Monroe Doctrine is alive and well: continuing effects of the US offensive against Venezuela - Ep 180

this is Fortress On A Hill, with Henri, Danny, Kaygan, Jo

vonni, Shiloh, Monisha , and Mike

Welcome everyone to Forgers on the Hill, a podcast about US foreign

policy, anti imperialism, skepticism and the American world of war.

I'm Jovanni here with Monisha.

Hey, Monisha.

Hoola,

thank you for being with us today and, uh, um, let's get to it.

It has been two months.

In 14 days since the US President, Donald Trump ordered an unprovoked military

attack on Venezuela and kidnapping.

His sitting President, Nicola Maddo and his wife, first Lady, and first combatant,

a national assembly member, sta Flores, the surprise assault, involved over a

hundred aircraft, drones and helicopters bombing military barracks, power stations,

medical centers, and civilian homes, killing over a hundred people and creating

over the creating cover for American Special Operation forces to abduct, Maduro

and Flo from the presidential residence.

They were then flown out of the country and paraded through the streets of New

York City like trophies from the Roman era before being placed in a Brooklyn

swell, where Ur now faces a show trial on frivolous charges in blatant breach of

diplomatic immunity after his abduction.

After his abduction, New York court swiftly dropped charges alleging Maduro

as the kingpin and cartel leader of a non-existent draw cartel, the principle

pretests for the abduction, along with other charges, while retaining

only weapons, possessions count.

Yet months later, rather than decapitating, Venezuela's government,

Washington's act of geopolitical Shock and NA has backfired.

The Bolivian movement endorses under vice President Desi Rodriguez, and

the spectacle of a capture head of state has transformed meduro into

Latin American Mandela, a lasting similar resistance against imperial

overreach whose image now galvanizing solidarity protests across the G globe.

perhaps the most astonishing thing has been define the deafening silence over

the greatest violence of sovereignty across Latin America, with the exception

of two major countries, Colomb and Mexico, along with Cuba, Nicaragua, and

smaller and until Caribbean nations.

And that of the diaspora living in the us, especially since many had

clung to Latin American unity theme.

When Bad Bunny, super Bowl halftime show was taken as in a front to

Trump's anti-Latino policies, ice terror across the country.

But let's visit this.

Let's revisit January 3rd.

What has happened since?

How does what happen to Venezuela fit into the grand to the American

Grand Political Chess Board?

Here we are today with our guest Leonardo Flores.

Leonardo Flores is a co Pink Land American campaign spokesperson and

coalition organizer, a Venezuela American political analyst and

activist with a degree in philosophy.

Leonardo has was born in Venezuela and maintains close ties to the

social movements that have transformed the country over the past 27 years.

He served as a media analyst and later policy advisor at the Venezuela Embassy

in Washington, DC before joining Code Pink as Latin American Campaign

coordinator from 19, from 2019 to 2022.

He's a founding member of the Venezuelan Solidarity Network and has worked

as a consultant with the Alliance for Cuba engagement and respect.

Welcome to the show, Leonard.

How are you doing today?

I'm doing well.

Thanks so much for the invitation.

I'm really excited to be here with y'all.

It's so good to have you here with us, and like I said, I've been, I've

been following your word for a while.

Um, and I'm happy to have you here and speaking to you at, you know, for the

first time finally speaking with you.

Yeah.

Um, tell us what's been happening in Venezuela since the abduction?

Yeah, I mean, I think the first thing to say about the abduction

and really about the attack in general on January 3rd is that, the US had

a military victory, we could say, but it wasn't a complete victory.

It wasn't a political victory because they were looking for a little bit

more than just kidnapping President Mato and first combatant Cja Flores.

Right?

They were trying to either spark a coup or spark some sort of military rebellion,

start a civil war in the country.

I mean, they really wanted a transition government in place, and they wanted to

clear the path for basically EZ one's fascists to take over, led by Madina Malo.

But that didn't happen, and it, it became clear within hours of the attack

that it wasn't going to happen, right?

Because we're talking about, uh, this blockade, the, the US deployment to

the Caribbean began in August, right?

So they had been basically surrounding Venezuela since August.

And at first, you know, my analysis of it up until kind of December was that

it was really psychological warfare.

