US Imperialists out of Latin America!
Originally Published: January 3 2026
US imperialism is escalating towards all-out war with Venezuela. As of December 23rd, the US has hijacked three Venezuelan oil tanker ships, and has announced a total blockade on all sanctioned oil transports to and from Venezuela. As of October 28th, the number of US troops in the Southern Caribbean and Puerto Rico had expanded to 10,000. The US has deployed several warships including the USS Gerald Ford, the world’s largest aircraft carrier and largest warship ever constructed. The Trump administration has designated the Venezuelan government of Nicolas Maduro as a “foreign terrorist organization,” alleging that Maduro is directly involved in drug trafficking to the US. On January 2nd, the US imperialists resorted to the cowardly bombing of Caracas in the middle of the night on January 2 followed by the kidnapping of Maduro and his family. Even as they try to cripple the regime of the state of Venezuela with deadly bombs and terror, they cannot face the onslaught of the wrath of the Venezuelan people.
Why has the US so rapidly escalated the militarist aggression against Venezuela? The US is the world’s number one imperialist power, but this status is becoming more and more tenuous. The walls are closing in as US imperialism faces challenges on multiple fronts. Strategically, the US needs to encircle and contain the rise of Chinese imperialism, which is its greatest economic competitor on the world stage. Over the past several decades, China has expanded its economic, political, and military influence over Latin America. In 2000, the Chinese market accounted for less than 2 percent of Latin American exports. Over the next eight years, trade grew at an annual rate of 31 percent. Today, China is South America’s top trading partner, and second largest for Latin America as a whole. Chinese financial capital has increasingly penetrated the region, with the foreign direct investment at roughly $8.5 billion in 2024. Since 2005, China’s state owned financial institutions have loaned more than $120 billion to Latin American and Caribbean countries, securing greater economic control in the region through “debt trap” schemes. Venezuela is the largest borrower, receiving nearly $60 billion in Chinese state loans, mostly relating to energy and infrastructure. China has focused on control over critical infrastructure such as ports and energy grids. Moreover, Venezuela is the region’s top purchaser of Chinese military hardware, after the US prohibited all commercial arms sales to Caracas in 2006. In the contention with Chinese imperialism in the region, Venezuela is a key battleground as China tries to secure it as a firm foothold to expand its influence more broadly.
While the inter-imperialist conflict intensifies in the region, the people rise up against imperialism with greater organization, consciousness, and determination. Within Latin America and Caribbean, the masses have a rich history of struggle against against US imperialist domination. Over a century of coups, CIA and military intervention, predatory financial schemes, and other machinations have imprinted upon the minds of the people a deeply rooted anti-imperialist consciousness. Decades of people’s movements and armed struggle have provided the people invaluable experience in resistance. The massive uprisings in Peru and Ecuador, guerrilla struggles which persist in several countries, land seizures by poor peasants in countries such as Colombia and Brazil, strong class-conscious labor movements, and other expressions of the people’s struggles all loom large for the US imperialists. The Communist Party of Peru leads a People’s War as a guerrilla armed struggle against the US-backed regime, and Communist Parties across the region are making preparations for the initiation of more People’s Wars. This is the incredible trouble that the US faces. Latin America is a key region, indispensable for the strategic aims of imperialism. At the same time, it is a region characterized by heroic and persistent rebellion against the US, with over a century of accumulated experience in the anti-imperialist struggle.
The increasing peoples’ struggles and penetration of Chinese imperialism in Latin America are deeply troubling developments for US imperialism. Latin America is America’s “backyard”, historically a key link in the global hegemony of the US. Dating all the way back to the “Monroe Doctrine” by President James Monroe in 1823, the US has long asserted sole prerogative over affairs in the Western Hemisphere. Under US imperialism, since the Spanish-American War of 1898, this has meant unrestricted right to invade, coordinate military coups, interfere in internal politics, extract resources, and engage in predatory financial pressure to secure US economic and political interests.
The current administration has recently announced the “Trump Corollary” to the “Monroe Doctrine,” under the central slogan, “enlist and expand” – that is, enlist the Latin American collaborationist states in militarization and enforcement of US imperialist rule, and expand the military and financial penetration into Latin America securing more favorable governments and exploitative relations in the region. The “Trump Corollary” is a continuation of the policy of the genocidal Biden, who enlisted Kenya to deploy soldiers to Haiti and reinforced the sanctioning of Venezuela.
