Federico Fuentes, a long-time Venezuela solidarity activist, was quoted at length in the two-part news analysis “Washington’s Conquest in Venezuela” that World-Outlook published last month. In the full interview published here, Ashley Smith of the online journal Tempest talks with him about the U.S. attack, Maduro’s regime, and the urgency of building resistance to Trump’s “vicious new imperialism.”
On January 16, 2026, hundreds of thousands of Cubans marched and rallied in Havana to pay homage to their countrymen killed during the U.S. assault on Venezuela two weeks earlier. Thirty-two Cuban soldiers died while putting up fierce resistance to U.S. forces that stormed the presidential residence in Caracas and ultimately kidnapped Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores. Cuba’s president Miguel Díaz-Canel delivered the speech published here to honor the 32 fallen combatants and respond to Washington’s escalating threats against his nation.
MIAMI, Florida, December 23, 2025 – Forty people demonstrated at the downtown Miami Torch of Friendship on Tuesday evening against Washington’s accelerating moves toward war on Venezuela. The protesters rallied at the call of the newly formed Miami Hands Off Venezuela Coalition. The coalition’s two points of unity in action are “U.S. Hands Off Venezuela!” and “No Deportations!”
This is the first part of a speech by Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, Cuba’s president, at the closing of the 11th Plenary Session of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba on December 13, 2025, in Havana. The Cuban president addresses the impact on the people of the Caribbean nation of the relentless U.S. economic war, Hurricane Melissa, the U.S. naval blockade of Venezuelan oil, as well as “bureaucracy, formalism, and inertia [that] are putting unacceptable brakes on the will of the Party and the needs of the people.” He points to the working people of Cuba and its youth as the main social forces that can confront the dire economic situation facing the country today.
In a major escalation of its hostilities against the people of Venezuela and the government of Nicolás Maduro, U.S. president Donald Trump announced on December 16 “a total and complete blockade of all sanctioned oil tankers” going in and out of that country. This is an act of war, aimed not only at Venezuela but Cuba, and a warning to all governments in Latin America and the Caribbean that dare stand up to the Yankee bully. Coming on the heels of killing at least 95 people in small boats off the Venezuelan and Colombian coasts on the pretext of fighting drug trafficking — nothing but murder at sea — and the seizure of a Venezuelan oil tanker, the blockade of Venezuelan oil brings the region a step closer to war.
On November 6, the U.S. Navy carried out the latest in a series of strikes in international waters against small vessels allegedly trafficking drugs to the United States. These attacks in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific have resulted in at least 70 deaths — people killed without any chance to answer Washington’s allegations — and there is no sign they will stop anytime soon. The administration of U.S. president Donald Trump has yet to provide a shred of evidence showing that these boats were loaded with narcotics or that the people on board were willing participants in drug trafficking.
“Fraud Foretold?”, an essay in the political journal New Left Review, and other articles have presented convincing evidence that the official results of Venezuela’s recent election, announcing the victory of Nicolás Maduro, are likely fraudulent. This article summarizes this evidence and outlines the political developments in Venezuela over the last three decades that are the root cause of Venezuela’s current political crisis.