Washington’s bombing of boats it claims are running drugs off the coast of Venezuela, and its threats to overthrow the Nicolás Maduro government, are an attack on the country’s national sovereignty. They take place as conflicts between Washington and Beijing are sharpening, in Latin America, the Pacific and elsewhere, a product of the deepening crisis of world capitalism.
A working-class response starts from the interests we share with fellow workers worldwide. It’s the cutthroat competition between capitalist rulers worldwide for markets and resources that is the source of the growing threat of more wars.
The U.S. rulers’ goal in Venezuela is to install a government subservient to Washington, and, in doing so, to tighten the economic and political war they’ve waged against Cuba. Cuba is a central target because its socialist revolution shows there is a way out of capitalism’s crises and wars.
Workers and farmers led by Fidel Castro and the July 26 Movement fought for and took state power. Faced with Washington’s moves to crush their revolution, working people took control of the factories, the land and the banks, ending capitalist exploitation, and extended solidarity to struggles against imperialism worldwide.
Washington is intervening to try to plunder Venezuela’s vast oil resources and reassert its imperial power, threatening the sovereignty of nations across Latin America. Its intervention is a deadly threat to the interests of working people across the continent, and their struggles for jobs, land and political freedoms. This is doubly true for toilers in the U.S. colony of Puerto Rico, where the U.S. rulers’ warplanes are now based.
When the U.S. rulers sent their warships, bombers and troops into the Caribbean and began bombing boats off Venezuela, they acted as judge, jury and executioner, ignoring basic human rights. They did so at the same time they’re sending troops into U.S. cities to arrest and deport workers without papers, throwing aside the right to due process. History shows the rulers’ steps toward war are always accompanied by attacks on basic freedoms.
The example set by the toilers of Cuba shows what can be accomplished with a leadership that acts on the capacities of the working class. At the center of offering solidarity to working people in Latin America today is advancing a course to replace capitalist rule with workers power in the U.S.
To be part of that struggle, join the Socialist Workers Party.