Venezuela’s interim president paints Trump as defender of “peace” after Washington shooting
Minutes after US Secret Service brokers took Donald Trump from the stage on the White House Correspondents Dinner Saturday and detained an alleged attacker after a shooting incident, Venezuela’s interim president Delcy Rodríguez grew to become one of the primary world leaders to publicly condemn the assault.
In a put up on
This assertion was one of probably the most grotesque from any chief. Associating Trump with “peace,” Rodriguez whitewashes the continued avalanche of warfare crimes unleashed by Washington throughout the globe and immediately in opposition to Venezuela itself.
The World Socialist Web Site opposes the type of assault alleged on the Washington Hilton on a principled foundation. Political violence carried out by people serves solely to strengthen the forces of response. But this opposition doesn’t require—or allow—portraying Trump, or US imperialism extra broadly, as a sufferer divorced from its personal systemic violence.
Indeed, as in earlier assassination makes an attempt, Trump is already exploiting the incident to criminalize opposition and escalate his authoritarian drive. His efforts to overturn democratic processes within the United States are inseparable from a broader imperialist marketing campaign aimed toward recolonizing Latin America. Rodríguez’s assertion, together with an analogous one from Mexico’s “leftist” president Claudia Sheinbaum, objectively lends help to those efforts, offering political cowl for Washington’s aggression.
Hypocrisy and the kidnapping of Maduro
The hypocrisy turns into much more evident when contrasted with current occasions in Venezuela itself. As lately as January 3, US army forces carried out a brazen operation to kidnap President Nicolás Maduro and his spouse, Cilia Flores. The assault, involving closely armed particular forces troops descending from helicopters below cowl of darkness, resulted within the deaths of greater than 100 individuals and the wounding of an analogous quantity, together with civilians.
The operation was executed with chilling brutality. Soldiers outfitted with superior know-how rappelled into secured compounds, reducing down Venezuelan and Cuban guards with out struggling any fatalities. The assault was preceded by a bombing raid that plunged Caracas into darkness. Residents described a metropolis below siege, with explosions echoing via the night time and helicopters hovering so shut that buildings shook.
“The apartment shook, the doors, the windows. At that moment I didn’t know the attack was only against military targets… ‘We’re going to die,’ I burst into tears,” one resident advised the BBC.
Another recounted: “I looked out the window carefully and saw the missiles. They were like laser beams exploding on the mountains of Fort Tiuna… ‘Wow, it’s happening. The Americans have arrived.'”
Hospitals had been overwhelmed. A health care provider described activating mass casualty protocols in an already collapsing healthcare system. Patients started arriving at 7am, with the physician left traumatized after seeing these injured from the blasts. “I remembered the many times we saw images from the wars in the Middle East,” he mentioned, recalling our bodies lined in dust and blood.
Families armed themselves with no matter they’d—knives, broomsticks—making ready to defend their properties. The blood within the presidential bunker has barely been washed away and the ringing of the bombs nonetheless echoes within the minds of Venezuelans.
Yet Rodríguez, representing the very authorities focused by this act of imperialist terror, now speaks of Trump as a determine deserving safety within the title of peace.
Escalating imperialist violence
The January operation was not a one-off assault. US army exercise within the area has intensified dramatically. Bombing campaigns have expanded into Latin American waters and border areas. A joint US-Ecuadorian operation dubbed “Total Extermination” focused rural areas, bombing rural properties and detaining agricultural employees.
Simultaneously, the Pentagon has escalated maritime strikes, notably within the Caribbean and japanese Pacific. More assault plane and MQ-9 Reaper drones have been despatched to bases in El Salvador and Puerto Rico to hold out extra air strikes on fishing boats, killing at the very least 186 individuals below the pretext of combating drug trafficking since September.
Meanwhile, Washington is overtly threatening additional regime change operations, together with in opposition to Cuba. Trump has declared that “Cuba is next” after Iran.
