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Firefighters work to extinguish flames from a vehicle used by organized crime members as roadblocks following a series of detentions by federal forces, in Guadalajara, Mexico, February 22, 2026. REUTERS/Michelle Freyria. REFILE - UPDATING SLUG (Michelle Freyria/Reuters - image credit) Source Yahoo News
By Sirantos Fotopoulos
2-23-26
Yesterday’s events in Mexico will no doubt be packaged, polished, and presented as a triumph of state resolve: Nemesio Rubén Oseguera Cervantes — better known as “El Mencho,” the head of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel — was killed in an operation hailed by officials as decisive and necessary. And yet, within hours, vast stretches of the country were seized by retaliation: highways choked with burning vehicles, cities paralyzed by blockades, flights suspended, businesses shuttered, families told to shelter in place.
The choreography was grimly familiar. A kingpin falls; the republic trembles.
What is advertised as a surgical victory metastasizes into civic panic. The spectacle invites applause, but the smoke rising over towns and tourist corridors alike is less a banner of victory than an indictment of a state that congratulates itself while its citizens barricade their doors.
It would be comforting to believe that the elimination of a notorious crime lord constitutes a moral turning point. But such comfort is counterfeit. Cartels do not spring from the soil like weeds independent of human cultivation; they are cultivated — by corruption, by collusion, by indifference, by the steady normalization of impunity.
For decades, public officials have oscillated between impotence and complicity, while vast rivers of money — black, gray, and occasionally laundered into spotless respectability — have flowed through banks, businesses, and political campaigns.
The narcotics economy has thrived not merely because criminals are ruthless, but because institutions have been porous, ambition has outrun ethics, and power has discovered that it can coexist quite profitably with vice. To pretend that one man’s death severs this web is to mistake the removal of a node for the dissolution of a network.
Indeed, the retaliatory convulsions that followed the killing offer a bracing tutorial in how shallow the rhetoric of “decapitation strategy” truly is. When a cartel leader dies and entire regions are brought to a halt by orchestrated mayhem, we are not witnessing the collapse of criminal enterprise; we are observing its redundancy and resilience.
The enterprise continues because it is not, in essence, a personality cult but a business model — one lubricated by demand abroad, by inequality at home, and by a surplus of young men to whom the legitimate economy offers little beyond stagnation and humiliation. Remove the figurehead and another will surface, because the incentives remain intact and the structural rot undisturbed.
Meanwhile, the cost is borne, as ever, by those who never signed up for this grim morality play. It is the shopkeeper who pulls down the metal shutter and wonders whether tomorrow will bring customers or gunfire; the teacher who cancels class; the parent who measures the distance between the front door and the nearest patch of floor safe from stray bullets. Airports close, highways empty, rumors multiply.
The language of “security operations” sounds robust in press conferences, but on the ground it translates into uncertainty and dread. The citizen is asked to applaud the state’s resolve while absorbing the shockwaves of its strategy. Victory, in this register, is indistinguishable from collective anxiety.
To speak plainly, the cartels are symptoms of a deeper disorder. They flourish where opportunity withers, where public trust has eroded to a brittle shell, where the distance between official rhetoric and lived reality has become a chasm.
Decades of uneven development, regional neglect, and a political culture tolerant of graft have created fertile terrain for parallel sovereignties — criminal fiefdoms that tax, threaten, and recruit with grim efficiency. Militarized responses, however forceful, address the visible eruption while leaving the subterranean pressures untouched. One may deploy soldiers and drones; one may celebrate tactical successes; but without confronting the entrenched inequalities and institutional decay that nourish the underworld, the cycle will reproduce itself with grim inevitability.
If there is a lesson in yesterday’s conflagration, it is not that the state lacks firepower. It is that firepower alone cannot repair a civic fabric long frayed by corruption and exclusion. The eradication of a cartel leader may satisfy a demand for spectacle and retribution, but it does not restore faith in institutions, nor does it generate dignified livelihoods, nor does it disinfect the corridors of power where complicity has too often found refuge. A society cannot kill its way to moral renewal. Until the deeper architecture of inequality, impunity, and political cynicism is dismantled, the smoke will clear only long enough for the next plume to rise.
And yet, to concede that a society cannot kill its way to moral renewal is not to concede that renewal is impossible. It is, rather, to insist that the work of repair must be undertaken where it has always properly belonged: in the patient reconstruction of institutions, the stubborn defense of civic virtue, and the unapologetic expansion of opportunity.
The same nation that has endured cycles of violence has also produced jurists, journalists, teachers, organizers, and ordinary citizens who refuse to surrender the public square to either the gunman or the cynic. If the smoke has too often obscured the horizon, it has not extinguished the horizon itself. Renewal begins not with a raid at dawn, but with the quiet, unglamorous labor of restoring trust where it has been squandered.
There are, even now, municipalities experimenting with transparency measures that make graft more difficult and accountability less optional; community groups reclaiming public spaces once ceded to fear; investigative reporters who continue, at real personal risk, to expose the nexus between political power and criminal enterprise. Such efforts rarely command the headlines that accompany a kingpin’s demise, yet they constitute the more durable form of resistance.
A cartel may command a territory through intimidation, but it cannot easily survive where courts function, where contracts are enforced without bribery, and where young people can imagine a future that does not require a rifle or a lookout post.
Economic inclusion, too, is a practical antidote to despair. When education is adequately funded, when rural regions are not treated as expendable hinterlands, when small businesses can operate without extortion masquerading as taxation, the gravitational pull of criminal enterprise weakens. The narcotics economy feeds on scarcity — of income, of mobility, of dignity. Reverse those scarcities and the calculus shifts.
