cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/73633
[Editorial note: Orinoco Tribune is not necessarily aligned with all the opinions expressed by the author in this article. However, Orinoco Tribune considers it important for publication in order to present various positions on complex issues.]
By Joe Emersberger – Aug 21, 2026
Since January, the US has imposed a level of subordination in Latin America that has not been seen since the early twentieth century when it directly occupied Haiti and Nicaragua. Today, only Cuba and Nicaragua deserve to be called sovereign states in the region. Trump has succeeded because the Holocaust in Gaza made western imperialists realize that they can get away with far more than they ever thought they could.
We who live in the imperial core should, at the very least, legitimize armed resistance to western imperialism at home and abroad, not make excuses for cowardly governments.
The despicable abandonment of Cuba
Cuba is hanging on by a thread as Trump has imposed a Naziesque fuel embargo on the island this year. Mexico and Brazil, two large oil-rich countries, have refused to sell oil to Cuba because Trump threatened them with tariffs. And Trump has actually threatened worse than that through his recent actions. In December of 2025, the US military stole a Venezuelan oil shipment to Cuba, and, soon after that, bombed Caracas and kidnapped President Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores. Venezuela has been run as a U.S. colony ever since.Oil-rich Canada, one of the USA’s top vassals, also hasn’t defied Trump’s fuel blockade on Cuba despite having diplomatic relations and a long-standing trade relationship with Cuba. Canada’s government is probably happy to see Cuba starved by the fuel blockade. Prime Minister Mark Carney is a shameless western imperialist. He applauded the US bombing of Caracas, supported Trump’s war of aggression on Iran, sanctioned Iran for defending itself against US aggression, and demanded that Palestinians adopt the ideology of the state that is genociding them.
China has sent solar panels to Cuba which, unlike other shipments of non-fuel humanitarian aid, directly undermine the fuel blockade. Russia made a huge one-time oil shipment that brought some relief. Iran has not sent any oil but it has its hands full expelling the US from West Asia with stunning success so far, and is making tremendous sacrifices to do so. Russia is fighting a proxy war against NATO.
One could still reasonably criticize powerful China and Russia for not doing more for Cuba, but the inaction of nearby oil-rich Latin American states cries out for the harshest condemnation.
Venezuela made into a US puppet
By now it is clear, despite some initial hopes I had, that Delcy’s government in Venezuela is a US puppet. Its actions, such as handing over Alex Saab to the US, and seeking rapprochement with “Israel” are so cynical that I now believe Delcy and her clique masterminded the overthrow of Chavismo and a gradual transition to fascist rule under Maria Corina Machado or some close equivalent. I believe Delcy sold this plan to the US. Her clique was likely motivated by a desire to save their own skin by sacrificing millions of Chavistas.High level betrayals are not new to Chavismo. Hugo Chavez was plagued by them as was Maduro. But Chavez and Maduro maneuvered around US-instigated betrayals before the Holocaust in Gaza changed western imperialism into something far more bold. In 2019, the US under Trump bluffed that it might invade Venezuela from neighbouring Colombia. The bluff failed, but in 2026 the U.S. dispensed with bluffs. The US military took a direct role in overthrowing Maduro because it failed to do so through devastating sanctions and by using proxies to attempt coups on its behalf.
However, the US military is also very casualty averse. Despite not being a match for the US militarily, Venezuela could have imposed significant US casualties had it fought back.
Surrender by exploiting Chavista discipline
Apologists for Delcy assume she made a good faith calculation that the costs of fighting back would have been higher than surrendering. But it is no longer reasonable to believe that she made a good faith calculation. I stopped believing that when Alex Saab, a minister under Maduro, was handed over to the US by Delcy’s government. The US is now certainly torturing Saab to try to use him against Maduro in a show trial. In June, Delcy’s government allowed the US to carry out assassinations on Venezuelan soil. The steps Delcy has now taken to normalize with “Israel” have further exposed her as a traitor.A Venezuelan friend I trust, who has been a dedicated Chavista activist for decades, says that government workers who are long-time loyalists to Maduro and Chavez are now forced to take orders from known enemies of Chavismo or else lose their jobs. In my friend’s assessment, Delcy has also exploited the disciplined manner in which the Chavista base has rallied behind Chavez and Maduro to survive decades of US efforts to destroy them.