It was psychological warfare aimed at breaking down, uh, the Venezuelan

military at causing some sort of cism to have them up, rise against the Malu

government and create some sort of civil war that the US can then intervene in.

And none of that happens.

The bian rela, uh, revolution stayed strong and it's still strong today.

You know, I think there's been a lot of, uh, speculation, especially in the

media, and unfortunately that's kind of bleeding into some of the left and

solid solidarity groups about an alleged betrayal within the re revolution.

But within Minnesota, you know, the movements aren't seeing that.

Uh, the movements are firmly behind Del Rodriguez, the acting president,

and they've been mobilizing constantly since January 3rd, calling for the

return of President Mato calling for the United States to stop.

Its, its hybrid war against Venezuela.

Yeah.

Like you also saw this, like this whole buildup this whole intimidation tactic.

Um, I'm looking for the, uh, uh, for a break, uh, within

the, in the inner circles of, of the, uh, uh, the government.

Perhaps they, uh, uh, uh, like a, a palace revolt or something like that,

A Palace Co or something like that.

That's what I was thinking, that, that that's what they were going for.

Uh, then they escalated the uh, um.

The, they did an escalation, they did an escalating, the tactic of, of

starting to bomb those little, um, uh, speedboats and whatnot out the coast of

Venezuela, Trinidad and all these other places, uh, off of Columbia as well.

Um, you know, all the extra, extra judicial killing of people who, they

didn't know who they were killing, they were just killing people.

Let them write.

And I thought that also was to amp the pressure on the government.

And not only the government, but not the government per se, but

the people around them, right.

To, like I said, do a palace coup and, and, uh, let the invaders in.

But yeah when all that fails, that's when they went for the, the Shock and awe.

And, you know, and did, did what happened on, on, on, on January 3rd

with the abduction of the president.

So

yeah.

I'm glad you mentioned those strikes, right?

Because I think there's been something like 45 air strikes

right now against these boats.

And like you said, we don't know who the victims are.

Uh, they've certainly, for, we know, we have no reason to believe that

they're actually drug traffickers.

Because there's been a couple of cases where we had survivors and they were sent

to Ecuador and Columbia, respectively, and then they were immediately

released by those authorities because they had no charges against them.

And then.

In terms of the escalation.

You know, I, I said that in December, my analysis changed the situation a

bit, and that was because the US in late November, the, the US Gerald Ford

arrived off the coast of Venezuela.

And then in December something happened, which is that the US

started blockading Venezuela and oil.

And so, you know, we had all these reports of, of ships being seized by the United

States or in the United States, you know, Navy chasing ships across the world.

I mean, I think the last one was caught a few weeks ago in the Indian Ocean, right?

And then there was a, you know, a so, so-called no fly zone that the Trump

administration attempted to impose.

And at that point it seemed clear to me that there was

gonna be an attack imminent.

And that's despite the fact that, Mato and Trump had held this telephone conversation

that had apparently gone well.

Uh, and there was this idea really floating around that

the negotiations were ongoing.

Um, mm-hmm.

And I know we'll talk about this a little bit later, but what's scares

me about what's happening in Cuba right now is that we're seeing the

same sort of thing happen, right?

The same sort of pattern develop where there's talk of negotiations where in

the media they're now saying that they.

That the Trump administration is insisting that President di resign

or or step aside somehow, and then that then negotiations can continue.

And the same thing happened with Venezuela.

There was the media reports floating around back in September about,

well, if Mato steps down, the US will lift sanctions and we'll

recognize the vice president.

And, you know, nobody was really thinking that was possibility

because why would he step down?

He's the president, he's elected.

Uh, but then that's what the United States kind of ended up doing.

What exactly are the charges against Maduro?

Yeah, that's a good question because you're right, they, they

dropped the most serious charge about the Cartel de los Soles because

it's a cartel that doesn't exist.

You know, just a, a little bit more background on that.

I went through, I think it was about 20 reports of this thing called the

National Drug Threat Assessment.

It's a yearly report put out with the, by the DEA, the Drug Enforcement Agency.

There was not a single reference that Cartel de Los

Soles in 20 years of reports.

