Watch video of the mass mobilisation here.
Presidents and ruling parties may change in the United States of America, but US imperialism’s policies of aggression against the peoples of Latin America never cease.
Such is the case with the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, whose revolutionary process places it in the vanguard of peoples who are striving for independence and sovereign development.
In addition to over one thousand unilateral coercive measures (described by US officials as ‘sanctions’ in an effort to legitimise the illegitimate), which target Venezuela as retribution for its refusal to bow to US diktat, new forms of aggression continue to be dreamed up in Washington – from policies against migrants to new accusations against President Nicolás Maduro.
As pointed in a recent statement by our party: “For the last 25 years, the people of Venezuela have endured oppressive economic measures, coup attempts, attacks on their leaders, the freezing of their assets abroad, invasion attempts and a relentless media war to destroy their future.
“All these actions, promoted by the fascist right wing in Venezuela and implemented by the United States of America in association with its European lackeys, have caused the Bolivarian nation enormous suffering.
“But the people of Venezuela, these brave people who did not lose heart in the face of difficulties, overcame the trials imposed by the imperialists and after each struggle emerged stronger and more determined than ever to continue building the legacy of Hugo Chávez.”
Outrageous new provocations and hostility against the Bolivarian process
Recently, the Trump administration has added two new gems to its list of unwarranted aggressions against the sovereign nation of Venezuela.
First, attorney general Pam Bondi announced that the USA is offering a reward of $50m (a bounty, in fact) to anyone who captures or facilitates the capture of President Maduro, accusing him (without producing a shred of evidence) of “being one of the world’s biggest drug traffickers and a threat to our national security”.
Immediately following this pronouncement, the US government authorised new military action against supposed ‘drug trafficking activities’ and deployed a naval flotilla (including the destroyers USS Gravely, USS Jason Dunham and USS Sampson, with a complement of 2,200 marines) to the southern Caribbean.
The description of the Venezuelan government as a major drug trafficker in the region does not withstand even the most cursory examination. A recent United Nations report (World Drug Report – 2025) indicates that Venezuela is neither a country of drug cultivation nor of drug production, drugs transportation or drug-related money laundering.
In fact, as anyone who pays the slightest attention to the global drug trade has long ago worked out, the vast majority of illicit global narcotics are cultivated, produced and transited through US-allied countries and managed by US-sponsored gangs, while the dark money that is produced boosts the economies and funds the dark operations of the imperialist countries – with US imperialism in first place as the world’s number one drug runner (a place formerly held by British imperialism, which still acts as an enthusiastic junior partner).
Contrary to Ms Bondi’s baseless assertion, the Bolivarian government has actually waged a constant war against the region’s drug cartels, which have always been associated with Venezuela’s ultra-right-wing groups and cooperated in imperialist plans for destabilisation of the country.
In short, the accusation of ‘drug-running’ is a base slander whose only purpose is to justify further sanctions, even more aggressive regime change attempts and even a military invasion.
Naturally, the massing of US military forces off the Caribbean coast of Latin America has not gone down well in the region. The governments of Mexico and Colombia have joined all the members of Alba (Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, Bolivia, Grenada, Dominica, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saint Christopher and Nevis, Antigua and Barbuda) in speaking out against it.
The long history of US military interventions and invasions in the region has been widely documented, with the invasions of Guatemala (1954), Cuba (1961), Honduras (1963), the Dominican Republic (1965), Grenada (1983), Panama (1989) and Haiti (1994), among others, showing clearly that the USA will not hesitate to intervene with direct force whenever it thinks it can get away with doing so.
Venezuelan masses mobilise
The response of the government and people to this new threat was decisive.
Faced with the possibility of an imminent imperialist attack, President Maduro called on the people to enlist without delay in the people’s militia, ramping up the country’s defences through a popular mobilisation. Their response was resounding, and will no doubt have sent shivers down the spines of the would-be aggressors.
The concept of a popular militia in Venezuela dates back to the Spanish colonial era, when its purpose was to defend the Spanish empire’s territory from English, French and Dutch pirates – and, of course, to defend the property of the ruling elites.
During the 19th-century wars of independence from Spain, the militias actively contributed to victory. Although their organisation was subsequently influenced by local and regional interests of the propertied classes, in the collective imagination the militia remained associated with defence against rapacious empires.
