Invasión, transacciones, cambio de régimen y poder. Son ellos. ¿Y ¿Nosotrxs?
Un audio que surge de intercambios con hermanxs de y desde Venezuela, tras el ataque de anoche y lo que ha empezado (y compas de otras geografías), que trata de hacer síntesis e invitar aportes a partir de nuestra posición compartida, pero del que asumo responsabilidad. Queda todo pendiente. El punto de partida es que compartimos nuestra postura y lucha contra el orden colonial, imperial y patriarcal y a favor y desde pueblos, luchas y territorios. Los puntos del audio (publicado abajo) son una reacción al imperativo de no callar y de no decir sólo lo que se dice y o que nos dejan, son, a manera de guía:
1. Nos manipulan y arrasan desde el y los poderes que nos reclutan, nos hacen espectadores y nos controlan
2. Derechas e Izquierdas adentro y afuera: el péndulo tramposo y la evidencia que se encubre
3. Chavismo, Maduro y la «transición»
4. Trump, Rubio, Hegseth, etc. Seguridad Nacional de EEUU. Monroe actualizado por Trump
5. Tejiendo pueblos y Procesos desde el olvido, no es una opción
Una hermana y compañera de lucha de Nicaragua y de Nuestramérica agrega:
“Aspectos para el análisis: 1. Se rompió finalmente el orden internacional y el multilateralismo. 2. Es un país que ocupa/invade a otro. 3. No gobernará ni siguiera la oposición (MCM fue desestimada completamente), gobierna el ocupante, como sucedió en Nicaragua con William W. 4. Si los poderes del Estado de Venezuela están reunidos hoy, brindando conferencia desde Venezuela (se nota que hubo negociación con el Chavismo). 5. Se realza, comercio, tierras, petróleo, nada de democracia y libertades. 6. Es evidente que tanto los llamados de izquierda como de derecha por estar en el poder son capaces de todo, todo es transable.”
Entre las muchas voces de Venezuela, por lo menos esta de un hermano que señala temas indispensables en un intercambio:
A– “Por los momentos la estructura del chavismo parece seguir en el poder ahora con la propuesta de una presidencia de Delcy Rodríguez y bajo la supervisión de Trump y su proyecto petrolero.”
B– ¨El tema de la legitimidad electoral del año pasado no está en la mesa, y me parece que es la única opción a una transición mínimamente institucional y soberana.”
Reacción: “De acuerdo compa. Pero en ese proceso electoral no pudieron participar procesos, partidos, sectores, pueblos por supresión desde el Chavismo, que fue eficaz en silenciar y excluir a las «izquierdas» para legitimar la derecha de María Corina y su candidato como única opción. ¿Si se convocan elecciones y hay más opciones, hay más posibilidades que las que la tiranía de Maduro? ¡Maduro acabó con toda opción de izquierda o popular, para obligar a la oposición al régimen a votar por la derecha! ¿Ese hecho incuestionable, no sería un argumento para convocar elecciones? ¿Hay condiciones? Si Trump manipuló a Argentina y a Honduras, ¿qué será en Venezuela donde Rubio y Hegseth con el Pentágono y las petroleras son el gobierno para recuperar “nuestro” petróleo, según dijo?”
Respuesta: “Si, no fueron elecciones libres. Aunque creo que MCM ganaría cualquier elección por los momentos. Hay una legitimidad ahí que no podemos rechazar, por más que podamos rechazar la agenda detrás de esa persona. Unas nuevas elecciones en mejores condiciones también serían una buena opción. Pero después de lo sucedido el año pasado no hay institución electoral con credibilidad. Hay un entrampamiento ahí, por eso creo que por los momentos el único piso de legitimidad es ese resultado electoral del año pasado, siempre que haya garantía de nuevas elecciones, derechos constitucionales y demás”
Reacción: “Gracias!!! Una es la mirada analítica desde lejos, otras son las condiciones concretas y uno necesita que lo aterricen.”