A young person who sees a credible path to advancement is less susceptible to the seduction of easy money and borrowed power. Structural change is slow and, to the impatient, maddeningly incremental; yet it is precisely this incrementalism that builds foundations too solid to be toppled by the next eruption of violence.
Finally, moral renewal requires a cultural insistence that neither the state nor its adversaries are beyond scrutiny. A citizenry that demands transparency from its leaders, that rejects the glamorization of criminality, and that prizes the rule of law over theatrical displays of force performs a quiet revolution of its own. It is easy to despair when confronted with burning roads and shuttered cities. It is harder, but far more consequential, to commit to the long campaign of civic reconstruction.
The smoke will inevitably rise again unless deeper reforms are pursued. Thus the task is clear: build a society in which the next plume finds no tinder. In that project — arduous, unsensational, but indispensable — lies the only optimism worthy of the name.
The kidnapping of Venezuela’s President Maduro and his wife by US military forces, the subsequent takeover by the Vice President Rodriguez and her agreement to allow the US to control Venezuela’s oil export revenues and to bring in US energy multi-nationals to invest – all this signals the end game of the Chavista revolution that began over 25 years ago. So it is very opportune that a new book has been published on what happened in Venezuela to reach this point.
Called Venezuela in Crisis and published by Haymarket Books, this book brings together “some of the most important Marxist, socialist, and anti-capitalist thinkers in Venezuela, representing a range of left political traditions and organizations.” These Spanish language writers have been translated so that English speakers can read the arguments and experiences of those on the left in Venezuela. Some contributors served in Chávez’s cabinet and have now become critics of the Maduro government. “Bringing these voices to an English-speaking audience will allow readers to engage with the current debates and perspectives of the Venezuelan left”.
The book has been edited by Anderson Bean from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, who has written before on Venezuela. His introductory chapter provides the reader with the essence of the chapters in the book. Bean starts by pointing out that through the 2000s, the Chavista-Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela was an inspiration for others in the so-called Global South, perhaps even more so than the Cuban revolution of the 1960s. The election of Hugo Chavez in the 1998 election, after decades of corrupt, pro-capitalist, pro-US governments, was a burst of fresh air. In the subsequent years, the Chavez presidency “improved Venezuelans’ material well-being, brought greater social equality, and empowered sectors of society that were traditionally excluded from the political process.”
Bean argues that there were three key components of the Chavez presidency: first, the rewriting of the constitution to promote of broad citizen participation and comprehensive human rights protections; second, the redistribution of oil profits through various social programs which reduced official poverty levels by 37.6% and ‘extreme poverty” by 57.8%. By 2008, Venezuela also had the highest minimum wage in all Latin America, and inequality in the country dropped to one of the lowest in the Americas. By 2011, Venezuela was the second most equal country in the Western Hemisphere; only Canada had lower levels of inequality. And third, which Bean reckons was the “most transformative”, was the transfer of power to the popular sectors through the creation of new forms of popular assemblies and experiments with workers’ controls and community councils.
But from 2013 onwards, things began to go wrong, big time. From 2013 to 2021, Venezuela’s GDP fell 75%, inflation reached 130,000% in 2018, the highest in the world! The percentage of households classified as poor increased from 48.4% in 2014 to 81.5% in 2022. The monthly minimum wage at US$2.23 then was the lowest in all Latin America. Indeed, the monthly minimum salary was just US$0.15 a day, eight times less than the World Bank’s then limit for absolute poverty of US$1.25 a day. That compared with a monthly minimum wage under Chávez of US$300, over 60 times higher.
The collapse in real incomes and the sharp rise in poverty in the 2010s led to a migration crisis. Since 2016, millions of Venezuelans have fled the country seeking work abroad in order to send money back home. Today, the number of Venezuelan refugees and migrants worldwide is estimated to be around 7.7 million, or 20% of all Venezuelans. Venezuela now has the highest number of displaced people in Latin America and the second highest in the world, just behind Syria.
What explains this collapse from inspiration to nightmare? Bean says there were two causes. The first was US sanctions imposed on Venezuela, coupled with several attempts by the US state, in collaboration with the domestic Venezuelan right-wing opposition, to undermine the Venezuelan economy, in order to carry out regime change. US imperialism saw Venezuela as a threat, with Chavez’s renationalisation of the oil industry; and Chavez’s attempt to build trade relations with other Latin American countries outside the orbit of US-led trade agreements, while looking for support in trade and investment from the likes of China. The very early success of the Chavista presidency was anathema.
Indeed, in 2002, the US, in collaboration with the Venezuelan business class, attempted a coup to overthrow Chávez. He was removed from office for forty-seven hours, before being reinstated by mass popular mobilizations. From late 2002 to early 2003, the US supported an oil lockout to bring oil production to a halt with the stated goal of forcing Chávez to resign. In 2014, the US backed the Venezuelan right-wing again in violent street protests called the guarimbas, demanding ‘la salida’, or the “exit,” of Maduro. The US, again in collaboration with the sections of the Venezuelan right wing, attempted yet another coup in January 2019, when Juan Guiadó unconstitutionally declared himself president of Venezuela. After the January coup failed to overthrow Maduro, Guiadó tried again in April 2019, but was thwarted once more.
