Leader of Venezuela’s Freedom and Socialism Party: The whole continent must resist together

Umut Can Fırtına

As the repercussions of the US’s imperialist aggression in Venezuela continue, Trump keeps threatening the entire region.

Miguel Angel Hernández, General Secretary of the Freedom and Socialism Party in Venezuela (Partido Socialismo y Libertad, PSL), head of the Venezuela section of the International Workers’ Unity-Fourth International (Unidad Internacional de Trabajadoras y Trabajadores-Cuarta Internacional, UIT-CI) and a faculty member at the University of Murcia (Murcia Üniversitesi), answered our questions.

With the latest actions of US imperialism in the Americas, what are we watching right now?

What has happened in Venezuela is a new attack on the peoples of Latin America. It is an unacceptable armed intervention by the US, the world’s main imperialist power. This will undoubtedly have serious consequences for the peoples of the continent. Trump is threatening Colombia and Mexico and even countries outside the region.

But the future is still uncertain. There are many contradictions within the US political establishment and the differences between Trump and Rubio are clearly visible. A very large part of the US public is against military interventions abroad and the MAGA base does not agree with this either. Alongside the Democrats, Republican members of Congress and senators have launched a congressional investigation, finding the bombings in the Caribbean and the Pacific illegal.

PEOPLE MUST DETERMINE THEIR OWN FATE

As PSL (Partido Socialismo y Libertad, PSL), we categorically condemn this criminal and cowardly attack on the Venezuelan people. We argue that the Venezuelan working people must determine their own fate, not the murderous US imperialism.

However, we take this position on the basis of left opposition to the Maduro government. While in power, Maduro ruled with a fake socialist rhetoric. In reality, it is a repressive regime with hundreds of political prisoners, applying a brutal capitalist adjustment policy that condemns the working people to hunger wages and terrible public services.

The Chavista regime handed the oil industry over to multinationals through so-called joint companies. The US multinational Chevron is the main exporter of Venezuelan oil. In Venezuela there are oil multinationals such as Shell, Total and ENI, Japanese companies and also Chinese and Russian companies, but Trump wants Venezuelan oil to be controlled mainly by US oil companies, while guaranteeing the investments of China and other imperialist countries.

HE DID NOT EVEN BOTHER TO HIDE IT

What does the US intervention in Venezuela, the abduction of the president of a sovereign state and taking the country under control mean for the future of the world? What will change?

Without doubt, it is a very serious precedent. They did not only abduct Maduro. Trump also said he would run the country until a “safe, proper and reasonable” transition takes place and he made it clear that the White House will determine when and under what conditions this transition will happen. He even disqualified the far-right María Corina Machado from leading this transition. He threatened a second military attack and said US oil companies would take back the oil industry in line with US interests. It became clear that the drug trafficking justification is fake and that the US’s real aim has always been to seize the country’s oil and other wealth. In this military intervention, unlike previous invasions, they did not even bother to seek a UN decision to cover it.

As in other areas, Trump is dismantling the political order established after the Second World War. He is putting on the table an intention to take unilateral actions to reach his goals. But this is also difficult for him. He has not been able to carry out everything he has said. He still has contradictions and limitations.

This aggressive policy of US imperialism aims, under the fake justification of “fighting drugs”, to multiply the plunder of natural resources, further intensify the extreme exploitation of peoples and stop the mass movements that have backed the capitalist/imperialist system into a corner in its deepest crisis.

All these attacks are part of the global counter-offensive launched by Trump. This counter-offensive aims to reverse the US’s hegemony and economic crisis, which is part of the global crisis of capitalist imperialism.

Trump is trying to “make America great again”, as he said when he took office in January, even if he has not succeeded so far. This also showed itself in his unconditional support for Netanyahu’s genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza and across all Palestine. They did not achieve a decisive victory there either.

Since Trump has declared that he will consolidate US dominance in the Western Hemisphere, what should we expect? How will he do this? What are his goals?

In the newly published US National Security Document, the goal is set to “revisit” the Monroe Doctrine of 1826: “America for Americans.” Control over the Western Hemisphere is the priority goal. The military intervention in Venezuela would be the first practical expression of what the document calls the “Trump interpretation”.

Trump said they have Venezuela under control, that their goal is to secure the oil and US investments in this sector and he threatened a second military intervention. He said they had spoken with the country’s interim president Delcy Rodríguez and that she was ready to cooperate. But this is not yet clear.

In Venezuela, chavismo is still in power. It is no coincidence that if Rodríguez does not meet US demands, mainly opening the oil industry to US multinationals, the threat of a much stronger second intervention is being raised. So the situation in Venezuela is still open. The possibility of a new intervention is on the table, but it is not simple. Occupying the country and controlling it with US troops is not that easy. There is an uncertain, unresolved situation and this reflects both US imperialism’s weakness in realising its intentions and the enormous contradictions within the US political establishment.

Trump is trying to present the US as a great superpower that has regained its prestige. He says this is the biggest military operation since the Second World War and, with this confidence, he threatens Colombia and Mexico, but he has not even been able to fully resolve the situation in Venezuela.

How are the Venezuelan people reacting to the latest imperialist intervention by the US and how are they behaving?

Right now, the biggest absence in Venezuela is the lack of mass mobilisations against the US invasion. Apart from small actions called by the government, attended mainly by militants of the ruling party, militias and officials of the state apparatus, the cities, especially the capital Caracas, are quiet.

On Saturday and Sunday, social and economic activity almost completely stopped. The streets of Caracas were empty on both days. The lack of mass mobilisation is in stark contrast to the huge marches and rallies that took place in response to the 2002 coup attempt against Chávez. Those very mobilisations defeated the coup and ensured Chávez’s return to power.

The huge expectations that existed during Chávez’s era and the political and anti-imperialist consciousness gained in the struggle against the coup and the oil sabotage gradually disappeared as chavismo failed to advance towards socialism, became stuck in simple reforms and was almost wiped out in bureaucracy and corruption.

Over the past decade, the country went through a deep crisis. The imperialist sanctions that began in 2017 and 2019 and the brutal capitalist adjustment policy implemented by the Maduro government deepened the crisis and made the people and the working classes pay the price. In Venezuela, oil multinationals and foreign companies in other economic sectors continued to exist. The harsh adjustment policy pushed the minimum wage below one dollar. Social spending fell dramatically and, combined with mass corruption in state institutions, public services collapsed, as did the oil industry and basic industries such as electricity and iron, steel and aluminium.

On the other hand, from 2016 onwards the government began to become more authoritarian and last year it carried out clear electoral fraud. Today there are hundreds of political prisoners, most of them detained during protests against electoral fraud in 2024. All this led millions to migrate. In the last decade, around 7 million Venezuelans left the country. All of this happened while the government called itself “socialist” and it created huge confusion.

This social, economic and political context explains why a significant part of the Venezuelan people either support the US intervention or watch what is happening with an indifferent satisfaction. That is precisely why there are no large mobilisations rejecting the imperialist intervention today.

CONTINENTAL LEADERS MUST STAND AS ONE

What should leaders and people do?

What matters now is that governments such as Petro in Colombia, Sheinbaum in Mexico and Lula in Brazil call for a major continental day of mobilisation against the US’s military aggression against Venezuela. In the US, Spain, Argentina, Mexico and other countries, actions in this direction have already begun.

Note: This article is translated from the original article titled Venezuela Özgürlük ve Sosyalizm Partisi lideri: Tüm kıta birlikte direnmeli, published in BirGün newspaper on January 8, 2026.