The war of aggression against Venezuela is part of a broader initiative of militarizing Latin America and the Western hemisphere more generally. The US recently announced troop deployments to Ecuador, welcomed with open arms by the pro-US, fascist regime of Daniel Noboa. While Venezuela is the main target at the moment, the US has threatened similar measures against Mexico and Colombia. This militarization, including reopening of cold war bases and deployment of troops and weaponry, is carried out throughout Latin America as part of the US’s goal to “restore leadership in the Western Hemisphere”.
As part of the preparation for the escalating war of aggression against Venezuela, the US is militarizing Puerto Rico as a strategic point in the region. The US military is reopening bases and infrastructure such as the Roosevelt Roads Naval Base, which was closed in 2004 after years of massive protests. Decades of live-fire and bomb testing has caused extensive environmental damage, with rates of cancer and respiratory illness soaring in military occupied areas. As a US territory seized in the 1898 Spanish-American war, Puerto Rico lacks formal political sovereignty with no representation in the federal legislative branch of government. As the Puerto Rican people aspire for national self-determination and peace, the re-militarization of the island will only invite greater resistance and struggle.
The current military escalation against Venezuela is result of a progressive escalation of the US’s low-intensity warfare in pursuit of regime change and installation of a more loyal puppet government. Since the Obama administration, the US has imposed sanctions on Venezuela as a means of crippling the economy and generating favorable conditions for US plans. These sanctions were expanded and utilized by both the Trump and Biden administrations. The US has directly interfered in Venezuela elections to promote a more favorable outcome, providing financial and logistical support to opposition groups and leaders, all while cynically calling for “free and fair elections”. The recent “Nobel Peace Prize” awarded to key Venezuelan opposition figure María Corina Machado is one of the latest ploys in the imperialist meddling. Democratic aligned media laments the “illegitimacy” of the Maduro presidency, promoting the same opposition groups the Trump administration seeks to impose. The great conundrum for the US however is that the more support they lend to the “opposition” groups, the more they undermine this “opposition” in the eyes of the Venezuelan people. After a century of intervention and coups, such inconspicuous trickery cannot fool the masses. Whether through militarization, sanctions, or political interference, the Democratic Party ultimately has no contention with the policy of regime change, no issue with imposing incredible suffering on the Venezuelan people. The phony “anti-war” posturing from the “left” of the Democratic Party is a merely a recoiling reaction to the Trump administration’s brazen aggravation of the conflict. There is disagreement over means, but the ends are the same: the intensification of the imperialist domination and exploitation of the Venezuelan people. But whatever the outcome, the Democrat politician’s hands will be just as stained with blood as their Republican counterparts.
The enormous ruckus made by the Trump administration over “narco-terrorism” is a thinly veiled ruse to fabricate a justification for direct military intervention. It is plainly evident that the accusations of drug trafficking are just an echo of the “weapons of mass destruction” used to justify the invasion of Iraq. Of course, the incredible hypocrisy is that the US has been one of the greatest facilitators in the international drug trade. Through the 1980s, the US propped up the military regime of the key CIA asset Manual Noriega in Panama, all the while well aware of Noriega’s role in drug trafficking in the region. The current escalation in Venezuela is the largest military escalation in the region since 1989, when the US invaded Panama to depose Noriega after he was no longer useful to the US interests in the region. The CIA assisted the “Contra” counter-insurgent forces in Nicaragua in smuggling cocaine distributed in US cities such as Los Angeles. The Contras used the CIA supported drug trafficking to fund their genocidal campaign against Sandinista guerrilla fighters and peasants.