These attempted coups failed, but a litany of economic sanctions were imposed. Under Trump’s sanctions, US institutions and citizens were prohibited from trading in Venezuelan debt. All government assets were frozen. The country was prevented from restructuring its foreign debt or payment schedules. Payments sent by countries participating in its program for preferential payment of oil were blocked. The sale of billions of dollars in trade credits were banned. Sanctions also closed off Venezuela to its most important oil market, the US, and properties held abroad were confiscated, like the US-based Citgo, which the state depended on for sources of income. These measures led to a loss of $6 billion in oil revenue in just 2018 alone. Sanctions froze $17 billion of the country’s assets and cost the country around $11 billion in export losses in 2019, or $30 million a day.
The Washington, DC–based Center for Economic and Policy Research published a 2019 report detailing the effects of US sanctions on Venezuela. Between 2017 and 2018 alone, the sanctions killed an estimated 40,000 Venezuelans and plunged many more into precarity. Over 300,000 people were put at risk because of the lack of medicine and health care, including 80,000 HIV-positive Venezuelans who have gone without antiretroviral drugs for years now. Additionally, obtaining needed cardiovascular medicine or insulin is a challenge for the 16,000 Venezuelans who need dialysis, the 4 million with diabetes and hypertension and the 16,000 people who have cancer.
But the writers in this book are at pains to argue that the collapse in Venezuela cannot be laid solely at the door of US imperialism and its sanctions. Despite the harm that the sanctions have wrought in Venezuela, the other major component was the economic mismanagement and neoliberal program of the increasingly authoritarian Maduro government. Mainstream capitalist economists claim that the collapse of Venezuela was the result of socialism; while many on the left claim that the Maduro regime had to be defended as an example of socialism. Both sides are wrong. Bean and the other writers in this book do not accept that Chavez (and Maduro after him) had established a socialist economy, or even that Venezuela was on the ‘road to socialism’.
As I argued in my own posts on Venezuela, Chavez’s relative success in improving the lot of most Venezuelans was founded on the boom in commodity prices during the 2000s. With the price of oil and natural gas high, even a modest increase in royalties and taxes created a huge influx in government revenues. This extra revenue enabled Chávez to increase social spending, create various distribution programs and improve the standard of living of the majority of Venezuelans.
But, as Bean points out, Chavez was able to do this without touching the Venezuelan capitalist sector. “There was no real meaningful transformation of social property relations, no transformation of the international division of labor, and no challenge to the prerogatives of transnational capital.” Private capital still dominated in Venezuela throughout the presidencies of Chávez and Maduro. The overwhelming majority of the means of production remained in the hands of the private sphere and the capitalist class. In fact, under Chavez, between 1999 and 2011, the private sector’s share of economic activity actually increased from 65% to 71%. The production and distribution of the majority of goods and services, including key industries like major food import and processing operations, pharmaceuticals, and auto parts, are still controlled by the private sector.
Even in instances where the state did own the means of production, for example, the state-owned oil and natural gas company Petroleum of Venezuela (PDVSA) and the concrete and asphalt industries, it is the state bureaucracy that controls and makes all decisions in these industries, rather than the workers. Indeed, as Chavez put it himself: “Who would think to say that Venezuela is a socialist country? No, that would be to deceive ourselves. We are in a country that still lives in capitalism, we have only initiated a path; we are taking steps against the world current, including towards a socialist project; but this is for the medium or long term.” Most important, as I also argued, there was no break with the country’s dependence on the export of minerals and hydrocarbons. Venezuela’s dependence on oil exports increased during the Chávez and Maduro era, leaving the country as a ‘one-trick pony’ beholden to global financial and oil markets.
The ‘compromise’ with Venezuelan capital finished with the end of the commodity boom in 2013. By 2015, commodity prices had hit a twelve-year low. This change also coincided with the death of Chavez and his replacement by Maduro. Maduro was faced with the dilemma. As Bean puts it: “ Now in a situation of austere state revenues, who was going to pay for the crisis? Was it going to be labor and regular working people, the social bases that supported and voted Chávez into power? Most important, “was there going to be a conflict with capital that had been delayed for years?”
The answer soon became clear. As one chapter by Venezuelan economist Luis Salas put it: “There is not much difference between the economic program of the [right-wing] opposition and that of the [Maduro] Government. . . .The only difference with the opposition is that the Government wants to reach agreements with the Russians, the Chinese or the Turks; and the opposition, with the Americans and Europeans. They are capitalist alliances, but with different partners.” As Roberto López argues later in the book,”[T]he inauguration of Nicolás Maduro as president in 2013, meant the almost total abandonment of the anti-neoliberal program, and the return of the same economic policies implemented in the last decade of the twentieth century. Maduro maintained the same radical discourse as his predecessor and presented his government as a genuinely “workerist” and “socialist” one. However, in office, he has implemented a real change of economic course, opening the doors to neoliberal policies, in a framework of growing authoritarianism.” This too was my view in my post at the time.
In 2016, the Maduro administration opened the Orinoco Mining Arc for mineral exploitation. And in 2021 Maduro introduced Special Economic Zones (SEZs) for capitalist businesses, free of taxation and regulation. In 2018, the Maduro presidency abolished the right to strike. With the so-called Anti-Blockade Law in 2020, Maduro effectively suspended the constitution and granted authority to the executive branch for steering the economy. Maduro dropped the living wage policy adopted under Chavez and introduced a ‘hate speech’ law that established prison sentences of up to twenty years for speeches against the government. The government also privatized major branches of industry, including oil, iron, aluminum, gold and diamonds, “Many of these privatizations targeted the very same industries that Chávez had previously nationalized, in effect carrying out a reverse appropriation that restored former state-owned assets to capitalist ownership.”
But perhaps worst of all is the cronyism. Under Maduro, the Venezuelan state has turned into a piñata, where a political-military caste distributes resources, privileges and financial benefits to secure loyalty and maintain its hold on power. The Maduro administration looked to compromise and reach agreements with the business sectors, including Fedecámaras— the big business organization that had played a key role in the failed 2002 coup against Chávez. The voices of any working class organisations were ignored.