And they have pages and pages about other cartels, uh, especially ones in Mexico.

Uh, on top of that, you know, the, the actual name Cartel De Los Soles comes from

a cia, a operation from the early 1990s.

Uh, there's this great segment on 60 Minutes called the CIA's Cocaine, and they

detail how the CIA was working with the Venezuelan National Guard at the time,

and they called it the Cartel of the Sun because the National Guard in Venezuela

at the time had a big patch of the sun on their uniforms, and they were trying

to allegedly infiltrate Pablo Escobar, the drug kingpin in Columbia, his cartel.

And to do that, they were importing drugs from Columbia, funneling it

through Venezuela and sending it to the United States, millions of dollars.

And so it's, to me, it's kind of ridiculous, uh, because at the

time Venezuela, was a transit country for cocaine for about

50% of the world's cocaine.

By the time Maduro was kidnapped Venezuela, it was a transit point

for about 5% of the world's cocaine.

Huge shift in policy by the Venezuelan government that's been really going

after drug trafficking hard and managed like a an incredible achievement,

I would say, especially in the midst of a hybrid war, is to really

cut down on cocaine trafficking.

And yet the US used that as a pretext anyway.

But going back to the charges now, the charges are conspiracy, which

is really su super nebulous and, and owning machine guns, which is a

totally absurd, so, yeah, you're right.

It's gonna be a show trial.

The actual charges don't even matter because it's, this is really about the

United States punishing an adversary.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

I, I remember when actually it was Chavez who kicked out the DEA

and once the DEA was sent home.

That's when you start seeing an an, an, an increase and decrease in, in, in,

in knock trafficking through Venezuela.

After that, I remember I was in the military I remember when, uh, when Chavez

was, had a, had a co, uh, when they had a co against Chavez, you know, too.

And then after that, I've been following Chavez ever since.

And I remember when they seized this after Chavez sent the DA home, that's

when they started doing a lot of raids in the Frontiers against Columbia.

I remember they seizing, uh, uh, a submarine.

It was a submarine, uh, that that, uh, off of the coast of, of Venezuela,

that full of also drugs on the way to the United States and whatnot or

whatever, wherever they was going.

But yeah, you know, you are, you know, you're right.

You know, after, after, they went, Venezuela went from 50% was being a

transit, was a transit country, right?

Of cocaine, 50% all the way down to 2%.

And not only that, uh, also Ecuador went, Ecuador also sent

the, the DEA, uh, home packing.

That's when their also their drug, their drug problem started decreasing as well.

I mean, so it's, there's a correlation here.

You know, you know.

So, so Go ahead, go, go ahead.

Uh, uh, Mon Monisha, jump in whenever you can.

Thanks.

Yeah.

It's interesting too, because in 1999 ish maybe a little bit earlier in, in the

nineties was when the narrative around.

Like you had the whole drug war narrative going on since Plan

Columbia, but in que where, um, the US had ated lands kicked people out.

I'm, I can say and put this narrative of, of protectionism and all the

other stuff to turn it basically into a, a floating military base.

Um, doing all but real war practice exercises, et cetera, et cetera.

And when the people succeeded in kicking the Navy out on, not completely, but

mostly in like 2003 prior, just prior to that, they were running a narrative

to get public support to install, um, a relocatable over the horizon.

Radar system pointed at Venezuela, Columbia, like pointed at our, our

neighbors for, to catch drug traffickers was the narrative that they were,

that they were running in press and media and, and all that stuff.

And yet in Puerto Rico the drug trade is monumental.

Murders happened constantly.

Like when I was living in que, there were massacres happening all the time.

Innocent people were getting killed because of drug families that war

with each other and all that stuff.

And so to hear now that they're still running this.

This War on drugs narrative all these years, it's like the same old

playbook and people still fall for it.

But what I'm curious about is how are you seeing the US justify its

supposed jurisdiction over a sovereign state and a sovereign head of state.

How are you seeing that play out in international media?

I know the US is not a signatory to the international criminal court,

which of course is speaks volumes on its own, but in terms of that, like

narrative warfare specifically, how is the US in your analysis justifying,

um, this thing that they're doing?