C- “Dos temas más para poner sobre la mesa en este momento: Sí, el régimen liberó cientos de presos políticos confesando de hecho su carácter tiránico, pero todavía quedan en prisión y en condiciones terribles muchos cientos más que no pueden olvidarse. Quienes fueron liberados tienden a ser quienes no tuvieron tanta participación en la prensa, en la defensa de derechos humanos, en la lucha desde procesos y comunidades”
“También está el tema de las condiciones de explotación, la situación salarial, la miseria y la explotación…bueno, eso es evidente, pero no puede olvidarse”
Seremos libres cuando lo seamos por nuestra mano y fuerza, por nuestra alegría y creatividad: Cuando nos podamos escuchar en la disposición de que nos critiquen, nos critiquemos sabiendo que es para la vida y la libertad, porque esos que mandan son repugnantes como quienes los obedecen y los imitan y los ignoran.
Emmanuel Rozental Klinger
Lectura de Contexto. En Tiempo Real. Pueblos en Camino.
Enero 3 de 2026.
Agradecemos a Paliacate Press por la traducción del audio.
Invasion, transactions, regime change, and power. That’s them. And us?
AUTHOR’S NOTE: An audio recording stemming from exchanges with siblings from and in Venezuela, following last night’s attack and what has begun (and with compas from other regions), attempts to synthesize and invite contributions based on our shared position, but for which I assume responsibility. Everything remains pending. The starting point is that we share our stance and struggle against the colonial, imperial, and patriarchal order and in favor of and from the perspective of peoples, struggles, and territories. The points in the audio (published below) are a reaction to the imperative not to remain silent and not to say only what is said or what they allow us to say.
January 3, 2026
by Emmanuel Rozental-Klinger
Invasion, transactions, regime change, and power. That’s them. And us?
How to struggle against the invasion, the occupation, the shameless crushing, the colonial order, the manipulation and surrender of regimes and leaders, the nation-states, in this particular context and from the current situation, how to struggle from the peoples under the colonial submission in process. How to do it?
And that question is not for the experts, it’s not for the geniuses, it’s not for those self-designated spokespeople of the processes of social movements and popular struggles, it’s a question for the peoples, and how to do it so that banality does not impede this question from being developed in the spaces of weaving and walking.
- They manipulate us and recruit us, keep us as spectators
The first point is evident in this context and sad. In the face of the attack last night, the so-called “capture” of Maduro and his compańera, and the extensive, arrogant, press conference by Trump together with military commander, Marco Rubio and Hegseth, who have everything out in the open.
Throughout all this and given what has happened in the past and will now unfold, it is clear they have us and treat us as spectators. They interpret the facts for us, and they condition our possibilities to position ourselves according to their recipe. It’s a quantity of lies, manipulations, propagandas, deceptions that are easy to discern and recognize, preventing us from seeing further than where we’re at. - Lefts and Rights inside and out; the deceptive pendulum and the evidence being concealed
Let’s depart from a point of view that’s essential but doesn’t appear evident even if it’s obvious: China, Russia, and the United States in this “left-right” equation are Rights.
All of them.
And they are not alone, there are a number of other Rights: the European Union, the United Arab Emirates, etc. They are Rights, and they are on the spectrum of the Rights.
So, the analysis that considers Russia and China alternatives to the imperial right of the United States is not only false now, it is even more evidentially false, dangerous, and suicidal now.
Russia and China are imperial capitalist regimes based on accumulation, on profit, and on the war against the peoples and the territories.
Each one is advancing in a world they call “multipolar” but internally it is unipolar among the capitalist Rights. It is really important that this is clear.
These are plutocracies of the right, capitalists whose purpose is to accumulate, and the accumulation is based on the exploitation of work and the territories, in other words, of life on the whole planet, and they’re fighting over it, and they’re each trying to recruit us to their side.
Some very important antecedents. One, last week China conducted an enormous military exercise against Taiwan. It was huge. And it wasn’t a military game. And in the face of this, Trump said he wasn’t worried.
Two, we have the enormous antecedent of Syria when Al-Asad fell, the ally, associate of Putin’s Russia who has a military base there in the Mediterranean in Syria, and Russia did not intervene. And there is evidence, there has been, that there was a deal: that Russia would keep Al-Asad, exiling him and shutting him up into oblivion in exchange for what, we don’t know, but much of what came out had to do with Ukraine, and the clear advance of Russia over Ukraine and the initial agreements between Russia and the United States to allow it to advance in Ukraine. That data point is clear.
