Maduro’s imprisonment supposedly happened because no Venezuelan group could organize against his regime. The existence of these groups, even if they are banned from elections, shows the Venezuelan people can organize their own regimr change with help from neighboring countries. Furthermore, these groups lack the perspective necessary to unite the region in revolution and overthrow every nationalist republic for a collectivized South American, Central American, and Caribbean economy run democratically by the workers and dispossessing the Spanish families of the Spanish empire amd colonialism in general. Maduro acted as a unifying figure for Pan-Latin American politics, like the Colombian leader Gaitán, assassinated in 1950 as front-runner in the Colombian presidential election. This led to a 50-year civil war that has drained the resources of Colombia and unleashed death squads and terror on the people of Colombia and the entire region. Venezuela’s loss of 8 million residents to emigration mirrors Colombia’s loss of 6 million Colombians since 1950, along with 7.7 internally displaced people, disproportionately indigenous people removed from their lands. This is a continuation of the conquest of the West but in Central and South America.

None of these groups have made their opposition to colonialism and capitalism the central point in their arguments. They base themselves on the capitalist-republican argument of the 1999 constitution, keeping Chavez and Maduro’s anti-colonial positions secret. Only a open war with colonialism and the transfer of Spanish wealth to indigenous people can begin the struggle against capitalism in Venezuela and internationally. The Spanish workers cannot turn revolutionary as long as brown workers are branded as slaves from birth to death. Marx argued the same way about Irish and Black national oppression preventing revolution in the UK and US. Sylvia Pankhurst continued Marx’s emphasis on freeing the colonies, but Trotsky and other Comintern Marxists emphasized class as a means of subjugating international Marxism to the Soviet Union, which really carried out the same work as the Russian empire.

Surgentes, a human rights collective:

“…(both this one, led by Maduro, like the first one headed by Pedro Carmona Estanga, representing an alliance of sectors of capital with sections of the military)…”

“The fight to regain democracy, constitutionality and respect for human rights requires identifying and circumventing the intentionality of power.”

The Citizens’ Platform in Defence of the Constitution (PCDC):

“The government is once again repeating the same unconstitutional practices, violating the rule of law and due process, by resorting to the violent detention of opposition leaders, social activists and ordinary citizens who are made to disappear for extended periods of time before being brought before the courts weeks or months later, denied a lawyer of their choosing and kept incommunicado even from their families.”

“Demanding respect for the constitution and the most basic civil rights are not a crime. With these fascist practices, Maduro’s government has placed itself outside the constitution that we Venezuelans voted in favour of in 1999, and has reinforced the very serious political crisis unleashed by its disregard of the July 28 election results, for which the CNE has still not published full and disaggregated results.”

“The government, instead of releasing hundreds of citizens detained for political reasons, has in recent weeks unleashed a campaign of selective arrests against opposition leaders, with almost 20 social movement and opposition group leaders having been detained and disappeared this week.”

National Independent Autonomous Workers’ Coordinating Committee (CAIT)

(We criticize this argument for its complete lack of an anti-colonialist perspective and respond to their threats with our own threat: to find new leadership for the revolutionary working class.)

“In the face of this situation, it is crucial that we do not remain silent. Therefore, we categorically reject any call, regardless of its origin, that seeks to promote violence, disorder and confrontation, as well as coup intentions and foreign interference in the affairs of the Venezuelan nation.

“In the face of the authoritarian and regressive policies of the government, it is imperative that we workers independently and autonomously establish our own agenda. This must focus on the recovery of wages, defence of labour and social rights, as well as the protection of the Labour Law and democratic, economic and political rights.

“Workers must not, under any circumstances, abandon the defence of their interests, which are diametrically opposed to those of the capitalist class. Likewise, we are willing to dialogue with militants of different political orientations in order to establish an independent political grouping that defends our interests as a class, both in the political and union arena.”

Communist Party of Venezuela

(We criticize this statement for a complete absence of class perspective or anti-colonialist perspective. Marquez did not run on a socialist program, and the wealth in Venezuela is mostly privately held by Spanish families while indiginous families and tribes remain dispossessed since the Spanish conquest. In Hawaii, as soon as the Imperialists had a majority of the population, they overthrew the monarchy and killed most of the native Hawaiians. They aim to repeat this massacre in Central and South American nations by excluding anti-colonialist arguments from public discussions. The González camp openly works with imperialism to make war against the Venezuelan people. Marquez went even further by denying that sanctions had hurt the country and blamed Maduro’s mismanagement, a position that Gonzalez admitted was untenable.)

“The PCV calls on the genuinely democratic and popular forces to the broadest unity of action to confront the authoritarian drift of the anti-worker and anti-popular administration of Nicolás Maduro and to advance towards the recovery of constitutional guarantees.”