Yeah, that's a great question because the, the justification changed,

and I'll go into that a little bit, but the initial justification was,

as you said, narco terror, right?

Which is this kind of very nebulous term.

Uh, what does it really mean?

Uh, anything can now be narco terror.

I mean, is, you know, a couple of guys driving a car in South DCC with a pound

of marijuana, are they narco terrorists?

I mean, the United States government might say so, and they might shoot

them and it might kill them, and they've been doing that to black

people in this country for ages, right?

So it's a term that actually be began in Peru in the 1990s, if I'm not mistaken,

this nebulous term of narco terror.

Then it's spread kind of north from there.

So internationally, that's what the US has been using to, was using for,

at first to justify the attack on Venezuela or the aggression on Venezuela.

'cause this was prior to the attack, right?

I would say that, the US doesn't really care about sovereignty

other than its own sovereignty.

So those arguments tend to fall very flat with, uh, with us diplomats

because, you know, they know that, you know, their, their basic

philosophies might makes right.

And we're seeing that play out based on a daily basis with the Trump

administration, where they can seemingly justify any atrocity if they're

going after so-called terrorists.

And any atrocities, it's somehow pitched as self-defense.

In fact, uh, in the first press conference that Trump gave about the

attack on Venezuela, he framed it as self-defense, uh, which is totally absurd.

You know, Trump was saying that Venezuela was flooding the streets of the United

States with criminals and with cocaine.

Neither of those were true.

Uh, in fact, of the, uh, I think at the time in December there were some 3000 or

so Venezuelans who'd been deported from the United States back to Venezuela and

maybe two of them had criminal records.

So, you know, that criminalization of migrants which was another

justification became to was proven to be completely false.

Right?

But something very curious happened in about.

I wanna say a week to 10 days before January 3rd was that suddenly the

narrative shifted in the media and within the Trump administration, and they

stopped talking about narco terror and about drugs, and they started talking

about Iran and Hezbollah and Hamas.

And that coincided with the visit on late December, early January of

Benjamin and Yahu to the White House.

And then within days this attack happened.

So they totally kind of flipped the script to talk about Iran in the context of

Venezuela, which was really an extremist right wing talking point that's been

floating around for like the past 25 years almost, but has never really been taken

seriously by the policy establishment in Washington because they know that

although Iran and Venezuela have very deep ties in terms of economics and

politically, socially and those ties date back to the founding of opec the

oil producing exporting countries.

And but those ties, you know, even the military ties, you know, Venezuela

doesn't have any sort of military capacity to threaten the United States.

So they were kind of trying to cast Venezuela in the slight as supporting

these quote unquote terrorist regimes.

And that's when the attack happened.

That makes total sense.

And I think it's interesting too when you brought up the timing of

the narrative shift around Venezuela, the attack on Venezuela and how that

narrative shifted over toward Iran.

And so the US likes to play a long game.

And it has been playing a long game in Latin America, as we know, just

as it's been playing a long game in I don't wanna say the Middle

East 'cause that's a colonial term in the lavant in that region.

And of course everything the US does centers on oil controlling

resources, con controlling finite materials, raw materials, et cetera,

controlling labor, et cetera.

How interesting that the first step was to take this action against Venezuela

attempt, essentially to control Venezuela's oil right before this attack

on Iran, which is disrupting the transport of oil from the, those OPEC nations

to the rest of the world essentially.

So in my mind, I think about how convenient it would be for the US

who wants to remain a superpower and have basically control of the

world's market in all aspects.

Try to take over the largest oil reserves in the world in Venezuela,

just before disrupting the flow of, of exchange for oil across the world,

on the other side of the world.

I don't know, that's just something I find fishy.

And especially with the false state of Israel's involvement

in all of this as well.

Yeah, absolutely.

You know, I think part of it w well, this attack and then the subsequent attack

on Iran part of the attack on Venezuela was meant to stabilize oil prices in

anticipation of a prolonged war, uh, with Iran and, and maybe not even a

prolonged war, but anticipation of a war with Iran that would see oil prices

skyrocket as we're seeing right now.

And the thing about what's happening between the United States and Venezuela

it's the United States isn't controlling Venezuela's oil production right now, but

they are still, uh, they are controlling Venezuela's trade in oil, right?