That discipline made it important for Delcy and the US to keep in place a facade of Chavista governance through a constitutional transfer of power to Delcy, the rejection of snap elections, and a perfunctory defence of Maduro. Delcy’s government is still paying for Maduro’s legal defence while he and his wife remain hostages in the US. All of that has contributed to keeping a lot of the Chavista base relatively quiet (notwithstanding the dissenting voices of Chavistas like Luis Britto Garcia and Mario Silva) but that relative quiet probably won’t last.
Trump’s theft of Venezuela’s oil revenues has prevented Delcy from delivering any major economic benefits to Venezuelans since she replaced Maduro. Economic growth slowed after Maduro’s kidnapping. And Trump maintains sanctions to ensure that a transition to full unabashed fascism in Venezuela is not interrupted.
My Chavista friend believes a mass uprising against Delcy by the Chavista base is coming as she inevitably rolls back rights for peasants and workers in the name of rejecting “polarization”. My friend is probably right, but with Venezuela security forces surely being purged of Chavistas I fear revolt will come too late, and will be viciously repressed. Regardless, Venezuela will certainly not be selling oil to Cuba any time soon.
The fake sovereignty of Lula and Sheinbaum
Often lauded as ‘progressives’ who stand up to Trump, the reality is that Lula and Sheinbaum feign independence from Washington, and not even very well, while cowering before it.Lula won’t dare defy the US fuel blockade by selling oil to Cuba. He vetoed Maduro’s efforts to enter BRICS. He echoed the US rejection of Maduro’s election win in 2024 but immediately welcomed the fraudulent election victory of Ecuador’s rightwing dictator (Daniel Noboa) in 2025. Lula also glad-handed the US-installed former Al-Qaeda and ISIS operative who is now the dictator of Syria.
Lula’s idea of showing independence from Washington is echoing its vilification of Maduro but adding procedural quibbles: like saying Maduro should have been tried in Venezuela. Lula has also added that he does not consider getting Maduro and his wife released from the U.S. dictatorship’s clutches a top priority.
In 2004, Lula sent over a thousand troops to Haiti where they murderously consolidated a coup that was directly perpetrated by the US. Despite Lula’s service to US imperialism, the US helped railroad him into prison because Washington prefers far right vassals like Jair Bolsonaro. That didn’t make Lula less servile towards Washington. It seems to have made him worse.
As for Sheinbaum, her pitiful response to Maduro’s kidnapping was to ask the war criminals in Washington to give him a fair trial. Sheinbaum has stopped Mexico from selling oil to Cuba, and she happily handed out medals at the World Cup final standing next to genocidal Trump, whose bigotry towards Mexicans has been one of the defining features of his presidency.
The sophistries of surrender advocates
Every government has to make some concessions to western imperialism. It’s the inevitable result of living in a capitalist-run world, so one way to defend US vassals is to say they are doing the same as Mao, Lenin, Stalin, Castro, Chavez and Maduro all did.But it is absurd to deny the truth about the USA’s ‘left’ vassals – and repulsive to invoke heroic leftist leaders of the past to do it. Today, former allies of Chavez who participated with him in armed insurrection in 1992 now debase themselves saying that fighting the US is “counterproductive” and that normalizing with “Israel” while it perpetrates genocide is very important.
Contrast that with Maduro wearing a Palestinian keffiyeh at his birthday celebration about a month before he was kidnapped. The keffiyeh he wore had words on it praising armed resistance against Zionism.
Iran, whose government is valiantly resisting the US, has stated the obvious about Delcy’s cowardice. Her government responded with a formal protest. Of course there are no protests from Delcy when Trump or his officials repeatedly say that they now run Venezuela.
Attacking gringo activists to defend US vassals
Apologists for Delcy, Lula and Sheinbaum often attack anti-imperialists who live in the imperial core. One piece made a very common line of attack as follows: “You gringos tell us how to make our revolution when our problem is you have failed to make yours.”There is a big category error in this rebuke. Activists in the imperial core don’t command militaries. Delcy, Lula and Sheinbaum all do. If they aren’t willing to ever use their militaries to inflict casualties on the US then they are colonies, not sovereign governments, and certainly not revolutionary governments. Their militaries may as well be disbanded. Also, is it ok to call Javier Milei a US puppet or should we say nothing because Argentina’s plight is actually our fault for not overthrowing western imperialism?
