“Invading Venezuela would be the worst mistake.”
Gustavo Petro, President of Colombia
By Tim Young, Labour Friends of Progressive Latin America
In a further escalation of the Trump administration’s aggression and threats towards oil-rich Venezuela, the US recently said it would be sending navy warships and some 4,000 troops to the southern Caribbean Sea, at the edge of Venezuela’s territorial waters, in a purported “anti-narcotics” operation. This comes hard on the heels of Washington raising the bounty for information leading to Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s arrest or conviction from $25 million to $50 million, and the ongoing US economic blockade of the country aimed at forcing illegal ‘regime change.’
In response to Trump’s aggression, support for Venezuela has come from numerous Latin American and Caribbean countries, including from the ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America) bloc of progressive countries, which recently held its 13th extraordinary summit, addressing this latest US threat to regional peace.
Countries represented at the meeting alongside Venezuela were Cuba, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada and Saint Kitts and Nevis.
The summit re-affirmed its commitment to Latin America and the Caribbean being “a Zone of Peace and Coexistence” – and issued a nine-point declaration in defence of Venezuela in the face of the renewed US offensive.
It denounced the US’s renewed and groundless “narco-state” narratives against Venezuela, and military deployments as part of a strategy seeking to pave the way for foreign intervention. This is seen not only as a direct attack on Venezuela’s independence, but also a threat to the stability and self-determination of all the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean, and a violation of the UN Charter’s commitment to respect for sovereignty, equality of states and self-determination.
The ALBA summit also demanded the immediate cessation of any military threat or action violating the territorial integrity and political independence of any of the states of Latin America and the Caribbean, and made a fresh call on the US to respect the international legal framework and multilateral mechanisms for the peaceful settlement of disputes.
In addition to Trump’s renewed attacks on Venezuela, ALBA condemned the US policy of harassment and destabilisation in the region more generally. These US interventions take the form of unilateral coercive measures, blockades, diplomatic blackmail and media distortion campaigns, as also illustrated by the intensification of the US’s illegal economic, commercial and financial blockade against Cuba.
Finally, in reaffirming the solidarity-based nature of ALBA, the declaration supported Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s call for an urgent meeting of the region’s foreign ministers to establish a joint position in response to threats of aggression and interference against Venezuela and any interventionist attempts to threaten peace in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Specifically Gustave Petro said, “The Americans are wrong if they think that by invading Venezuela, they are solving their problems. They’re putting Venezuela in the same situation as Syria, but they would drag Colombia into the same, because these groups would take over underground resources and minerals, and this means more economy of death, not of life. So I told the United States, through its envoys, that invading Venezuela would be the worst mistake.”
- BRIGHTON EVENT: ¡Viva la solidaridad! Stand with Latin America Against Trump – Sunday September 7, 12.30. Trina Chavarría, CUT (Colombian TUC) // Gabriel Rodriguez, IRF, Argentina // Francisco Dominguez, VSC / Sarah Woolley, BFAWU // Gawain Little, GFTU // Natasha Witham, part of NEU teacher exchange with Nicaragua. Register here.
- LIVERPOOL EVENT: ¡Viva la solidaridad! Stand with Latin America Against Trump – Monday September 29, 18.30. With Martina Pesce, Argentinian campaigner against the far-right // Francisco Dominguez // María Perez Ramos, MORENA supporter, Mexico // Richard Burgon MP // Jess Barnard, Labour NEC // Louise Regan, NEU // Gawain Little, GFTU // John McDonnell MP. Register here.
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