And so all of Venezuela's oil trade, and this is starting to change because even

as of March 17th, the Trump administration is now saying that they're gonna start

lifting some sanctions on foreign oil companies so that they are, excuse

me, on Venezuela, so that foreign oil companies can do business with Venezuela.

But the US is still obviously blockading the country.

Uh, there's still a massive deployment of the Navy on off Venezuela shores,

and they're controlling the trade, and they're saying that Venezuela has

to trade through two US companies.

Uh, I'm blanking on their names right now, but one of those companies is a big

supporter of the Trump administration.

They've given money to his, to his political action committee.

Uh, the other company was flagged for corruption, corrupt practices.

So these are kind of really nasty actors that ve sorta has to deal with now.

So there is this control of oil, but.

The thing is that the United States had been waging economic warfare

on Venezuela until least 2015.

And then when Trump comes into office in 2017, he immediately starts oil sanctions.

And these sanctions got progressively worse until around August of 2019

when they imposed what the Wall Street Journal characterized as a

total economic embargo, Venezuela specifically of the Venezuelan government.

So in that interim, Venezuela's oil production cratered, right?

And, and their oil, Aruba news fell something like 99%.

This happened over a period of two or three years, and that led to

massive, a massive economic crisis.

It led to mass migration as well.

But Venezuela had been able to starting roughly in 2021 to overcome those

sanctions and to restart its oil supply.

So by November of last year, before the blockade of oil from the United States

on Venezuela, Venezuela was producing roughly one, 1.2 million barrels of oil.

It had had 18, 19 straight quarters of economic growth.

The sensation was that Minnesota had hit rock bottom economically, and that

they had found a way because they had found a way to overcome the sanctions.

And so now Trump comes in and blockades the oil and says, you can only

trade oil through these companies.

And the thing is, Venezuela right now isn't producing as much

oil as it was four months ago.

And so Trump is kind of scrambling because he's seeing this and is thinking,

wait, this is really backfiring.

Because the whole point of going after Venezuela first was to stabilize

the oil market, but now they're producing less than they were.

And so that's why we're seeing all these new stories about Trump considering

a more part like lifting of sanctions and offering kind of partial sanctions

of relief every two weeks or so.

And he frames it as, oh, it's because Desi what he calls president, the

acting president of Rodriguez, it's because Desi's so great and

we're working so closely together.

But no, it's because his policies failed and because Venezuela, which was supposed

to produce oil relief rapidly if the US came in, and that's not happening

because of the, still because of the US sanctions that are still in place.

In fact, there was a really weird, uh, meeting in DC within a week of the

attack on Venezuela, where Trump invited the heads of several transnational

oil companies and they had this big, uh, open press conference with them.

And he asked, well, what's holding you back from investing in Venezuela?

And one of the oil companies was very clear and they were

like, well, US sanctions are.

And so, you know, and so without these sanctions, Venezuela would

be producing a lot more oil.

And, and, you know, ironically the US would be better off

because the more oil market would even, would be even more stable.

Uh, and so the United States really finds itself with a problem here,

and that really kind of undercuts this argument that Venezuela has

become a colony of the United States in some way because it's clear that

it's the US policy against Venezuela.

It's economic warfare, which is harming not just Venezuela, but it's now beginning

to harm the United States as well.

So what was this, uh, hydrocarbon law that uh,

uh, that just passed recently?

Yeah, so Venezuela has a hydrocarbon law that they amended in

2006 that really kind of renationalized the oil industry, uh, and made it so

that Berea, which is the state owned oil company, had to have a majority

share in any sort of joint project.

Uh, but.

Because of this economic warfare, because of all these sanctions on the

oil industry that really destroyed the industry, Minnesota had to find a

way to, first of all, not just produce oil, but ship oil in ways that could

not be detected by the United States.

That is by evading these sanctions.

And so they passed an anti blockade law a few years back, and that was

really fundamental in helping, uh, Venezuela's economic recovery that I

spoke about a couple of minutes ago.

Right.

And now that we have this new kind of really tense relationship with the

United States where they're pretending to be friends of Venezuela, now

Venezuela understands that first of all.

