“Palestine will rise, free and independent… we will only reach real peace when justice is served for the crimes and genocide committed.”
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro
By Matt Willgress
In November, on Palestinian Independence Day – just months before his illegal and grotesque kidnapping by Donald Trump’s US – Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro issued a powerful statement reiterating support for Palestine. Declaring that “we will not abandon this sacred cause until the ultimate goal is achieved: Palestine will rise, free and independent,” he added “we will only reach real peace when justice is served for the crimes and genocide committed.”
These comments were another clear illustration of a commitment he and predecessor Hugo Chávez have maintained since the latter’s election in 1998 – Chávez was awarded the Star of Palestine honour for all he did on this issue, including expelling the Israeli Ambassador in 2009.
It is then no surprise that whilst popular Palestinian social and political forces have expressed opposition to Trump’s war on Venezuela, many of the most vocal political forces in the world that have supported Israel’s genocide in Gaza have also been at the forefront of backing Trump on Venezuela.
As in the case of Venezuela, at a time of great crises, socialists can also start to understand how the world is changing through the reactions of different political forces to the ongoing war crimes on Gaza.
This can be seen by how governments and movements across the Global South have led major solidarity efforts with Palestine – notably from Latin America’s left.
In addition to Venezuela’s support, fellow ALBA (the Bolivarian Alternative Alliance for the Peoples of Our America) bloc members Nicaragua and Cuba have shown staunch support.
In the case of Nicaragua, there are strong links through people-to-people initiatives, with Palestinian doctors training their Nicaraguan counterparts in trauma surgery, and the Nicaraguan Ministry of Health sharing information about the country’s free healthcare system based on a community model.
In addition to backing the South Africa case against Israel in the International Court of Justice (ICJ,) Nicaragua has also used ‘international legal weapons’ to support Palestine based on the country’s experience of winning a 1986 case against the US in the ICJ. In 2024, Nicaragua took Germany to the ICJ under the Genocide Convention for ‘facilitating the commission of genocide’ in Palestine through supplying military equipment to Israel. A verdict is still pending.
Cuba is also one of Palestine’s most vocal international supporters – rooted in shared anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggles – having severed diplomatic relations with Israel in 1973.
President Miguel Díaz-Canel has personally led solidarity marches, and last October, over 100,000 Cubans rallied in Havana.
And, despite the illegal blockade, Cuba continues to provide free medical education, with 250 to 300 Palestinians currently training as doctors in Cuba.
Beyond Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, most Latin American nations also recognize the State of Palestine. A recent addition here is Claudia Sheinbaum’s Mexico.
Numerous Governments have withdrawn Ambassadors from Israel, including Lula’s Brazil and Colombia under President Gustavo Petro, with the latter also halting Israeli weapons purchases and suspending coal exports.
And it is not just in the actions of governments that we see this. Socialist, trade union, and other social movements have organised mammoth marches and solidarity actions, with Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement (the largest social movement in the world) sending delegations for olive harvests in the West Bank.
These examples show how vital it is that every socialist activist here to not only stand with Palestine, but also with the Left in Latin America as the war-mongering Trump seeks to re-assert US domination – building links and solidarity to ensure that internationalist policies are not silenced in favour of a return to the dark days of US-domination.
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