Gaza, Israel, Palestine in general make evident how they make agreements between these parts.
The agreements include the rhetoric of refusal. “China refuses” the United States. This allows it to make the agreement. Without that refusal, there is no transaction possible. “Russia refuses” the intervention of the United States in Venezuela and Syria. If it doesn’t say it, it doesn’t have anything as a ruse. But it does it only as a ruse. It doesn’t do it to defend Venezuela.
In sum, there has been a transaction prior to the intervention of the United States in Venezuela. China and Russia and others had to have advance knowledge of this intervention and that the agreement is the rhetorical refusal.
Thus, in reality, we don’t know what it was exchanged for, but it would be absurd to think that there were no agreements and that there hadn’t been agreements as there had been from Libya, Ukraine, Syria, Israel, Palestine, Gaza, etcetera, and a tremendously long etcetera. There exist transactions and agreements; there does not exist two sides.
In this same sense, and I won’t linger here too long in detail, progressivism in the continent is capitalism. Progressivism is not a revolutionary left; it is a liberal administration of capitalism within the spectrum of accumulation by dispossession and exploitation, that can have anti-imperialist rhetoric and more but submits to the rules of the game.
Putting it into view: Presidents Sheinbaum and Lula in rhetoric are opposed to Trump but in practice they concede what he asks in exchange to continue speaking against him.
In the meantime, and now we’re entering into the third point: - Chavismo, Maduro, and the “transition”
All the evidence points to that, not only in this Trump administration but also the previous one, and also during Obama and also during Biden, there haven’t just been special envoys to the United States, there have been negotiations and transactions in progress, and President Maduro has been granting them, in all of these periods, to the United States more and more and more and conceding more, in exchange to keep him in power.
There was even a formula proposed that Maduro leave, and the Vice President would stay in power for a transitional period. This is not a formula from the past; it’s something we need to consider given the current conditions.
They have been negotiating. That’s just one point among many to put on the table, including the delivery of natural resources, mining, etcetera. That is just one point.
The 87 and then 88 political prisoners delivered by the regime as a confession of the tyranny in progress in Venezuela and the theft of the elections.
In the end, Venezuela has had an illegitimate regime that was negotiating before with the empires and receiving support from Iran, from Russia, from China in exchange for the transaction of resources, and delivering resources to balance the other empire, that is, with the three most powerful imperial Rights on the planet, Chavismo was negotiating at the same time with a rhetoric of the left.
In that same sense, a necessary question: as with Iran, as with Syria, was the military intervention possible without the help of internal counterparts? They had precise intelligence, did they not need to connect with internal counterparts within the country? That’s a difficult question to answer but one that is necessary.
It appears, and this is from speaking with people who know about political and geopolitical military strategy: it appears that an operation of this magnitude and precision in the time that it took to locate Maduro where they located him in order to take him could not have been done without internal collaboration, and from there, the recent paranoia of President Maduro, seeing enemies and traitors all over the place, and the greater and greater repression by the regime during this time.
In the face of this, obviously what comes now is an acceleration of a transitional process that was already in progress: the transition from a government with rhetoric of the left but with a repressive tyrannical practice of the right with profound corruption and violation of human rights, trying to hold on with a rhetoric of the left and anti-capitalism that in practice it wasn’t fulfilling, transitioning from there to do something different.
And that’s what Maduro and the regime were trying to negotiate with Trump, and that’s what Trump no longer needed to negotiate: with saying no to María Corina, with the huge military forces in the Caribbean, with the possibility of getting rid of Maduro and keeping everything, why negotiate with someone who, with the support of others, they can do without.
So, a question: might it be that the transition taking place right now was agreed upon previously with Chavismo, because without Chavismo the transition would be a disorder, a confrontation, an internal war. So then, that Chavismo would orient the transitional process so that Trump can get what he proposed, which is the total surrender of Venezuela and its resources, and its territories, and its mandates to the transnationals as Trump announced, in exchange for non-intervention or limited intervention and participation of Russia and China in exchange for whatever it was they previously negotiated.