It is the conclusion of this book’s writers from the left in Venezuela that among observers in the advanced countries of the Global North, there has been a tendency “to unwittingly lend credibility to a regime that uses the language of socialism to obscure its own oppressive and anti-worker practices. By failing to reckon with the realities of Venezuela’s crisis, such positions inadvertently sideline the struggles of the Venezuelan people, who are fighting both the consequences of the Maduro government and the suffocating sanctions imposed by the United States.” It is not socialism that failed in Venezuela, but the failure to apply socialist policies to end the sabotage of the capitalist sector in the country and to unite the working class organisations in the struggle against US imperialism.
Now in February 2026, the Rodriguez administration is prostrate before US imperialism. The Trump administration has been clever and cautious; it has not yet replaced Maduro with the right wing, free market, Nobel peace prize winner (sic), Maria Machado, for fear of generating a tumult and even civil war. Instead, it is steadily forcing Rodriguez into acceding to all its demands in preparation for elections later that can then bring in a completely pro-US regime. Appearing alongside Rodríguez at the Miraflores presidential palace last Wednesday, US energy secretary Chris Wright said: “We want to set the Venezuelan people and economy free.” A poll by Gold Glove Consulting this week found that Machado would win a landslide victory in a fresh vote, with 67% favouring her against 25% for Rodríguez. Seventy-two per cent of respondents felt Venezuela was “moving in a positive direction” after Maduro’s capture.
By Greg Oxley of French socialist website, La Riposte
The bombing of Caracas and the kidnapping of Nicolas Maduro and Cilia Flores marked the unleashing of a large-scale imperialist offensive against Venezuela. Its objective is nothing less than to grab the country’s natural resources and to place its government under the effective control of the American administration.
The intervention took place after the build-up, since August 2025, of a powerful military presence off the Venezuelan coast. This includes the USS Gerald R. Ford (the largest aircraft carrier in the world), the USS Winston S. Churchill, the USS Bainbridge and at least 9 other first-class warships, equipped with an extremely powerful air strike force and some 4,500 marines. 18,000 U.S. troops are stationed in Florida and 15,000 in Puerto Rico, where a naval base, closed for decades, has been recommissioned.
This deployment is of a scale and firepower capacity that completely belies the pretext of drug trafficking that the American administration has used to justify its existence. To destroy thirty or so boats designated – without the slightest evidence – as drug smugglers, a surveillance operation and a single fighter jet would have been enough.
Fighting drug trafficking was only a sham, especially since Trump has nothing against drug traffickers, provided they are on his side. We know that the former president of Honduras Juan Orlando Hernández, sentenced to 45 years in prison in June 2024 for his participation in drug trafficking in collusion with the Sinaloa cartel and other crimes, was pardoned by Trump.
Another less publicized case is that of Ross Ulbricht, a large-scale seller of narcotics and other illegal products on the dark web. He was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole by the American justice system in 2015. Trump pardoned him in January 2025, a few days into his second term. The donation of one million dollars from Ulbricht’s mother to candidate Trump’s presidential campaign might have had something to do with that! Obviously, the spectacular and highly publicised destruction of purportedly drug-running boats was just political theatrics, to cover preparations for war against Venezuela.
Militarily, Venezuela is completely held in check. Its air defences have been partially destroyed, and any attempt to use the remaining part would be suicidal. During the January 3 attack, a few Venezuelan fighter jets took off, but all it took was for the Americans to tell them to turn back or be destroyed for them to give up the fight. As for Venezuela’s maritime defence, it is very far from being able to compete with the American fleet.
New acting President Delcy Rodriguez meeting with her Council [photo – wiki commons]
In the first press conference after Maduro’s kidnapping, Trump said that from now on, Venezuela will be “run” by his administration, and that Delcy Rodriguez, now Venezuela’s interim president, is ready to co-operate in this takeover. Marco Rubio, his secretary of state, reiterated this statement. However, Delcy Rodriguez then denounced the American intervention and vowed to defend Venezuela’s sovereignty and protect its natural resources.
It was not immediately clear how the US administration could effectively, to quote Trump, “take all the decisions”, take control of the industry and seize the country’s oil resources. Nor is the nature of its relationship with the post-Maduro regime in Caracas clear. Everything is still not out in the open, but this week’s events have provided a better understanding of the situation.
The Venezuelan regime
As far as the regime is concerned, the Venezuelan state is now, and has been for a long time, in the hands of the military caste at the head of the armed forces. The power, prestige and personal wealth of this caste depend largely on oil windfalls, shady deals and corruption.
The Bolivarian Revolution, under the leadership of Hugo Chavez, who died in 2013, was not brought to a decisive conclusion. Chávez implemented a program of important social reforms, but capitalism remained intact and the “Bolivarian” bureaucracy, freed from any semblance of democratic control, became arrogant, imbued with a sense of their own untrammelled power, personal enrichment and corruption.
Today’s Venezuelan government is an authoritarian and repressive regime, responsible for brutal arbitrary arrests and detention, as well as numerous murders and “forced disappearances”. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and other advocacy organizations have documented many cases of torture and cruelty against opponents of the regime, including beatings, electric shocks, asphyxiation with plastic bags and long-term solitary confinement in filthy disciplinary cells.
The victims of this repression are not only political figures, but also trade unionists, strikers, and many who people who have simply protested against poverty and social injustice or who done nothing other than publicly criticise the regime in one way or another.
