In response to the escalation of hostile rhetoric and the positioning of U.S. armed forces to attack the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, the Diaspora Pa’lante Collective (DPC) urges all progressive forces of the region to mobilize in defense of Venezuelan sovereignty and self-determination. DPC stands unequivocally opposed to the impositions of imperialism on the peoples and nations of Our Americas, and reiterates that our region must be respected as a Zone of Peace.
Yankee imperialism dares to project itself as the arbiter of justice in the Western Hemisphere, threatening to depose Venezuela’s democratically-elected president under the pretext of neutralizing state-sanctioned drug trafficking, while undertaking the mass extermination of Palestinians in Gaza in full view of the world and in flagrant violation of international law. As a people subjected to 127 years of colonial occupation, forced displacement, and systematic exploitation by the United States, we recognize such posturing for what it truly is: a reckless and tyrannical determination to maintain its centuries-long domination of the Americas.
This cruel contradiction couldn’t be clearer: as Washington embarks on a savior’s mission to rescue the Venezuelan people from the depredations of socialism, its longstanding deployment of sanctions as a weapon of war has eviscerated Venezuela’s economy and contributed to the immiseration of its people. As in Cuba, Iran, Zimbabwe, and Korea, coercive economic measures are designed to discipline insubordinate peoples and governments. U.S. planners continue to signal their true intentions by escalating their strategy toward conventional warfare against the Venezuelan people and state.
Reports indicate that in addition to hosting amphibious training and flight operations on behalf of the U.S. Marine Corps, a nuclear-powered submarine and several P-8 maritime patrol aircraft are stationed at the Roosevelt Roads Naval Base in southern Puerto Rico, ready to be deployed in the region.
Puerto Rico’s lands and waters have long been used by the U.S. military to further its imperialist agenda across the world, serving as a logistical hub and as a training, staging, and launching ground to facilitate armed interventions in the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Grenada, Panama, and elsewhere across Latin America and the Caribbean.
In the midst of World War II, the Pentagon seized nearly eighty percent of the island of Vieques to create an extensive practice range for war exercises and weapons testing. Occupied by the U.S. Navy for more than sixty years, the island was systematically subjected to the “sights, sounds, smells, and sensations of exploding bombs, gunfire, deployment of chemical weapons, aerial attacks, and ship-to-shore bombardment.” The courageous people of Vieques successfully evicted the Navy in 2003, but the toxic legacy of its presence has left survivors with elevated cancer rates and unexploded ordnance scattered throughout the island.
Such flagrant disregard for the lives of Puerto Ricans, for the health of our water, soil, and non-human life, and for the rights and dignity of all peoples and nations across the Americas, is made possible by our status as a colony of the United States, the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today. Without the decisive defeat and expulsion of U.S. forces from our archipelago, Our Americas will remain hostage to the dictates of the U.S. ruling class.
We must remain vigilant in our defense of the Venezuelan people against U.S. militarism. As internationalists, our commitment is to the preservation of socialism in the Americas, the protection of all nations from U.S. imperialism, and the safety and wellbeing of our siblings across the Americas.
Build, Grow, and Defend a Zone of Peace in Our Americas!
Defend Venezuelan Sovereignty and the Bolivarian Revolution!
Glory to the Heroic Palestinian Resistance!
¡Que Viva Puerto Rico Libre y Socialista!
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