US naval workouts have begun close to Cuba, codenamed Flex2026, integrating synthetic intelligence, unmanned methods, and conventional forces to boost surveillance and management. Reconnaissance drones just like the MQ-4C Triton and digital plane such as the RC-135 patrol Cuban airspace and maritime routes, tightening the noose across the island.
Within Venezuela, Rodríguez’s assertion has drawn criticism even from Chavista circles, with some stating that it ignores the lengthy marketing campaign of US sanctions that has precipitated over 100,000 extra deaths and compelled over 8 million to flee the nation.
Some commentators, nonetheless, argue that the federal government is merely “buying time,” hoping for higher situations—greater oil costs, geopolitical shifts, or a preferred upsurge—to reassert sovereignty and defend social applications. But such illusions have already been uncovered.
The class nature of Chavismo
This trajectory shouldn’t be a betrayal of Chavismo’s rules—it’s their logical consequence. The so-called Bolivarian Revolution, proclaimed after the 1998 election of Hugo Chávez, represented sections of the nationwide bourgeoisie looking for higher phrases throughout the world capitalist system. During intervals of excessive commodity costs and nearer ties to China, Russia and different financial powers, it used restricted social applications to include the category wrestle and negotiate a better share of the income for the native ruling class.
But as situations modified—notably with the slowing development of the Chinese economic system, the burden of US sanctions and army threats—these similar forces have capitulated, prioritizing their very own privileges and sophistication rule over the working class.
The actuality is that the Venezuelan authorities has systematically shifted the burden of disaster because the downturn in oil costs in 2014 onto the working class, implementing austerity measures, sustaining starvation-level wages, and opening the economic system to overseas capital.
The insurance policies previous to the January 3 raid set the stage for what has taken place since. At every flip, Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro prioritized the protection of capitalist property relations and made concessions to overseas capital by providing the nation as a supply of low-cost labor and pure sources.
Today, the minimal wage stands at simply 130 bolivars monthly—round $0.30. Protests demanding greater wages have been met with tear fuel, water cannon, and repression. Rodríguez’s promise of a “responsible” wage improve—so as to not gasoline inflation—repeats the acquainted lie that employees, not companies, are guilty for rising costs.
What we’re witnessing is the dismantling of all types of sovereignty. The Venezuelan state is being remodeled right into a de facto puppet of US imperialism.
The Chavistas are implementing a program that goes past what the deregulation and privatizations the Chicago Boys led by Milton Friedman sought to implement below the Augusto Pinochet fascist-military dictatorship in Chile.
Oil, gold, and uncommon earth minerals have been privatized and handed over to overseas firms. Export revenues are funneled via the US Treasury, which determines how a lot is returned to fund the Venezuelan state.
The Central Bank has enlisted overseas auditing companies like Deloitte—deeply tied to the Pentagon and CIA—to supervise its accounts. Agreements with Chevron, Shell, Repsol, Eni, and BP additional entrench overseas management over the nation’s oil reserves, the most important on this planet.
Even the International Monetary Fund is again within the image, with Rodriguez welcoming this imperialist company of Wall Street asking for a $5 billion mortgage that will add to an already crushing $170 billion debt. Every Latin American is aware of the lengthy historical past of IMF structural applications and their affect on poverty and inequality.
Now, The Country runs the headline, ‘Have you been to Caracas but?: the query traders are asking about Venezuela.’
The means ahead
The occasions in Venezuela confirmed a basic lesson: the nationwide bourgeoisie in oppressed international locations is incapable of finishing up democratic duties, together with real independence from imperialism.
This actuality vindicates the Theory of Permanent Revolution superior by Leon Trotsky. Only the working class, main a socialist transformation of society, can break the chains of imperialist domination. This requires not solely the overthrow of capitalist states domestically, however a world motion aimed toward restructuring the worldwide economic system to serve human want, not non-public revenue.
Rodríguez’s assertion shouldn’t be merely hypocritical—it’s symptomatic of a deeper disaster. It displays a political motion that has deserted any pretense of resistance to imperialism and now seeks lodging with the very forces answerable for the immense struggling of the individuals it claimed to characterize.