The country is deeply scarred by glaring social inequality; the impoverishment of workers and of the middle classes; unemployment and mass emigration. The regime’s social base – which was massive in the Chavez era – has been greatly undermined by social and economic stagnation and state repression. Clearly, the weakening of the regime, and its internal dislocation, greatly facilitated the American intervention. The CIA had long since recruited agents from Maduro’s inner circle. The fact that the latter had to entrust his personal guard to Cuban special forces speaks volumes about the fragility of his position.
Imperialist stranglehold on oil
For Trump and Rubio, overthrowing the regime by force and installing a puppet government in its place would be a dangerous option, possibly dragging them into a long-term war of uncertain outcome. Even this option cannot be categorically ruled out. The US administration prefers, at least for now, not to impose a “regime change”, but a change in the policy of the existing regime. There is no doubt that Trump has the means to achieve this. And should this fail, he will still be able to hit Venezuela in a much more devastating way than in the intervention of January 3.
A first indication of the balance of power in this conflict is provided by the Venezuelan government’s decision to release certain political prisoners – those who mattered, in short, in the eyes of the American authorities. Rodriguez calls this about-face a “gesture for peace.” However, for Trump, the priority issue in the conflict is that of Venezuela’s oil resources. He has bluntly stated that Venezuelan oil “belongs to the United States”, that the regime there has stolen it, and that he wants to take it back.
From the Financial Times – 6 January 2026
And he can do it. He is taking the oil now and will in future. Who can stop him? The US armada is there to intimidate the regime, on the one hand, but it also means that Venezuela is under a total oil embargo (and not just oil, potentially), giving the US economic power of life-or-death over Venezuela. Only shipments to the United States can get through. Currently, oil shipments are being managed directly by the American authorities.
Trump has asked 14 major U.S. and European oil corporations, including Chevron, Exxon Mobile, ConocoPhillips and Continental Resources, Repsol, Shell and Eni, to take advantage of the takeover of Venezuelan reserves. He asked them to invest $100 billion to build new oil facilities and renovate existing ones.
But industry leaders are reluctant, at least for now. The fact is that even if corporations were willing to invest so heavily, it would probably take years before they could make profits that would be concerning enough from their point of view. The social and political stability of the country is also a problem. The level of long-term risk is indeed considerable.
It is possible, however, that the reluctance displayed by the leaders of the multinationals is only strategic, in the sense that they know how important these investments are to Trump and hope to be able to obtain concessions and financial guarantees in exchange. In any case, for the time being, the American administration is organising the confiscation of existing production.
Since the implementation of the maritime blockade, oil tankers trying to defy it have been intercepted and their shipments automatically become American property. But the imperialist brigandry does not stop there. The Financial Times of January 6th, 2026 detailed how Trump proceeded to seize all the oil still blocked in the port area, the value of which is estimated at $3 billion.
“Donald Trump is asking the United States to bring sanctioned Venezuelan oil to American ports. He said Venezuelan authorities would hand over between 30 million and 50 million barrels of authorized crude to the United States, a sign that his administration is making good on its desire to control the country’s oil sector.”
The oil seized by the United States will then be sold at market price. Trump said that the income generated by the sale will be placed in a bank account managed by himself, personally:
“This money will be controlled by me, as President of the United States of America, to ensure that it is used for the benefit of the Venezuelan people and the United States,”
On his Truth Social platform, he says that the seized oil:
“will be transported by storage vessels and brought directly to the unloading docks in the United States […] I have directed Energy Secretary Chris Wright to execute this plan immediately.”
The Financial Times explains that, “These remarks come as a flotilla of U.S. tankers is heading to Venezuelan waters to begin loading oil from the country, which has been blocked in ports because of Washington’s naval blockade.” Trump estimates that this operation would give him up to 50 million barrels of oil, the equivalent of six weeks of Venezuelan production.
Submission of the Venezuelan regime
The American strategy also relies on the greed and corruption of the regime. Rodriquez and the leaders of the armed forces want above all to preserve their power, their privileges and their personal wealth. If that means dealing with US imperialism, they will, especially since Trump has directly threatened them with “the same fate as Maduro, or worse” if they don’t.
The Venezuelan government has not even tried to resist this imperialist plunder. On the contrary, it approved the handing over of 30 million barrels to the Americans on January 6. When Trump says that Venezuela is effectively managed by the executive branch of the United States, he is not bluffing. He describes Rodriquez as an “ally” and a “collaborator”. Rodriguez’s power is largely nominal. On all the issues that matter to them, it is now the United States that pulls the strings and sets the policy of its government.
Maduro kidnapped by US forces [Image – La Riposte]
The sight of Maduro, handcuffed and blindfolded, being taken out of the country after an audacious lightning operation, undoubtedly made an impression. The protests about the legality of his arrest are of no consequence. As is often the case with Trump, regarding his actions in the United States or elsewhere, legal or not, what is done is done. And since the US Congress is largely under his thumb, he has a free hand to do what he wants.
We denounce the murderous attack on Venezuela and the kidnapping of Maduro and Flores. This is an unacceptable imperialist aggression, whether it be legal or not. However, the personal fate of the two captives is not the most important question, except, of course, to Maduro and Flores themselves. Our focus should be on the far more important issues of US imperialism and the fate of the Venezuelan people.
Maduro is indignant, naturally. He maintains that his rights have been violated, and that is certainly the case. However, at least he will have a trial, a team of lawyers, and the opportunity to defend himself. No one is going to connect electrical cables to his body. He will not be beaten with a belt or a baton. He will not be murdered or suffer “forced disappearance”, which is more than can be said of his opponents in Venezuela.
