Maduro with DEA ​​officials in New York

By Mario Gonzalez - La Marx Venezuela

The capture and imprisonment of the murderous and oppressive Nicolás Maduro Moros by the United States military has unleashed a global political reaction. While Donald Trump and the imperialist media claim that they apprehended him through "Operation Southern Spear" with ships from the Pentagon's Fourth Fleet leading the charge, and later with Operation "Absolute Resolve," the reality is that the capitalist dictatorship in Venezuela was a political corpse that had already been annihilated by the Venezuelan masses years before, leaving behind a hollow shell devoid of legitimacy, propped up by the armed forces.

The sudden and "strange" capture of Maduro without any resistance from the Venezuelan armed forces or his security detail, without ground intervention (infantry) or bombing of inhospitable areas, suggests not only the possibility of internal betrayal, as the New York Times asserts, but also a negotiation between the "Bolivarian" capitalist dictatorship and imperialism. Maduro will be tried for "drug trafficking" and "terrorism," which leaves open the possibility of his subsequent release if the negotiations are successful.

We denounce this as a negotiation and a maneuver from a judicial standpoint, because if the trial were to focus on the persecution, forced disappearance, and murder of dissidents, as well as human rights violations against political prisoners, Nicolás Maduro's legal situation would be extremely serious, and a life sentence would be insufficient. Meanwhile, the Venezuelan Supreme Court ordered Vice President Delcy Rodríguez to assume the presidency in Maduro's "forced absence," placing her in charge of negotiations with the United States in a political status very similar to that of an "interim government," given that Pentagon ships remain stationed off the Venezuelan coast as a pressure tactic against the capitalist PSUV government.

One striking fact is that although US forces remain in international waters of the Caribbean Sea without entering Venezuela by land with at least 12 conventional warships and a couple of aircraft carriers (the USS Gerald R. Ford and the Iwo Jima), no US soldiers remain on land in an occupation capacity as they did during "Operation Just Cause " to capture Manuel Antonio Noriega and secure strategic points on the Panama Canal in 1983 with a deployment of 27,000 US soldiers as an occupying army, leaving several hundred (although independent sources speak of thousands) dead in their wake.

In Venezuela, imperialism fears triggering a popular mobilization that would jeopardize not only the operation itself, but also any puppet government that might be established. So far, the Venezuelan armed forces remain in the streets and around Miraflores Palace to prevent any popular mobilization that could derail negotiations with imperialism. It goes without saying that Maduro's arrest "by helicopter" did not provoke the slightest movement from our people, who hate the tyrant with all their hearts.

We Marxists call for confronting imperialist interference and the dictatorship; both are inextricably linked. One cannot fight imperialism without fighting the dictatorship, and vice versa, because both are negotiating. Both negotiate over millions of dollars, bank accounts, impunity, exile, the location of family members, and the assets stolen from our people, who are mired in a sea of ​​poverty and misery by the capitalist dictatorship of the PSUV.

We condemn the 99% of the global left that refuses to mobilize against the dictatorship under the pretext that doing so would mean "playing into the hands of imperialism ," when it is Trump who is negotiating impunity for our executioners regarding the hundreds and thousands murdered and disappeared in Venezuela. At the same time, we reject any "transition" or solution to a capitalist government like that of María Corina Machado or González Urrutia, which would endorse the fraudulent elections called by the dictatorship, which these bourgeois leaders seek to legalize.

They are negotiating to avoid a Nepal in Latin America

We condemn the imperialist harassment of Venezuela, which demonstrates that Donald Trump does not defend any "freedoms" ; on the contrary, he violates rights constantly. Trump poses as a defender of democratic freedoms, but he tramples on and violates them continuously, both within and outside the United States. At the same time, we reject the shameful campaign of the Castro-Chavista dictatorship and 99% of the global left, who lie about an "invasion" of Venezuela, which does not exist. They do this to conceal the reality of the negotiations the dictatorship is conducting with imperialism.

