A reactionary wave is sweeping Latin America. Since the elections of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro in July 2024 and Uruguay’s Yamandú Orsi in November 2024, all seven of the subsequent direct presidential contests have gone to the right.

The Maduro election is widely assumed by the US-aligned corporate press to have been stolen, although a recently declassified CIA report found no election manipulation. More relevant has been Washington’s role in tipping elections to the right in Colombia, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, Peru, and Costa Rica. Most blatant was the Honduran contest in which President Donald Trump pardoned convicted narco-trafficker and former president Juan Orlando Hernández immediately before the election and threatened to cut aid if his candidate lost.

“The Latin American electoral left has reached its limits,” the Peoples Dispatch concludes. If Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva loses the presidential runoff, an orange wave will have inundated the Pink Tide for some time to come.

A US-backed reactionary wave of the 1960s-1980s brought the rule of the generals. The current one might be called the reign of the clowns: Colombia’s Abelardo de la Espriella joked about burning cats, Argentina’s Javier Milei communicated with his deceased dog, and El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele proclaimed himself the “world’s coolest dictator.”

While the reactionaries of the past posed as nationalists, today’s neo-fascists flaunt their subservience to the White House in what Foreign Policy calls “caudillo courtship.” “Patriotism,” according to Vijay Prashad, “is cast aside for absolute loyalty to Washington and its corporations.”

The US military buildup in the Caribbean surrounding Venezuela has been accompanied by an aggressive penetration into the entire region.

Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez helped initiate regional alliances for Latin American integration and autonomy that deliberately excluded the US and Canada. ALBA and CELAC have survived, though much reduced; UNASUR and Petrocaribe have largely withered. Capitalizing on their decline, Washington has constructed the Shield of the Americas, a hemispheric bloc designed to reintegrate the region into a US-centered political and security architecture.

The US military buildup in the Caribbean surrounding Venezuela has been accompanied by an aggressive penetration into the entire region. The Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere is integrating military capabilities of 17 partner nations with those of the US in the Americas Counter Cartel Coalition.

For a quarter century, the US tried to overthrow the Bolivarian Revolution. The campaign further escalated with the imposition of an oil blockade last December. And still the Venezuelans resisted. Then on January 3, Washington kidnapped Venezuela’s President Maduro and his wife, National Assembly delegate Cilia Flores, leaving over 100 dead. The attack demonstrated, especially to Venezuelans, that Washington could act with impunity.

With a war on Iran looming, the US needed to reassure international oil markets to keep prices down at the gas pump. Maduro had repeatedly offered to negotiate with Washington and even update the hydrocarbon law. The US had demonized Maduro as a narco-terrorist, providing a pretext for abducting the lawful president while leaving intact much of the Chavista system that emerged from the Bolivarian Revolution led by Hugo Chávez.

Washington possibly reasoned that removing Maduro while compelling the existing state to accommodate intervention was more workable than destroying Chavismo and attempting regime change from scratch.

Vice President Delcy Rodríguez was sworn in as acting president. The Chavista party, legislature, judiciary, military, and grassroots organizations united behind her and continue to do so. Venezuela’s access to oil markets and thus its hope for economic recovery and national development was restored, but at a terrific price.

In the face of overwhelming force, Venezuela has been forced into an unprecedented negotiated sovereignty. Washington determines the boundaries within which Venezuela can bargain, although Caracas retains some agency within those boundaries.

Sentiment on the Street

Venezuelans feel alone, a sentiment communicated to me in a February visit and subsequent correspondence. Even some critical voices recognize “the continuing capacity of US imperialism to impose its will when no countervailing power exists, and without new political breakthroughs internationally to come to Venezuela’s aid.”

Venezuelans, regardless of political affiliation in a highly polarized country, feel under attack. They believe, with good reason, that the US could come back at any time with ever more devastating force. The metaphor of a “gun to the head” is a lived reality. Every week or so, a small boat is capriciously incinerated in the eastern Pacific or the Caribbean.

Some online leftists living in the imperial core call Rodríguez “cowardly”—substituting moralism for political analysis. But the “gun” was pointed not just at the leadership but at the whole country: the threat of an asphyxiating blockade, a large-scale invasion, a far-right government, and a bloodbath for Chavistas.

The key is understanding the problem as regional and the solution as uniting against the same enemy. The common denominator is the enormous leverage exercised by US imperial power.

Venezuelans also want peace. While militant currents exist, particularly in some of the more successful communes, there is no appetite for confrontation with the hegemon. The consensus after 26 years of........

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