The Cuban dimension
An important aspect of U.S. strategy in the Caribbean is that of Cuba. Economic, diplomatic and military cooperation between Cuba and Venezuela dates back to the coming to power of Hugo Chavez in 1998. Venezuela exported an average of 35,000 barrels of oil per day to Cuba in 2023. The volume of exports was 100,000 barrels per day in 2008. But despite this decline, it was still five times the amount supplied by Russia and a significant boon for the Cuban economy.
In return, the Cuban government has provided medical professionals and hospital equipment, as well as military personnel and highly specialised intelligence agents. Since Juan Guaidó’s 2019 coup attempt, which was backed by Trump and Rubio, and the imposition of economic sanctions, the security and intelligence apparatus from Cuba has become much larger.
The security link between the two countries is now weakened by the American intervention and the blockade. Trump has said that the Cuban regime “will fall soon.” That remains to be seen. What is certain, however, is that by stopping the export of oil to Cuba, he is dealing a heavy blow to a Cuban economy already in difficulty and increasing its isolation. Russia and China are staying away from the situation and their involvement in Venezuelan affairs will now be seriously reduced.
Strategic Reorientation of the USA
The decision to launch a military and economic operation against Venezuela is part of the new National Security Strategy developed by the current US administration. In a sense, this strategy amounts to a scaling down the ambitions of the United States in the world arena compared to what it has been in recent decades, moving it from a global hegemonic power to a more regional power.
The current administration is no longer the bearer of a “globalisation” supported by an intensification of international “free trade”, using its military power and reach to defend its own interests and, by extension, those of the Western imperialist powers as a whole, and heavily involved in international institutions and agencies.
The document recently produced by the current administration to define its strategic priorities clearly states that the main pivot of US interests is in the Western Hemisphere (the North and South American continents) and presents this as a “Trump” corollary to the “Monroe Doctrine”. This doctrine, announced by US President James Monroe in 1823, stipulated, in short, that the United States should not interfere in the affairs of the European powers, but concentrate on the Americas: “To the Europeans, the old continent, to the Americans the New World”.
Stephen Miller – Trump’s deputy Chief of Staff spells it out. [From a broadcast interview on CNN – 4 January 2026]
In essence, Monroe wanted to tell the European powers that they should not attempt to recolonise the newly independent countries of Latin America. In Monroe’s time, the United States was a relatively small and essentially agricultural economic entity, with just 20 states and a population of about 10 million people. Its share of world trade was only 2.6%.
The allusion to the Monroe Doctrine, which Trump seems to see as a justification for his aggression against Venezuela, is completely nonsensical. From the point of view of US imperialism, seeking to restrict the US sphere of intervention in this way is not only prejudicial to its interests, but also practically impossible to maintain in practice, given the global reach and economic power of the giant multinational corporations that lie at the heart of its economy.
Military and diplomatic strategy must align with economic strategy, or else do serious harm to the latter. Trade between the United States and Latin America was worth $450 million in 2024, compared to $1500 billion with the European Union and $2000 billion with Asia! Economically (by imposing protectionist tariffs), diplomatically and militarily, Trump is weakening the ties between the United States and Europe. This is a disastrous policy, even for his own camp.
The strains within NATO offer new possibilities for Russia’s imperial expansion. By abandoning its European alliances – even making concrete preparations for the upcoming annexation of Greenland, which belongs to its “ally” Denmark – the US is freeing up military resources to pay more attention to its main international rival, namely Chinese imperialism. The US priority is to contain China’s economic expansion and growing military power as much as possible.
Given these strategic priorities, the fate of Ukraine matters little to Trump who, through all the apparent zigzags in his attitude toward the Russia-Ukraine war, has repeatedly pressured Ukraine to make significant concessions to Russia. However, if Russia were to agree to stop the war in exchange for the annexation of eastern Ukraine, it would only be the prelude to a new Russian offensive to take the entire country.
Spheres of influence
It is as if Washington and Moscow have agreed to turn a blind eye to the extension, through war if necessary, of their respective spheres of influence. Russia’s next targets may well be towards other European countries, especially since the latter can no longer count on support from the United States.
Putin’s war to colonise Ukraine, the genocide in Gaza, the numerous wars in Africa, the threat to Greenland, the rise of protectionism, the arms race and now the aggression against Venezuela all mark a turning point in the history of international relations that raises the prospect of further wars and genocides around the world.
The imperialist aggression against Venezuela is further proof of the realities of capitalism and imperialism. The world is dominated by great powers with an insatiable thirst for profit and domination.
So-called “international law” does not work in the face of predators like Trump, Putin or Netanyahu. It exists only on paper. Who is going to impose it? Recently, the true foundation of international relations has been brutally explained by Stephen Miller, Donald Trump’s deputy chief of staff. Asked by CNN‘s Jake Tapper (January 4, 2026) about the legality of the attack on Venezuela and the abduction of its head of state, he replied:
“Look, we live in a world where you can talk as much as you want about international courtesies and everything else, but[…] the real world […] is governed by force, governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world. He continued, “We are a superpower. And under President Trump, we’re going to behave like a superpower.“
This is the authentic voice of imperialism! It reminds us of the stark truth as stated by the Venezuelan-born American socialist, Daniel De Leon (1852-1914). “Capitalism means war,” he said. He could perhaps not have imagined just how right he was, since the terrifying carnage of 1914-1918 just weeks after his death. Recent experience shows us that this idea has lost none of its relevance. If we want to prevent new invasions, new pillage, new carnage, we must find a way to put an end to the system that is the cause of it.