It 's a campaign designed to confuse activists by making them believe that Trump can change regimes and governments at will, and that imperialism has decided to return to the "Monroe Doctrine" of "America for the Americans." This is utter nonsense, completely divorced from reality. We hear this constantly from all sorts of pundits, charlatans, and "geopolitical" experts, who chatter away 24/7, in a campaign echoed by leaders of the global left. They talk about a supposed struggle between the US and China, parroting the " Decoupling Theory" to ultimately predict the advent of a Third World War, which, in the end, never materializes.

The reality is that the regime and imperialism are negotiating not because there is an "anti-China or anti-Russian conspiracy ," or because they seek to revive the "Monroe Doctrine ," or other absurd conclusions put forward by the illiterate leaders of Castro-Chavismo and the reformist left, inspired by Netflix spy movies. The reality is that imperialism and the dictatorship are negotiating because they seek to avoid a Nepal in Latin America. They want to prevent an explosion in which the people end up burning down government buildings, the parliament, the courts, and the mansions of the oligarchs who dominate the country, as happened in Nepal.

Donald Trump himself made the negotiation public when he explained in great detail at the press conference held at the White House on January 3, 2026, that María Corina Machado does not have the necessary "support and respect" to be in charge of the country, and therefore a transition is being made with Dalcy Rodríguez, the current vice president of the regime, who is now the president.

This is how Donald Trump "defends freedom" : by making a deal with a group of criminals belonging to a dictatorship that has perpetrated all kinds of crimes against humanity in defense of capitalism. The Chavista dictatorship has thousands of political prisoners, 2,000 detentions, and 1,600 cases of torture, 129 of which involve minors. Using paramilitary groups, the Chavista dictatorship has murdered more than 10,000 activists, union members, politicians, and popular opposition figures, and operates an open-air concentration camp, "El Helicoide," in the heart of Caracas, the country's capital.

The dictatorship has expelled 8 million Venezuelans, constituting one of the greatest migration tragedies and human rights violations of the 21st century, surpassing even Ukraine, which is in the midst of a national liberation war. The bourgeois and treacherous left refuses to fight this horrific dictatorship so as not to "play into imperialism's hands." And on this point, the policies of Chavismo and imperialism converge.

While Maduro poses for photos with DEA ​​officials in New York, paramilitary groups roam menacingly through the streets of our cities, seeking to intimidate us. And while the dictatorship's thugs threaten us, the bourgeois leaders who answer to imperialism warn us that it is better to "seek peace," to "not demonstrate" to avoid deaths or harm at the hands of the dictatorship. The reality is that both imperialism and the capitalist dictatorship of Venezuela are afraid of our people because they fear that our country will inscribe its name among the great revolutionary processes sweeping the world. They know perfectly well about the revolution we have been carrying out for the last nine years.

Revolution against the dictatorship: Nine years of permanent revolution

The one who consistently defends freedoms and democratic rights is not Donald Trump, but our people who have been fighting and leading revolution after revolution to defend those rights for the past nine years. In 2017, the dictatorship created a parallel parliament called the National Constituent Assembly because it was in the minority in the National Assembly that the same dictatorship had convened through fraudulent elections. The Supreme Court of Justice considered the elected parliament "in contempt," while extending powers to President Nicolás Maduro, effectively turning him into a kind of "monarch." All of this sparked a new wave of protests. Our people rose up, rejecting the dictatorship's measures and suffering the conditions of capitalist Venezuela, where under Maduro the inflation rate had exceeded 500%.

The mobilizations we led were brutally repressed by the Bolivarian National Police and the Bolivarian National Guard, who pointed lethal weapons at demonstrators at close range. The dictatorship thought it had ended the protests, but in 2019 we returned to the fray. The bourgeoisie, who answer to imperialism, used our struggle to derail it, with Juan Guaidó proclaiming himself president, which diverted part of the fight and confused thousands of honest activists.

But despite the disastrous policies of the bourgeois leaders, the treacherous policies of the Chavista union bureaucracy that isolated our struggles, and the nefarious policies of the bourgeois left that only sought electoral participation, we rose up again against the dictatorship after the 2024 elections in the face of the dictatorship's blatant fraud. We seized police stations, mobilized by the thousands, toppled statues of Chávez, the working-class neighborhoods of Caracas mobilized en masse, and we had the possibility once again of carrying out a triumphant revolution. But María Corina Machado took the lead in the struggle, diverting the revolution to the legal arena of vote counting and electoral records, demanding that the dictatorship acknowledge its fraud, which was like asking a cow to fly—something that simply won't happen.

