The Fourth International openly declares itself against the latest attempted coup and imperialist interference in Venezuela cynically orchestrated and called for by US vice-president Mike Pence (in place of Trump, who is discredited in Latin America). In a video circulated on the night of 22 January, the starting flag was raised for the unfolding of a strategy beginning with the would-be usurper Juan Guaidó proclaiming himself “president” of Venezuela, even though nobody had voted for him. This was followed by a string of neoconservative, right-wing and neofascist presidents and governments in Latin America and throughout the world rushing to “recognise” the purported new government. The Organisation of American States and the countries signatories to the “Lima Declaration” also immediately fell in with the imperialist plans by recognising Guaidó’s illegitimate presidency and imposing a blockade on Venezuela, thereby helping in an attempt to provoke a response that would act as an excuse for an armed intervention.

We strongly support campaigns to condemn this attempted coup d’état and imperialist intervention, which violate the basic norms of national sovereignty. We call for the widest popular, united, internationalist and democratic mobilization against the coup, which means that, regardless of our differences with and our criticisms of the Maduro government and the regime it implemented in Venezuela, we do not see a solution via an imperialist coup. Let the Venezuelan people, freely, independently and democratically decide their future.

Venezuela’s undeniable political, social and economic problems can only be solved democratically without any interference by imperialists who lack all credibility in their claims to defend “democracy and human rights”.

It is true that important popular sectors, exasperated by the very serious economic situation of the country and by the government’s difficulties, contradictions and wrong choices, have taken to the streets in support of the coup. The tragedy is that it is not by placing themselves under the orders of the national oligarchy and the international, reactionary and even neofascist imperialist forces they are going to make the economic, social and human rights situation in Venezuela any better.."

At the present time everything suggests that those carrying out the coup are trying to force a civil war and/or direct intervention by foreign powers, which would only aggravate the country’s problems and lead to a deepening of the political offensive by the right and the far right on the American continent and throughout the world. Armed conflict would be catastrophic for the region and open the door to a new crusade for the control of the country’s oil resources by the major international oligopolies. The catastrophe caused by the United States’ occupation of Iraq gives some idea of what could happen in Venezuela and the whole region if those taking part in the coup fail to change course.

We call on all revolutionary, progressive and democratic forces to mobilise against this latest imperialist interference and to defend the sovereignty of the Venezuelan people in solving their political, social and economic problems democratically and pacifically, free of economic sabotage and without the threat of armed intervention, respecting the will of the majority as expressed through the ballot box.

No to the coup in Venezuela!

For an anti-imperialist and independent solution to the Venezuelan crisis!

Executive Bureau of the Fourth International 24 January 2019