So from this point on, Venezuela does not have sovereignty. It has had a tyranny, and now it doesn’t have sovereignty. It is left subdued and enslaved. And those who are left subdued and enslaved are the peoples, because those above are certainly at the table. - Trump, Rubio, Hegseth, etc., national security, the Monroe Doctrine updated
Next point: it was made absolutely clear that the priority of the United States is a neocolonial, extractivist project of the backyard, an interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine updated for this context.
The Monroe Doctrine was initially defended by the Latin American peoples and countries because, when it was first implemented, it was a way to defend themselves together with the United States, newly liberated from European colonization, defending themselves from European neocolonization or recolonization.
The Monroe Doctrine was accepted at that moment as useful and then was reinterpreted as a “backyard” when the United States subdued through gunboat diplomacy, which is what Trump reestablishes in a moment of profound crisis for the United States and the corporations that control that country and this world, and the priority for the national security policy of the United States is total control, absolute, of territories, resources, and work in this part of the world. And that’s the project that’s advancing, and that explains Venezuela right now with absolute clarity.
The question then is, what next? The disturbances are, one, Cuba, which has a profound crisis not only because of the blockade and external repression, it has an enormous crisis of internal legitimacy with uprisings that were violently subdued, which cannot be ignored.
The other disturbance right now is Colombia, and President Petro has been unjustly labeled, just like Maduro, as a narcotrafficker. They could realize an intervention just the same in Colombia and take Petro out. They could do that, that could be on the agenda, and in an electoral context, which does not favor them, there is more risk that this could come to be, this from the politics of above.
Mexico and Brazil in reality could disrupt the imperial project, but in practice they’re not doing it because they’re conducting a ruse, keeping the rhetoric.
To think the BRICS project is an opposition to the capitalist imperialist project? It is not. BRICS is the capitalism of some who either ruse or confront the capitalism of the other in crisis. They’re both capitalism, and for being so, they are patriarchal, colonial, and enemies of the peoples, there is no real option picking between BRICS and U.S.-led imperialism, they’re the same.
One thing is the tactical and another thing is strategic. In the strategic and the ethical we cannot be in agreement with BRICS to oppose the United States, only tactically to help end capitalism, which we forget about because they recruit us, some of the imperialist, right, transactional, organizations that can be called “left” or not, because that no longer matters.
So now we have El Salvador, Costa Rica, Panama, Venezuela, Ecuador, Chile, Bolivia, Paraguay, Argentina, all of them now as the backyard in the new Monroe Doctrine. And it’s barely getting started. - Weaving peoples and processes from oblivion, it’s not an option
Finally, here I don’t explain, I only propose, I reiterate what we have been arguing in various environments that we feel is indispensable. Indispensable.
We in the communities, in the countryside, we have been made into citizens, which means that our existence is in relation to the nation-state as a consequence of the law that legitimized dispossession and colonization through private property, that finished consolidating the dispossession and exclusion and erasure, that exiled from the soil the majority of the peoples.
Citizenship is the same as banishment. Being banished, we are forgotten. Being forgotten, we participate only in political processes that, in the greater part, are manipulated. We don’t have real options. The best of the options is the lesser evil so that someone worse doesn’t come.
In reality, we are so deeply in with the United Nations and electoral politics, in the trap of the colonial conquest in process, which today is, none other than, through the threat of violence, rhetoric, and propaganda, the Monroe-Trump Doctrine of the total control of the territories in the search to eliminate surplus populations according to capital, and the capture of territories and scarce resources, in the middle of a war, competition between capitalist, imperialist rights, which include the United States, China, Russia, and up but are not limited to them: Turkey, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, European Union, etcetera.
In this context, the question we have to ask ourselves that we haven’t answered but we need to work on: how do we prevent ourselves from submitting to the nation-states, to the electoral processes, and we use them tactically but they don’t become ends even if rhetorically we can say they are only media.
How do we become peoples-territories once again to put the brakes on the war against Mother Earth?