The historic tragedy of the current situation in the Caribbean is that it was precisely in Venezuela, some 20 years ago, that the possibility of overthrowing capitalism and spreading the transformation to the entire Latin American continent presented itself.
The opportunity was lost, alas. But for future struggles, let us never forget the fundamental lesson of that failure, namely that no resistance movement, no matter how massive and impressive, can truly defeat and abolish exploitation and oppression unless it succeeds in taking control of all the essential wheels of economic and political power out of the hands of the capitalists.
Only in this way can we hope to build a society based on democratic management of wealth, for the benefit of all, and begin to free the world from the law of profit and imperialist greed.
[This article is a translated and slightly edited version of an article in the French socialist website – La Riposte. The original can be found here]
[Featured photo – from Trumps “Truth Social” platform]
This clearly disproves the notion that multipolarity at the present stage can serve as a mechanism for protecting the sovereignty of Global South states. The US, with the world’s largest military budget, the most extensive network of military bases, and technological superiority, has reasserted its unipolar hegemony in the field of military power. The subsequent psychological warfare operation has sought to sow disunity by alleging “betrayal” or “treason” within the revolutionary leadership, particularly targeting Vice President Delcy Rodríguez. This narrative lacks any evidence, appears totally false, and is also a classic tactic in US military strategy and psychological operations.
The Rodríguez family’s revolutionary credentials are etched in struggle. Their father, Jorge Antonio Rodríguez, a leader of the Socialist League, a Marxist-Leninist organization, was tortured and murdered by the Punto Fijo regime in 1976. Both Delcy and her brother Jorge (the President of the National Assembly) emerged from this tradition of clandestine and mass struggle for socialism. President Maduro himself was a cadre of the same organization. To suggest betrayal among them or capitulation born of cowardice or opportunism ignores four decades of shared political formation, persecution, and leadership under relentless imperialist aggression and the class character of their revolutionary leadership.
2) But a former insider - Chavez confidante Eva Golinger - has expressed a very different view:
Have been saying all along that the pseudo-experts on Venezuela that popped up over the past few months were miscalculating the internal situation in the country and government. The story the opposition and Machado were telling was not the reality inside the country, but they were platformed on all major media worldwide and had the ear of governments throughout Europe and the US, and most think tanks regurgitated the same talking points.
This has been the case for years - decades really. They were wrong. This is just a simple overview. The government in Venezuela has been comprised of several groups that have a power-sharing pact. They control different sectors of the apparatus - security, military, pueblo, colectivos, institutions, judiciary, oil industry, business, etc. One of those groups - Delcy and her brother Jorge - have now taken power through a meticulous and 'evil genius' negotiation with the Trump administration that has been going on for months behind the scenes. Note that the new indictment against Maduro and Cilia includes both Maduro's son and Diosdado - this is purposefully to put them on alert that they are next should they betray the Rodriguez siblings.
CIA is now operating inside Venezuela and can execute another 'extraordinary rendition' at any time on Trump's orders. Delcy has allowed them in and permitted them to stay. The US Embassy is returning, along with all of its intel & military support. The calculation was that the most important thing for the 'Boliviarian movement' (they do not represent chavismo, they long ago betrayed Chavez and his legacy) and their own interests (power, wealth accumulation) was for them to maintain power - no matter the cost, including sacrificing Maduro. There was zero chance they would ever cede power to Machado or the exiled opposition. They represent a system, not a government taking its turn. They will do whatever it takes to retain control of the country, even negotiating and compromising with Trump, the 'evil empire'. The lobby began months ago, both with the Trump administration and in the media. Delcy was positioned in the international media as the 'moderate' and the most pragmatic to deal with. This made it clear that the cards had been dealt. Once Maduro was out, Delcy was in.
In the coming days, more business deals will be made, some sanctions may be loosened and prisoners released. They will continue to appease Trump with lucrative deals, opening up Venezuela's rich resources (oil, gold rare earths, heavy metals, minerals, coastline, etc) to Trump and his friends. Perhaps a Trump resort in Margarita Island or Los Roques. All the things Machado promised, but without her.
Trump has no interest in democracy or Machado. He never met with her, never invited her to the White House like George W. Bush did during the height of the attempts to overthrow Hugo Chavez. Trump resents her Nobel Peace Prize (which he believes he deserves), but also understands the truth: Machado cannot command the country right now. She does not have the support from the groups in power or their enablers. Delcy&Jorge promised Trump stability and control, for now. If sanctions ease, life can improve inside the country, which will calm tensions over the US invasion and Maduro's violent capture. No doubt that the remaining chavista and leftist movements in the country are not happy with this betrayal. Over time there will be a growing internal opposition to the government, but they will likely employ the same tactics as before - any dissent will be treated as treason and repressed. Especially now with Trump's arsenal hovering above Caracas. They will tell the people that this is necessary to continue the 'chavista movement', even though their true interest is their own power and wealth.
However, the biggest wild card is Trump. His volatility and lack of strategy shows he can change his mind at any time. It is a very dangerous time for Venezuela.
For a brief historical moment in the early twenty-first century, the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela appeared to rupture the global neoliberal consensus that had dominated Latin America. Under Hugo Chávez, elected in 1998 amid deep social exhaustion with austerity and elite capture of oil wealth, Venezuela embarked on an experiment that promised to redistribute income, expand social rights, and reassert popular sovereignty against both domestic oligarchies and imperial discipline. The project was never a fully realized socialist transformation, but it did succeed — for a time — in materially improving the lives of millions of poor Venezuelans and in re-opening political possibilities that had been foreclosed for decades. That it ultimately collapsed so catastrophically under Nicolás Maduro does not negate those gains, but it does demand a sober post-mortem — one that resists both Cold War caricature and uncritical nostalgia.
