Venezuela, Palestine, Haiti…we stand with you against US imperialism and occupation
By the Global Women’s Strike (GWS), Women of Colour GWS and Payday men’s network
Once again, the US government and military have violently intervened to remove a head of state who did not serve their purpose, President Nicolas Maduro and his wife Celia Flores. Once again local elites (in Venezuela and some Caribbean and Latin American countries) have backed US criminality in their greed for power and resources and their contempt for the people they claim to represent. And once again the UK and the EU (except Spain) are going along with this blatant violation of international law.
All pretence fades in the light of Trump’s declaration that his invasion is a US takeover of Venezuela and its vast oil reserves and strategic minerals. One of our sisters in Venezuela, a country whose majority are people of colour, spoke for many as she told us “We are desperate, this is rough because terrible things can now happen in our country, these people are bad. Mothers are worried about protecting their children.” She also shared the first signs of defiance as thousands of people in Caracas took to the streets demanding the return of their kidnapped president.
The US-backed, armed and funded Israeli genocide in Gaza has shown that anyone who stands in the way of US (and its allies) domination is expendable – individually and in our hundreds of thousands. This is not new. Haiti has lived under US occupation, coups and imposed puppet governments for over a century, punished for its 1804 revolution which defeated the imperial powers and abolished slavery; its much loved democratically elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was removed by US marines with the backing of France and Canada in 2004. Many other countries in the Global South have suffered similarly, especially when they pursued policies that benefited their populations rather Western imperialism. But the US racist and supremacist disregard for life and for international law is being stated overtly, once again.
Since Hugo Chávez was elected president in 1998, the US has conspired and funded coups to stop the Bolivarian Revolution. In April 2002, Chávez was kidnapped. The coup failed as millions of Venezuelans, starting with women and loyal soldiers, poured onto the streets of every town and city to save their President and their revolution. (The Revolution Will Not Be Televised documented the coup and its reversal step by step.) Later that year, the CIA with the support of corrupt unions in Venezuela and the US, locked down Venezuela’s oil industry. This second coup also failed as people mobilised, inspiring the Venezuelan oil workers, including retired workers, to take over the running of their industry and save the revolution. (Our documentary, Enter the Oil Workers, tells that story.) Year after year, the US imposed sanctions and funded unelected candidates and NGOs to bring the government down, while the Bank of England withheld Venezuela’s gold reserves… All attempts failed.
The Bolivarian Revolution survived all these years because Chávez was loved, especially by the women who spearheaded the revolution, and whom he credited with being its “motor, cutting edge and fire”. They ran the misiones – the soup kitchens, the literacy, land and housing programmes, the health clinics, the user groups of the Women’s Development Bank… – the many government programmes which welcomed every gender and used some of Venezuela’s oil revenue to tackle poverty and discrimination. (You can see some of their achievements in our 2006 documentary, Journey with the Revolution.) And they continue to this day through comunas that grow and distributefood and organise in the community. Their 1999 antisexist and antiracist constitution broke new ground, including with Article 88 which recognised the economic value of the work women do in the home and entitled housewives to social security.
But these Venezuelans are never interviewed by the corporate media who have portrayed Chávez and then Maduro as dictators and “narco-traffickers”. Neither do they report how sanctions have crippled Venezuela’s economy, increasing poverty and emigration. Instead, they extol the virtues of every US-funded coup-plotting opposition. The latest, the extremely wealthy Maria Corina Machado, was directly involved in the 2002 coup against Chávez. She was rewarded for her warmongering efforts with the Nobel Peace Prize (shocking, but not surprising, considering that Henry Kissinger, responsible for killing millions in Vietnam, Indonesia, Chile… also received it) – a clear go ahead to Trump from the European elites.
The millions all over the world who have been mobilising for over two years against the genocide in Gaza and in support of the Palestinian, Haitian and other movements for liberation, against repression and climate change are testimony of a growing determination to stand for humanity against barbarism and the destruction of the world by the billionaires that rule it. We remember that President Chávez was the first to break diplomatic relations with Israel and call their actions a “genocide” in 2009, and that in 2006 he had the boldness to say “we can still smell the sulphur” when addressing the UN General Assembly, referring to George W Bush and the US invasion of Iraq. We note that Western politicians who are so keen to label Maduro as an “illegitimate President” have refused to dissociate themselves from Netanyahu and his genocide.
The mobilisations that are taking place in Venezuela and many cities around the world and the statements condemning this US “act of war” by civil society internationally and principled politicians like the President of Colombia Gustavo Petro and the new Mayor of New York Zohran Mamdani show that people know that we are all under threat. There is growing concern that Cuba, which has held on to its revolution since 1959 and has supported Venezuela and many others in the Global South with their health care, Colombia, whose President is an outspoken critic of the US, and Greenland, whose resources Trump has already claimed, may be attacked next.
The need to stop the imperialist war machine and invest in caring not killing has never been clearer or more urgent.
6 January 2026