The revolution we are waging against the dictatorship is a February revolution, in the sense defined by Nahuel Moreno. We haven't achieved its triumph, but even though the dictatorship hasn't fallen, each uprising we have led has weakened it. The dictatorship has become a senile Bismarckian regime, that is, a Bonapartism that is decomposing, and its constituent elements—officials, armed forces, paramilitary groups—are crumbling to pieces. Our revolution is part of the global revolutionary process unfolding on five continents. It is a third wave sweeping through Turkey, Serbia, Bangladesh, Nepal, Morocco, Peru, Paraguay, Ecuador, France, the Ukrainian national revolutionary war, Syria, Rojava, the Palestinian national liberation intifada, Iran, and so on. This is what frightens imperialism and the dictatorship, which are negotiating a " transition" to avoid a violent fall of the regime.

The global left is betraying the Venezuelan people.

The global left claims that Maduro's imprisonment is a "kidnapping ." But it's clear this is utter nonsense, considering the tyrant doesn't seem particularly sad when he's photographed with DEA ​​agents. All the fabricated "invasions" that don't exist, "kidnappings" that are actually prearranged, and all the exaggeration have a single objective: to support the Chavista dictatorship. The global bourgeois and reformist left abandons the fight against dictatorships: It never supported the people's struggle against Assad in Syria, it doesn't support Ukraine's struggle against Putin, it doesn't support the people of Iran against the Ayatollahs, it didn't support the people of Hong Kong's struggle against Xi Jinping's sinister dictatorship, it didn't support the people of Libya against Gaddafi, it doesn't support the Arab Spring, nor does it support the Kurdish people's struggle against Turkey. It doesn't do so because it considers these dictatorships "anti-imperialist," and the revolutions the people are waging against them "play into imperialism's hands."

Where does all this nonsense come from that leads groups calling themselves "Marxist" or "socialist" to view dictatorships with sympathy? It stems from "Decoupling Theory ," which posits that what is happening in the world is the end of US hegemony, and that old imperialisms like the European Union (EU), or new imperialisms emerging like China, India, Russia, and Brazil (BRICS), are "decoupling" from US imperialist domination and challenging that hegemony. According to this theory, the world is heading toward World War III between the US and the "China-Russia bloc ." This entire theory originated in Wall Street circles, and the reformist left has embraced it passionately. 99% of left-wing groups adhere to this theory.

But this theory, besides being false, inevitably leads to opportunism. First, because it is completely false that China or Russia are imperialist countries vying for hegemony with US imperialism. China and Russia are sub-metropolises of imperialist capital; they are not imperialist countries. Therefore, beyond the logical and occasional friction that occurs all the time between all bourgeoisies, there is no confrontation between imperialism, China, and Russia. On the contrary, there is a constant search for agreements and the joint implementation of policies: In Ukraine, Donald Trump has sided with Putin, demanding Ukraine's surrender and the handover of Donbas, its territory, and sovereignty to the criminal oligarchy that governs in Moscow.

With Xi Jinping, there are very deep trade and political agreements that sustain the structure of imperialist capitalism. The US invests heavily in China, while China supports the US fiscal deficit by buying bonds—an agreement that has been working like clockwork for over 30 years. The most blatant example of the falsity of decoupling lies in its prediction: Its proponents have been predicting World War III for 20 years, an old prediction of the revisionists. But since the theory is false, World War III never happens, which makes the global reformist left look ridiculous.

The problem is that, because proponents of "decoupling" see a world "divided in two ," they inevitably tend to believe that China and Russia or the BRICS will eventually confront US imperialism, leading leftist groups to "campism." That is, to believe that there is an anti-imperialist "progressive camp" that confronts imperialism and questions its policies. This leads the illiterate leaders of these groups to consider Maduro, Gaddafi, Assad, Ortega, Díaz-Canel, Putin, the Ayatollahs, Erdoğan, or Xi Jinping "progressive ," and thus groups that identify as "Marxist" end up supporting criminals who murder, torture, and massacre their people. It is the adoption of this theory, which has no basis in reality as you can read here, that leads the reformist and bourgeois left to support the Venezuelan dictatorship and refuse to unite the struggle against it in the fight against imperialism. Thousands of activists worldwide are breaking with this bourgeois, reformist, and treacherous left.

