Sagar
Venezuela stands as a very visible and clear example of how imperialism and neoliberalism destroy resource-rich countries. Before the Bolivarian Revolution, despite having the world’s largest proven oil reserves, Venezuela was facing extreme poverty, deep income inequality, and social exclusion. Successive governments, most importantly under President Carlos Andrés Pérez, bowed down to the dictates of the American dominated IMF and the World Bank. They implemented neoliberal reforms and started the privatisation of the public sector. In the late 1980s and 1990s these policies culminated in mass suffering and popular anger, visibly expressed during the Caracazo uprising of 1989. The working class revolted against IMF imposed policies which had led to huge price hikes, cuts in subsidies of basic goods, low wages and the privatisation of the public services and industries. The Caracazo uprising was brutally repressed by the state, thousands of people, who were protesting against these policies were killed. This state repression broke the myth and proved the notion wrong that neoliberalism is a peaceful reform. It shows that anti people policies are only enforceable through brutal state violence.
A Venezuelan army officer, Hugo Chávez came to realize that the armed forces were only used to defend elite and imperial interests, not the working class people. These were the conditions and crisis of neoliberal rule. Soon Hugo Chávez emerged as a popular working class leader, carrying the aspirations of the workers, peasants, and the urban poor. After the long struggle, in the 1998 presidential elections, Chávez was elected as president through an overwhelming popular support. By drawing ideological inspiration from the 19th century revolutionary Simón Bolívar, who led the struggle for independence against Spanish colonial rule in many Latin American countries. Hugo Chávez started the Bolivarian Revolution, transforming the country into the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, with the social welfare schemes, political alignment with the global south and complete state control over oil. This redistribution of oil’s wealth towards education, healthcare, and social welfare directly challenged America’s dominance in the region and their energy security, pushing Washington to back the failed 2002 coup attempt to overthrow Hugo Chávez. Chávez was detained by Venezuelan military officers aligned with opposition elites. However, massive popular mobilisations of workers brought Chávez back to power within 48 hours. This moment revealed the deep class basis of the Bolivarian Revolution. It was not the will of a single charismatic leader but the collective strength of organised masses. Hugo Chávez was well aware that Venezuela’s struggle is part of a broader contest over sovereignty and dignity in the Americas. Chávez warned the world that U.S. aggression was driven not by ideals but by the desire to exploit their resources. In his 2006, famous speech at the United Nations General Assembly, Hugo Chávez said that the devil, spokesperson of imperialism came here yesterday, and it still smells of sulfur today. Yesterday from this rostrum the President of the United States, whom I refer to as the devil, came here, talking as if he owned the world.
In the 21st Century, Venezuela continues to challenge, neoliberal capitalism and U.S. hegemony. Venezuela boldly asserts their economic and political sovereignty and resource control. After Chávez’s death in 2013, his successor Nicolás Maduro also clearly refused to bow down to U.S. dictates. The United States launched a cascade of sanctions, tariffs, blockades, and legal warfare designed to destabilise the Venezuelan economy and isolate its leadership on global platforms. Washington targeted Venezuelan officials, froze assets, imposed oil export restrictions, and executed maritime interdictions of oil tankers under the pretext of curbing “drug trafficking” and “illegitimate rule”. These were in reality fake narratives that mask their real strategic agenda to control Venezuela’s vast oil reserves and its geopolitical position. The United States ran a nonstop sustained campaign of economic warfare consistent with imperial interventionist logic rather than any legitimate international law or justice.
The claims and narratives spread across the world, that Venezuela failed to manage its oil wealth, are also fundamentally flawed, because it completely ignores this context of active destabilisation. A country whose economy has historically been dependent on their oil resource, was very systematically targeted by oil blockades that discouraged shipping, seized tankers, and reduced its capacity to sell crude oil on the world market and develop their own advanced technology to refine oil. These actions of the United States reflect imperialist sabotage against independent development of a sovereign country, aimed at weakening and destabilizing Venezuela, so they can assert control over energy flows that global capital demands.