The early Bolivarian period was marked by tangible achievements. Fueled by rising global oil prices in the 2000s, the Chávez government channeled petroleum rents into expansive social programs that dramatically reduced poverty, expanded access to education and healthcare, and incorporated marginalized populations into political life through communal councils and participatory initiatives. Illiteracy declined, malnutrition fell, and millions gained access to subsidized food and medical care for the first time. These were concrete improvements in material conditions, and they explain why Chávez retained genuine mass support well into the later years of his presidency. Any serious analysis must begin by acknowledging that the Bolivarian project addressed real suffering and did so in ways that orthodox liberal governance in Venezuela had conspicuously failed to achieve.
Yet embedded within these achievements were structural weaknesses that were never resolved and that became decisive once favorable external conditions evaporated. Venezuela remained a profoundly rentier economy, dependent on oil exports for the overwhelming majority of its foreign earnings and state revenue. Redistribution was financed not by a transformed productive base but by volatile commodity income, leaving social gains acutely vulnerable to price fluctuations beyond national control. Nationalizations, while symbolically important, often failed to establish democratic workers’ control or coherent planning mechanisms, instead reproducing bureaucratic hierarchies within state ownership. Domestic production stagnated, imports expanded, and price and currency controls — introduced to manage inflation and capital flight — gradually distorted incentives and decimated productive capacity rather than rebuilding it. Political power, meanwhile, became increasingly centralized in the executive, with institutions subordinated to the presidency and dissent framed as existential threat rather than as a corrective force.
These contradictions did not originate with Nicolás Maduro, but his presidency exposed and intensified them. When Maduro assumed office in 2013, the global commodity boom had ended, oil prices were falling, and Venezuela’s fiscal model was already under severe strain. Instead of recalibrating policy to confront these realities, the government doubled down on controls, improvised monetary expansion, and tolerated the steady decay of state capacity. Oil production collapsed due to chronic underinvestment, managerial dysfunction, and the politicization of technical institutions such as PDVSA (Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. — Venezuela's state-owned oil and gas company). Hyperinflation followed as the state resorted to printing money to cover deficits amid collapsing output. Shortages became endemic, infrastructure deteriorated, and real wages were obliterated. Long before the most punitive international sanctions were imposed, Venezuela was already in economic freefall, undermining claims that external pressure alone explains the catastrophe.
At the same time, the political response to crisis proved disastrous. Rather than expanding democratic participation to confront economic breakdown, the Maduro government increasingly relied on repression, legal manipulation, and institutional bypass to maintain power. The sidelining of the National Assembly, the erosion of electoral credibility, and the criminalization of dissent alienated broad segments of the population, including many who had once supported the Bolivarian project. What remained of the revolution’s legitimacy was progressively replaced by coercion and patronage, hollowing out the popular foundation that had sustained it under Chávez. The result was not merely economic collapse but social disintegration, reflected in the mass emigration of millions of Venezuelans whose departure further weakened productive and civic life.
The Venezuelan experience is best understood not as the failure of socialism but as the failure of a state-centered, rent-dependent reform project that never escaped the structural constraints of capitalism. The Bolivarian Revolution redistributed surplus without fundamentally transforming the relations of production that generated it. Workers were beneficiaries of state spending but rarely subjects of democratic economic power. Planning was bureaucratic rather than collective, and popular institutions lacked the autonomy needed to discipline the state itself. When crisis arrived, there were no robust mechanisms through which the working-class could intervene to correct policy, reorganize production, or hold leadership accountable. The revolution had mobilized the masses electorally and rhetorically, but it had not sufficiently embedded them in the everyday governance of the economy.
Reliance on extractive rents, combined with centralized authority and weak worker control, creates a fragile equilibrium that cannot survive prolonged shocks. Bureaucracy, far from being a neutral administrative tool, tends under such conditions to become a conservative force prioritizing institutional self-preservation over transformative goals. Corruption and inefficiency are not moral aberrations in this framework but predictable outcomes of concentrated power without democratic counterweights. When revolutionary legitimacy is grounded more in historical narrative and external antagonism than in present material improvement, it erodes rapidly once living standards collapse.
The Venezuelan case also exposes the limits of anti-imperialism when it is decoupled from internal democracy. Opposition to foreign intervention and sanctions is not only justified but necessary, yet it cannot substitute for accountable governance or excuse domestic repression. A politics that treats popular hardship as collateral damage in a geopolitical struggle ultimately forfeits the allegiance of the very class it claims to represent. International solidarity cannot be sustained through slogans alone; it depends on the credibility of a project that demonstrably advances human flourishing.
The lessons here are uncomfortable but indispensable for the Marxist left. Redistribution without structural transformation is reversible. State ownership without democratic control is brittle. Charismatic leadership without durable institutions invites collapse once the leader is gone. And economic sovereignty built on a single commodity is not sovereignty at all but dependency by another name. Venezuela fell not because it challenged global capitalism, but because it did so incompletely, inconsistently, and without building the material and institutional foundations necessary to endure crisis.
None of this erases the significance of the Bolivarian moment or the real hopes it generated. On the contrary, its tragedy lies precisely in the distance between what it promised and what it ultimately delivered. For those committed to emancipatory politics, the Venezuelan collapse should not function as a warning against ambition, but as a reminder that genuine transformation requires more than redistribution, more than rhetoric, and more than control of the state. It requires the patient construction of democratic economic power from below, capable of surviving both external pressure and internal failure. Without that, even the most inspiring revolutions remain vulnerable to their own contradictions