How do we create agendas from the diversity, the immensity of territorial processes, urban, rural, of struggles and resistances with an infinite creativity and with every type of difficulty that we don’t have spaces or have created the conditions to weave with each other.
How do we confront and help overcome the greatest of the ills, which is the systematic banalization of life through entertainment, algorithms, and all biopolitical mechanisms so that for the majority of the population, nothing you and I are talking about right now interests them.
It doesn’t get on their radar, and if it does, it is doesn’t go beyond the prefabricated interpretations of the left-right imperialist propaganda, etc. to stay inside the trap that is their world against us and against life.
How to build in the weaving of peoples and processes the alternative to this order? How to confront from there what exists tactically, resisting while at the same time generating alternatives to the nation-states, to the politics, to the needs and concrete challenges all of this confronts us with.
That’s what I wanted to share.
Emmanuel Rozental-Klinger
Lecture in Context. In Real Time. Pueblos en Camino.
January 3, 2026
P.S.
A sister and compa in the struggle from Nicaragua and Our America adds more aspects for analysis:
The international order and multilateralism have finally broken down.
It is a country that occupies/invades another.
Not even the opposition will govern (MCM was completely dismissed), the occupier governs, as happened in Nicaragua with William W.
Yes, the powers of the Venezuelan State are meeting today, giving a conference from Venezuela (it is clear that there was negotiation with Chavismo).
Trade, land, oil are emphasized, nothing about democracy and freedoms.
It is evident that both those on the left and the right, in their pursuit of power, are capable of anything; everything is negotiable.
Among the many voices from Venezuela, at least this one from a brother who points out essential issues in an exchange:
A- “For the moment, the structure of Chavismo seems to remain in power, now with the proposal of a presidency for Delcy Rodríguez and under the supervision of Trump and his oil project.”
B- “The issue of last year’s electoral legitimacy is not on the table, and it seems to me that it is the only option for a minimally institutional and sovereign transition.”
Reaction: “Agreed, compa. But in that electoral process, certain movements, parties, sectors, and communities were unable to participate due to suppression by Chavismo, which was effective in silencing and excluding the “left” to legitimize María Corina’s right-wing and her candidacy as the only option. If elections are called and there are more options, are there more possibilities than those offered by Maduro’s tyranny? Maduro eliminated every left-wing or popular option to force the opposition to the regime to vote for the right! Wouldn’t that unquestionable fact be an argument for calling elections? Are the conditions right? If Trump manipulated Argentina and Honduras, what will happen in Venezuela where Rubio and Hegseth, along with the Pentagon and the oil companies, are the government, according to them, to recover “our” oil?”
Response: “Yes, they were not free elections. Although I think MCM would win any election at the moment. There is a legitimacy there that we cannot reject, no matter how much we may reject the agenda behind that person. New elections under better conditions would also be a good option. But after what happened last year, there is no electoral institution with credibility. There is a stalemate there, which is why I think that for the moment the only basis of legitimacy is that electoral result from last year, provided there is a guarantee of new elections, constitutional rights, and so on.”
Reaction: “Thank you!!! One thing is the analytical perspective from afar, another is the concrete conditions, and one needs to be grounded in reality.”
C- “Two more issues to put on the table at this moment: Yes, the regime released hundreds of political prisoners, effectively confessing its tyrannical nature, but many hundreds more remain in prison under terrible conditions and cannot be forgotten. Those who were released tend to be those who were not so involved with the press, in defending human rights, or in the struggle through processes and communities. There is also the issue of exploitative conditions, the wage situation, poverty and exploitation… well, that’s obvious, but it cannot be forgotten.”
We will be free when we are free by our own hand and strength, by our joy and creativity: When we can listen to each other, willing to be criticized and to criticize ourselves, knowing that it is for life and freedom, because those who rule are repugnant, as are those who obey and imitate them.
About the author
Emmanuel Rozental-Klinger is a physician and surgeon, author and activist in Indigenous and popular movements in the continent. Founder of the Tejido de Comunicacíon of the Association of Indigenous Councils in Northern Cauca (ACIN). Founder and member of the Pueblos en Camino initiative, weaving resistance and autonomy between peoples and processes.