in Brazil.

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