Throughout their history of militarist interventions and counter-insurgency, the US imperialists have had no moral objection to drug smuggling to advance their goals. As Victor Marchetti, the former special assistant to the CIA deputy director Rufus Taylor explained: “It goes all the way back to the predecessor organization OSS and its involvement with the Italian mafia, the Cosa Nostra in Sicily and Southern Italy. Later on when they were fighting communists in France … they got in tight with the Corsican brotherhood. The Corsican brotherhood of course were big dope dealers. As things changed in the world the CIA got involved with the Kuomintang types in Burma who were drug runners because they were resisting the drift towards communism there. The same thing happened in Southeast Asia, later in Latin America. Some of the very people who are the best sources of information, who are capable of accomplishing things and the like happen to be the criminal element.” Whether by outright conspiracy or through the systematic deterioration and disinvestment in working-class neighborhoods and communities, the US capitalist class is the largest perpetrator of the drug crisis that the people of the world and the US working class face.
The military escalation towards Venezuela is one aspect of a multifaceted offensive by the US ruling class to preserve its weakening grip on global hegemonic power. The US must secure its hold on key regions, while also intensifying the exploitation of working people and crushing any resistance. The expansion of the immigration enforcement within the US is a key component of this reactionary offensive. The Trump administration has moved to withdraw the ‘Temporary Protected Status’ for over 600,000 Venezuelan immigrants in the United States. This would render these immigrant workers without legal status, and more susceptible to the militarist terror of the ICE thugs. At the same time, the state is expanding the repressive mechanisms against anti-imperialist and revolutionary activists. The designation of “Antifa” as a “domestic terror organization,” increasing FBI surveillance and raids, utilization of politically-motivated immigration enforcement, and curtailing of democratic rights of free speech and association are all measures designed to suppress the increasing domestic anti-imperialist resistance.
Despite all these maneuvers and preparations for large-scale conflict, the US hesitates. One of the main deterring factors for an all-out invasion of Venezuela is the inevitable armed resistance of the Venezuelan people. In addition to active armed forces numbering over 100,000, Maduro claims he will mobilize millions within the “Bolivarian militias.” Undoubtedly, a ground invasion by the US would confront the formidable force of the Venezuelan people mobilized in guerrilla resistance for their national liberation. Venezuela would become a cemetery for the occupiers, just like Gaza, Afghanistan, and Vietnam, all of which haunt the minds of the imperialist military strategists.
Opportunist, would-be “anti-imperialists” clamor for “multi-polar” geopolitical rearrangement of the world, where Chinese and Russian imperialism pose a greater challenge to US imperialism. This one-sided “anti-imperialism” opposes US military aggression, but welcomes the intervention by other imperialist powers so long as it threatens US hegemony. The situation with Venezuela, just like the brutal war in Ukraine, is a harbinger of what this “multi-polar” world order has to offer the oppressed masses of the third world. The inter-imperialist conflict is increasing, but the sharpening of this contradiction only intensifies the fundamental struggle between imperialism and the oppressed peoples of the world. As the imperialist powers gear up for a new inter-imperialist world war, they inevitably open up new armed conflicts, expand their financial schemes for exploitation and control, and amplify the repression against any resistance. The militarization of the Caribbean and Latin America indicates what is to come for the increasing inter-imperialist conflict as the US increasingly sets its sites on the Indo-Pacific region. The militarization of US territories, new wars of aggression, regime change, and greater exploitation of the people are the bricks which pave the road to new imperialist world war.
Genuine anti-imperialists must wage the struggle on multiple fronts and demand the unconditional self-determination of the Venezuelan people in their revolutionary national and democratic aspirations. The main aspect of this struggle is currently the opposition to US military aggression and looming invasion and occupation. As the Venezuelan people arm themselves and prepare for an armed struggle against US aggression, the anti-imperialists and workers in the US must prepare and develop the struggle on the home front. This struggle must be waged ideologically and politically against the misdirection by the Democratic Party and opportunist, false “anti-imperialists” who try to pacify the movement and hijack it for electoral maneuvering. Organizationally, it is necessary to build a broad front under a consistent anti-imperialist perspective, united in principles and in action. Anti-imperialist revolutionaries must expose the multifaceted offensive of US imperialism, intensifying the struggle on all its fronts. The struggle of immigrant workers, the struggle to defend democratic rights and political prisoners, the struggle for the liberation of Palestine and other oppressed nations – these are all fronts in the same anti-imperialist struggle.
YANKEES GO HOME!
VICTORY TO THE NATIONAL RESISTANCE OF THE VENEZUELAN PEOPLE!
DEATH TO US IMPERIALISM!