We are a political home for Latine people, shaped by many perspectives, emotions, trajectories, places, and lived experiences. Within our organization, we do not always agree. This is the case when it comes to Venezuela. The purpose of this statement is not to establish a single truth or to shut down debate, but to lay out —with political honesty— the tensions, questions, and perspectives that currently coexist within Mijente in response to the situation in Venezuela and the most recent U.S. military intervention.
We firmly believe in popular and national sovereignty. For this reason, we reject political and military interventions in Latin America and elsewhere in the world. It is the people themselves who must decide and shape the course of their nations and communities. Within our organization, there are perspectives that view the January 3rd military intervention in Caracas as the most recent act in a long history of interventionism on Venezuelan soil — one that does not occur in a vacuum or out of nowhere. It follows years of economic blockades, sanctions, and a strategy of political destabilization led by the United States, with an objective that today is expressed openly and without pretense — control over Venezuela’s oil and mineral resources — and that has nothing to do with defending democracy or human rights.
At the same time, we acknowledge the real suffering of the Venezuelan people. Venezuelans, like Latine communities more broadly, are not a monolith or homogeneous. Their experiences are deeply shaped by class, place, political history, and material conditions. This is reflected even in migration processes: different waves, different points of departure, and different reasons for leaving the country over the past decades.
This mosaic of experiences tells us something important: the political project launched at the beginning of the revolution lost its focus. Especially in recent years, it has lost its capacity to sustain dignified living conditions for broad sectors of the population. Nor can it be denied that thousands of people —workers, journalists, activists, and opposition figures— have been exiled, imprisoned, or persecuted for political reasons.
Between external economic blockades and internal practices of repression, corruption, and concentration of power, a crisis accumulated that struck Venezuelan society in multiple ways.
Some wanted Maduro to leave. Some maintain total opposition to U.S. intervention. We can remain stuck reacting to events, fighting online, and sharing memes about whether what happened was right or wrong, or about who has the right to speak; perhaps all of that is necessary at this stage. But we cannot ignore the threat taking shape in our hemisphere. The United States has never stopped waging wars and interventions around the world, but the actions and rhetoric of Trump and his administration at this moment point to a shift in approach.
Venezuela is not an isolated case, but the starting point of a new phase of U.S. empire building — more crude and more direct. Today it is Venezuela; tomorrow it could be anyone who refuses to submit. Today, they seek more oil, more lithium, more minerals, and more energy to sustain their military, their data centers, to line the pockets of billionaires and fund their space ventures . But above all, they seek to uphold a vision of “America for Americans,” in which the wealth extracted from our territories is reinvested to strengthen a white and wealthy elite within the United States, while our peoples bear poverty, violence, and displacement.
This mode of governance is also reflected within the United States itself: the Trump administration’s disregard for laws and procedures when they stand in the way of its objectives; its threats and revenge campaigns against political leaders who dare oppose its policies; and its blatant corruption that benefits friends and those who offer the highest sums of money. That same government criminalizes, persecutes, and deports our migrant communities inside the United States. These are not separate phenomena — they are two sides of the same imperial project.
The question now is clear: what will be the cost to the Venezuelan people for the removal of Maduro, and who — which countries — will be next?
We know that many truths, many emotions, and many reasons can coexist at the same time. Unanimity is not required to sustain organization or collective association. We must seek common ground and shared interests. Our fate is linked.
A growing wave of authoritarian rule, oligarchy and imperial exploitation rises in opposition to the vision of self determination and dignity, a world that is just, solidaristic, equitable, and truly democratic. Just as we criticize the consolidation of an increasingly powerful oligarchy in the United States, we also ask whether clinging solely to state power strengthens or weakens us in the construction of that new horizon.
Speaking openly about the failures of the left is complicated and, at times, dangerous. There is often resistance to acknowledging when something has gone wrong. When has the United States ever allowed an experiment of this kind to run its course without interference? And at the same time, why offer our adversaries information that could strengthen them? These are all valid questions to deter such speak. But on the other side of those fears lies the consequence of not speaking plainly: failing to learn collectively, failing to innovate, and, worst of all, losing the trust of the people.
There is much talk about building power, but far less about how power is used once it is attained. We need conversations and practices to build and sustain organizations, parties, and movements that are effective and hold and wield power wisely and with integrity.
Only people organized in their communities, workplaces, and in the states and municipalities that still resist can confront and weaken this renewed expression of the Monroe Doctrine. From here, our responsibility is to defend the victories of our ancestors and elders and build anew.
The call from our political home today is to listen to one another, to question ourselves, and to debate collectively. This is critical in order to learn and to start again, and always, always marching on.
“The old world is dying, the new one struggles to be born, and in this twilight monsters emerge.”
— Antonio Gramsci
En lucha y solidaridad,
Mijente