Thus in 2005, under the leadership of President Hugo Chávez, the Bolivarian militia was relaunched as a military reserve and national mobilisation force tasked with guaranteeing national defence. Since that time, it has not only participated in the defence of national territory and its resources, but has also carried out activities that contribute to the wellbeing of Venezuela’s working-class communities.
In 2020, it was incorporated as a special component of the Bolivarian national armed forces (FANB), when it was defined as: “popular in nature, made up of men and women who express their patriotic desire to actively participate in actions that contribute to the security of the nation in all areas”.
The voluntary enlistment drive (see video) has been a triumph for Venezuela’s popular forces. In every town, city, neighbourhood, community and barracks, thousands responded to the call and queued up to enlist with an enthusiasm that demonstrates more clearly than a hundred theoretical treatises not only the firm resolve of the people to defend their national territory against imperialist threats, but also the empowering and truly popular essence of the Bolivarian Revolution.
We in the CPGB-ML salute the glorious people of Bolívar and Chávez and expresses our full support for the Venezuelan people and government, their anti-imperialist struggle and their revolutionary spirit.
Venceremos!
Leales siempre! Traidores nunca!
Statement by the Communist Party of Venezuela
The Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV) condemns the new imperialist aggression by the United States, led by Donald Trump, through the attorney general of that government, Ms Pam Bondi, who has illegally offered a reward of $50m to anyone who captures the president legitimately elected by the Venezuelan people in the presidential elections held on 28 July 2024, Nicolás Maduro Moros.
We communists categorically reject before the world, and especially before the communist movement and other revolutionaries who fight for free and sovereign homelands, this new imperialist attack, which is not really against President Nicolas Maduro but against our people, fuelled by the desire to get their hands on the largest oil reserves in the world.
We Venezuelans have decided, under the leadership of Nicolás Maduro, to build a socialist, free and sovereign homeland, free from the tutelage of any empire. This has cost us more than a thousand sanctions from the United States and its puppet countries, but these have only served to raise the morale of the men and women who feel themselves to be the children of Bolívar, Sucre and the continuators of the legacy of Hugo Chávez Frias.
We are and will remain determined to build our own destiny, to build a socialist homeland.
This criminal empire, which supports the genocide of the Palestinian people, cannot accept that its puppets have been resoundingly defeated by the people in three consecutive elections in less than a year, who voted for peace and their wellbeing, for the leadership that is driving the Bolivarian and socialist revolution.
That is why the empire, seeing its puppets defeated, is desperately promoting ‘judicial’ actions such as the one just decided by US attorney general Pam Bondi.
We communists are aware that where there is a revolution, there is a counter-revolution lurking permanently, and it does not and will not spare any methods, regardless of the cost and sacrifice that the people must pay.
That is why we see them [local compradors] promoting foreign military invasions, supporting economic and financial blockades, carrying out attacks against President Maduro, planning terrorist acts such as those recently uncovered, and agreeing with the empire on illegal ‘judicial’ measures such as offering a reward for the capture of our working-class president.
These lackeys of the empire and their puppets are not serving the highest interests of our homeland, but rather the US government and the big transnational oil companies that finance their actions.
We communists believe that the president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Comrade Nicolás Maduro, has become a target of the decadent US empire because, in addition to demonstrating that he continues to be supported by the vast majority of the Venezuelan people, he has also become a reference point and a leader in Latin America, the Caribbean and the world.
Because we have shown the peoples of the planet that another world is possible – not a capitalist world, but a socialist world.
We communists alert our people, our brothers and sisters around the world, and especially the progressive, revolutionary and communist sectors, that behind this decision to label President Maduro and the Venezuelan government as allies of narcoterrorism lies an excuse to create a justification for invading our patriotic soil through military action and thereby get their hands on the world’s main oil reserves.
Our people, sons and daughters of Bolívar and Sucre and followers of the legacy of Commander Hugo Chávez, under the leadership of Nicolás Maduro, will not tremble or bow down before Yankee threats. Our people carry the blood of our liberators in their veins and, honouring their blood and memory, we will continue to fight for a definitive independence that remains incomplete.
We are a people who have decided to build a socialist homeland, and no one and nothing will divert us from that path.
Today we call on people everywhere to show solidarity with Venezuela. Today we need each other, as equals fighting for the highest interests of all our peoples.
Venceremos! We will win!