Nicolás Maduro came into the historic role, carrying forward the legacy of the Bolivarian revolution. Despite huge internal and external pressures, including intensified sanctions by the United States, Maduro remained determined to refuse U.S. dictates. Maduro sought to diversify Venezuela’s relations with other global powers, deepening strategic ties with countries such as China and Russia. He was forced to engage in “crude for loans” agreements and energy cooperation, a defensive response to imperialist siege that shielded Venezuela, to an extent, from the brunt of US economic blockade. These emerging south-south connections not only helped the Venezuelan economy but also represented a future alternative geopolitical bloc that can pose a direct challenge to the U.S. and their dollar’s hegemony in the region.
The Venezuelan government consistently rejected the fictitious charges that the US used to justify escalating its campaign. Accusations of “narco-terrorism” and criminality, such as those centred on the so-called Cartel of the Suns, which were used as political weapons for sanctions and blockade measures. In reality, these fake charges give legal defence, allowing the United States to frame its intervention as a “law enforcement” project even as it moved toward direct military action.
The recent escalation of this conflict reached a watershed moment in January 2026, when the US army carried out a military operation on Venezuela, striking targets in the capital Caracas and announcing the capture of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores. The US presented this as a lawful action against alleged Narco Terrorism, yet it starkly violated principles of state sovereignty and international law, drawing widespread condemnation from governments across the world.
This kidnapping of an elected president of a sovereign country is, in reality, a symbol of imperialism’s logic in its naked and aggressive form. When the years-long economic and political pressure tactics failed to break the spirit of the people, then to secure dominance and serve the corporate elites, the so-called world champions of democracy and liberty, went to direct military action on the land of a sovereign state and kidnaped its president. This kidnapping of President Maduro was not an isolated incident, this mirrors the historical pattern of the United States, of invading other states, under fabricated allegations, who refused to bow down to their dictates. As was seen in the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, on the baseless claim of the presence of weapons of mass destruction, and in several other countries. In all the cases, fabricated allegations serve to legitimize their direct military interventions in the name of establishing peace and restoring democracy. But history proved that all the American interventions on the land of other sovereign states are fundamentally about securing their own energy resources and geopolitical hegemony.
Lenin’s analysis of imperialism, where capitalism at its highest stage leads to monopolies and finance capital dictating the foreign policy of powerful states, these events are logical consequences of a global system in which economic domination is enforced through direct political and military interventions. Imperialist powers do not simply seek access to resources, they wants total control over the terms of global accumulation, and any sovereign state that challenges this, whether in Venezuela, in Cuba, in Iraq or elsewhere they become targets of political, economic and military actions to destabilise their economy, overthrow elected governments and now kidnapping of president. This is the material reality of imperialism, not the ideological fiction propagated by corporate media.
After the disintegration of the USSR, Capitalist state apparatus declared one sided victory of capitalism, the spirit and voices of resistance remained alive among the working class people and the broader Global South. We saw how small countries like Cuba resisted the continuous imperialist intervention, even after decades of economic sanctions. They remained steadfast for the ideals and commitment to Socialism. After the abduction of President Maduro, solidarity protests erupted globally, across Asia, Africa and Latin America. Dozens of countries condemned this imperialist invasion on Venezuela, demanding the release of Maduro and defending Venezuelan sovereignty. Calls for “Hands off Venezuela!” and denunciations of unilateral military actions across the world, reflect a growing consciousness that true solidarity must be rooted in anti-imperialist struggle rather than acceptance of hegemonic dictates of Imperialism. It is unfortunate that our country, which has a legacy of anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggle have become mum at the face of imperialist aggression on the Global South. The criminal silence of Vishavguru and 56 Inch Modi government is also very crucial at this juncture. Silence in the face of imperialism is not diplomacy, neither a realist strategy, it is surrender.
Hands off Venezuela.
Long live Bolivarian Revolution.