We Marxists propose revolution against dictatorship and imperialism

Why does the Castro-Chavista dictatorship repress, torture, and murder? To subject our people to the worst conditions of oppression and exploitation, which have destroyed our wages, our living conditions, our working conditions, and our social conditions. It is a dictatorship that proclaims itself "socialist," which is completely false because it is the best defender of capitalism, copying models like those of Cuba or China, where capitalist dictatorships led by Stalinism are the best defenders of the profits of corporations and multinationals.

That is why we refuse to obey the policies of the dictatorship or the treacherous left that says we can fight because otherwise "the right wing will come." Or "imperialism will come." Imperialism isn't "coming" it's already here with the dictatorship. For years, as we explained in the article you can read by clicking here, the dictatorship received Richard Grenell, Trump's envoy, in Caracas to negotiate the sale of oil to Chevron in the five oil projects it has in the country jointly with Petróleos de Venezuela, SA (PDVSA), and to share profits with imperialism equivalent to hundreds of millions of dollars.

Donald Trump, through the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), automatically renewed license number 41 to guarantee the dictatorship's profits. In return, the Maduro regime unconditionally agreed to receive all flights carrying deported Venezuelans, and not only receive them but also send planes to pick them up. In other words, a beautiful collaboration between the Venezuelan dictatorship and the worst anti-immigrant policies of imperialism.

Therefore, the fight against Trump and imperialism is inseparable from the fight against the dictatorship. This exposes the lies of "clowns" like the president of Argentina, Javier Milei, a Trump ally, who claims to support the "freedom" of the Venezuelan people, while thousands of Venezuelans are about to be deported without having committed any crime in the U.S. For this reason, we reject the current negotiations and the Delcy-Trump pact, which are in reality a continuation of negotiations that the dictatorship and imperialism have been conducting since October 2023, when the Partial Agreement on the Promotion of "Political Rights and Electoral Guarantees," known as the Barbados Agreement, was signed in Bridgetown, Barbados.

That agreement actually allowed the dictatorship to systematically violate all political rights and electoral guarantees, while, as a result of License 44, most US oil companies were allowed to do business in Venezuela, and PDVSA was allowed to sell its oil in the United States. This enabled the dictatorship, just days after the agreement, to grant 30-year licenses to Shell and NGC to produce natural gas off the Venezuelan coast. This is how we lost our sovereignty, our heritage, and our labor and social gains.

It was Chavismo, in partnership with imperialism, that deprived us of them. Our position is clear! We call on the Venezuelan people to mobilize and fight for our rights. To recover our salaries, our jobs, the debts the government owes us, our collective bargaining agreements, and our labor rights. We must reclaim our gains now that the dictatorship is weak and imperialism is negotiating.

But we also demand the immediate release of all political prisoners. We demand justice for our dead, our disappeared; we demand trial and punishment for the officials of the dictatorship—Maduro, Diosdado, the Rodríguez brothers—and for the judges who allowed them to carry out these abuses and violations of our rights. Not a single one should remain free! We know who murdered, tortured, and imprisoned our family members and friends. None of this will be achieved with the Delcy-Maduro agreement! We Venezuelans must take our destiny into our own hands!

The solution is not reformist, it is revolutionary. That is why in Venezuela we must achieve a new mobilization in the streets to defeat the dictatorship. Out with Delcy, Diosdado, and the dictatorship! The only independent solution, free from the capitalists and belonging to the workers and the Venezuelan people. From Marx Venezuela, we vehemently reject all imperialist interference, and at the same time, we fight against the dictatorship. We call on you to mobilize and take to the streets until we impose a general strike, a path to establishing a workers' and people's solution to this crisis, a workers' and people's government, independent of the capitalist governments of the US, the region, and the dictatorship. Join us to fight for it.