Version imprimableThis defeat is expressed in the lack of an autonomous, popular and self-organised response in the streets against the military aggression and the colonial situation that the United States intends to impose. The government has managed to organise, from the apparatus of power, diminished mobilisations without a combative spirit; the right wing was immobilised by Trump’s recognition of the colonial administration board led by Delcy Rodríguez; the radical, anti-capitalist, and anti-colonial left wing also failed to mobilise popular sectors; whilst the popular movement was activated this February 2 in response to its most deeply felt demand: wages and better material living conditions. To tell the truth, however painful it may be, there are no possibilities at this time for unified mobilisations that demonstrate anti-imperialist national unity. Maduro’s regime has led us to this disaster.
The release of political prisoners has restored hope, although fear has not dissipated because those freed are subject to precautionary measures that prevent them from speaking out or expressing their opinions. The perseverance of the mothers and families of political prisoners has achieved the most significant democratic victory in recent years. This has brought the democratic agenda to the forefront.
However, public life, the exercise of citizenship, has reached its lowest point, leading to collective despair. This is expressed politically in the fact that a significant segment of the population, not only on the right, believes that US tutelage might be better than Maduro’s misrule. That is why we don’t see large-scale mobilisations or a national anti-imperialist front; to deny this is to misunderstand the current political moment.
Consequently, the struggle to redemocratise the country’s social and political life must be the priority on the national agenda, which involves the reinstitutionalisation of public powers and a space to address urgent social demands. This is the only possible path to open channels for anti-colonial consciousness and struggle. Without the democratisation of Venezuelan society, it will be impossible to recover the Republic.
In previous colonialist experiences, the aggressor fosters the formation of puppet political parties, due to their acceptance of the colonial condition, whom they consider valid interlocutors; today, a significant part of the political class, those in government and sectors of the opposition that are functional to the status quo, strive to fulfill that role. Consequently, the challenge is to build democratic political parties that truly fulfill the intermediary role necessary to constructively restore the Republic. This implies creating spaces for convergence amidst differences and organising pluralistic political instruments, as the only way to prevent redemocratisation from leading to the rise of parties that perpetuate a colonial situation.
It is not easy, because we come from decades of polarisation, discord, and abandonment of politics as the art of making the impossible possible to benefit the majority. For the non-Madurist left, this implies overcoming subjectivism, sectarianism, and radical posturing without the capacity to connect with the mass movement, but it also means defending identity, preserving the right to exist as a power option for the humble, for the popular sectors, within the framework of an imperial agenda that may promote the proscription of any political instrument referenced in socialism. Reinventing oneself to avoid making mistakes is the biggest challenge for the Venezuelan left in such a complex time as the present.
3 February 2026
Translated by David Fagan for International Viewpoint.