As Justin Podur has noted, history shows that the imperial core is much more efficiently controlled than the periphery. Control has involved a mix of tactics that include bribery, propaganda and censorship, but also financial ruin, incarceration and murder. The characterization of imperial core activists as very free but too incompetent to overthrow their governments has been pushed by prominent non-violence advocates like Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn. That characterization is false, and to promote it for any reason—including to shout down criticism of Delcy, Sheinbaum or Lula—makes revolution within the imperial core even more difficult to the extent it is believed. There is no non-violent path to liberation anywhere in the world, including the imperial core.
Podur correctly observed “while the global north is unequivocally more materially comfortable because of all the stolen wealth, it is not an easier location to ‘go and make a Revolution’ “.
Another attack line is that it is easy to advocate armed resistance from the relative comfort of the imperial core. Again, it is literally the job of militaries in Latin America to prevent their countries from becoming colonies. Those militaries have no valid reason to exist otherwise. There is nothing wrong with anyone saying that. And it is also easy—in fact, easier—to advocate surrender while living in the imperial core. Surrender advocacy is what imperialists want.
Unbreakable Cuba: Why Washington Still Fears a Defiant Island
Never ignore the costs of surrender
Selling defeatism is easy. The assassinated Hezbollah leader Seyyid Hassan Nasrallah constantly did the exact opposite of that. He reminded people that the costs of surrender tend to be forgotten – and that liberation requires sacrifice.Underdevelopment imposed on Latin America and much of the world by the leading capitalist states has killed hundreds of millions people since 1990 alone. That’s the cost of surrender to western imperialism. Whether you live in the imperial core or not, you must never forget it.
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I think finger pointing and name calling is useless. There’s no point of blaming US left for the failures of the Brazilian left, or vice-versa. Political organizing in any place has its own difficulties and contradictions.
Lula is receiving a lot of criticism from marxist orgs in Brazil (even from marxist tendencies inside the workers’ party itself), as specially in his third term he assumed a defeatist stance, with both poor domestic and foreign policies. Most gestures regarding defense of Palestine and South to South integration have been at most symbolic. He also signed a deal between Mercosul and EU, and allowed a deal with the US company (US Rare Earth, which has contracts with the DoW) to have them own a Brazilian rare earth mining company (Serra Verde). His domestic policy has been equally bad by pushing an austerity policy that will eventually undermine their own social policies (Bolsa Família) and a privatization agenda for ports, subway lines, water supply and logistics, many of those to be acquired by foreign capital.
I appreciate your insight into Lula. I desire not to place blame, but to insist a correct attitude and interpretation of events from my own western perspective, against what I think are other western perspectives. Maybe I’m out of place given the comm, I don’t mean to deny critical discussion among LatAm folks who are directly involved in the struggle.
The ethos I try to embody is that communists can never be let down by the people. Only the people can be let down by the communists. To think otherwise is to adopt the Kamala liberal habit of locating the fault outside of oneself, to blame the people for failing to act, for failing to manifest one’s theory.
If historical materialism is to be believed, the material conditions determine the sphere of possibility of human will to “swerve” history in a different direction. The focus of communists should be always on those conditions, not on the strength of will alone, and certainly not on the will of other people facing harsher conditions than oneself.
You have all the right to criticize Lula, Sheinbaum, Rodriguez or any other LatAm leadership, as long it’s a fair criticism, with actual materiality to your analysis. Fair criticism is a tool for improving on bad practices and fixing the direction of our political line. Within the Marxist tradition, criticism has always been a fundamental tool, especially since our movement was as an internationalist one since the inception.
We do have criticisms of our own to politicians like Starmer, Sanchez and others who are leaders of working class parties, even those who are not communists or marxists. But we also do criticisms of Western leadership and organic intellectuals who fall into the trap of falling behind bourgeois leadership, like Hassan glazing the Democrats (in Brazil we had our own pejorative term, “Axé Kamala”), or any form of sectarianism that causes splits in the movement or even denies unity in action.
I couldn’t agree more. That’s precisely the attitude the communist movement should have.
Once more, agreed.