New members of the Bolivarian militia during a military deployment in Caracas, Venezuela. Gabriela Oraa (EL PAĂS) | Video: EPV
Realizing a Zone of Peace in Our Americas requires defending Venezuelaâs popular sovereignty.
Originally published in Black Alliance for Peace.
Nov 14, 2025 â The U.S. empire, unable to accept the sovereignty, progress, and moral example of the Bolivarian Revolution, is escalating its aggressive attacks against Venezuela. This is by no means an isolated struggle â what started as aggression against Venezuela and the Bolivarian Revolution has already claimed several dozen lives of working-class people in the Caribbean and Pacific, extended to threats against Colombia and its President, been linked to the militarization of Ecuador and Panama, and re-militarized Puerto Rico. This is yet another front in the struggle against U.S. imperialism, and it is interlocked with our movements for liberation in Haiti, Palestine, throughout Our Americas, across the Global South, and within the borders of the United States.
It is the wider ongoing pattern of regional militarization and imperialist control that fundamentally violates the principles of a Zone of Peace, as the U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) has systematically transformed the Caribbean into a staging ground for its hegemonic projects. Puerto Rico, a colonial territory, is consistently used as a strategic site for the deployment and launch of military exercises, normalizing its status as a forward operating base, while nations like Guyana and Trinidad & Tobago are treated as subordinate "puppet states" that risk their own sovereignty to facilitate U.S. objectives. Simultaneously, Haiti has been cast as a laboratory for imperial policy, where an accelerated militarization and occupation over the last four years has provided a blueprint for intervention. The racist and cynical designation of Haitian paramilitary armed groups as âterroristsâ to be eradicated by US-led occupation has done nothing to relieve impoverished, marginalized Haitians from the violence of these âgangsâ â because they are a direct consequence of imperialism. And yet, the excuse and label of âterrorismâ has now been directly exported to the case of Venezuela. There, the U.S. Department of War cynically compares Caribbean people in fishing boats to Al-Qaeda, a transparent tactic to manufacture a pretext for full military invasion and attack.
To oppose this militarization and violence, and expel the nefarious forces of imperialist, colonial violence from our region, we must be steadfast in guaranteeing Our Americas as a Zone of Peace. This guarantee can only be built from the bottom up, through grassroots coordination and popular struggle that elevates/focuses on/highlights anti-imperialist national sovereignty. This is why the Popular Steering Committee for a Zone of Peace in Our Americas launched the U.S./NATO Out of Our Americas (UNOOAN) earlier this year. The UNOOAN is the mass organizational structure of the Zone Of Peace campaign designed to educate the public and strengthen an Americas-wide consciousness among the peoples of the region.
To move towards meeting this moment, BAP has joined with dozens of organizations calling for local actions during the week of November 15 - 23 to Defend Venezuelaâs Sovereignty and connect our struggles. This week of action is a crucial beginning, but the gravity of the moment demands a coordinated and powerful response that moves from mobilization to sustained organization. Our movements must pull together our forces to expose the imperial lies that cynically label popular resistance as terrorism, broadening our analysis to expose the interlocked assaults on sovereignty across the region. And we must advance our collective consciousness beyond merely exposing these lies and toward challenging state violence and repression through popular power.
This mobilization must fuel the concrete building of national coalitions against SOUTHCOM and local self-defense networks, learning from the powerful examples of Venezuela's communal militias and projects that embody popular democracy. The steadfastness of the Venezuelan people, who have joined these militias by the millions to defend their homeland, is not just an act of national resistance; it is a living proof that alternatives to imperial domination exist. The U.S. empire seeks to destroy the Bolivarian Revolution precisely because it shows we can fight for People(s)-Centered Human Rights (PCHRs) and for a true, just, militant peace. In unwavering solidarity with the Venezuelan people, we therefore commit to continuing this fight, organizing in solidarity with their masses and popular movements across the Americas to defend sovereignty, dignity, and the right to forge a different future.
Defend Venezuela's Sovereignty!
U.S. & NATO Out of Our Americas!
Make Our Americas a Zone of Peace!
Johanna Fernandez left a powerful and revolutionary legacy through her scholarship and activism.
Johanna Fernandez touched many lives through her scholarship, activism, and belief that people themselves can change history and be "the ones we've been waiting for."
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