Its capacity to act against these, this us aggression.

Aggression is very limited.

But on the, on, on the same, kind on the flip side of the coin is that Venezuela

really needs and wants investment in its oil Sector because it's been

underinvested not from any fault of the Venezuelans, but because of these economic

sanctions, the unilateral coercive measures imposed by the United States

against the Venezuelan oil industry.

So this new hydrocarbon law, what it does is that it eases some of the, it

basically gets better returns to oil companies, particularly what the ones

who invest in, what's what are known as what Venezuelans called green fields,

which are basically undeveloped oil fields that have known reserves in them.

And it's a way to attract investment and to boost production.

It's not gonna give kind of immediate benefits in the short term, but in

the medium and long term, it should boost production in Venezuela.

And there's been a lot of controversy about this law, mostly internationally

rather than in Venezuela, because internally, domestically, I

think there was an understanding that something had to be done.

And you can't be kind of dogmatic about some of these laws.

Yes, it was a, a key law that UL Chavez managed to pass in 2006, but if he were

still alive with us today, he was someone who was understood pragmatism, not as

an ideology, but as something that you employ depending on the conditions and

depending on the conjuncture, right?

And so he would see this conjuncture and say, look, the reality is that the

United States still is blocking us.

From obtaining the necessary investment that we need.

And if we adjust our laws, we can get some of that investment.

And, and, and that's ultimately gonna be a good thing for the

Venezuelan people as more oil money is set to flow into the country.

He's mentioned Chavez.

So basically, so my little came to power in 2014, and the United

States have never, never, uh, um, recognized his, uh, um, his presidency.

He's been elected three times, and the United States have always

contested all three elections.

And before that, um, they've always been slow to recognize Chavez,

uh, uh, electro victory as well.

Uh, when they were, when they had no other, you know, when everybody else

recognized, you know, they were like kind of the last ones to recognize, right.

Uh, but yet they were us is quick to hold on and, and recognize and

give credits to the, to all of the accusations of, of the Venice women.

Right.

You know, and recently, uh, I think, uh, yesterday or the day before yesterday

I think for the first time, uh, the Trump administration recognized,

uh, delsey's, uh, presidency, right?

Uh, what do you make it all this and how does this affect one thing?

How does it affect, how is this gonna affect cha and all these gains?

And where is the Washington backed opposition in all this.

Yeah, and let me just kind of backtrack a little bit just to give folks

a bit more context because I think it's kind of important, and there are some

really interesting parallels, right?

So Chavez, in 2002, he faced a coup that was backed by the US right?

And there were couple of main reasons why that happened.

There was a geopolitical reason and then there was oil, right?

So right before that, coup Chavez was trying to, rest control away of the

state owned oil company from these executives who basically belonged to the

Venezuelan oligarchy that had basically looted the company and kept all the

profits for themselves, and that he was trying to make it more state run.

Also at that time, after the attacks, uh, on September 11th, Chavez was

saying, you know, we shouldn't fight terror with terror warning the United

States that, you know, its actions in Afghanistan could backfire.

And I think maybe a couple of weeks after the US began, its war in Afghanistan.

Chavez was on TV showing pictures of some of the dead children that were

killed in Afghanistan from US bombs.

And so this really put Chavez kind of in the crosshairs of the, of Washington, and

that led to the coup against him in 2002.

Then Maduro gets into office after Chavez passes away in 2013.

He is, as you said, he won the, the elections.

And Washington didn't, not only fail to recognize him, but then they absurdly

claimed at one point that, oh, we don't recognize elections in other

countries, which is total, which is a joke because they do that all the time.

Right.

But this failure to recognize Malto, the immediate aftermath was that there

was political violence in Venezuela.

About a dozen people died in the aftermath of those elections, and that hadn't really

happened in the country in a long time.

That sort of political violence.

After that, there's a two color, CI, a backed color revolution

attempts in Venezuela 20 14 20 17.

In 2018, there was a, an attempted assassination attempt on, on

malu by drones leading with C 4 20 19 was the whole gudo thing.

2020 was the mercenary attempted invasion, uh, when you, when Huang Gudo contracted

some US-based mercenaries to invade the country and killed Avita leaders, but

they were captured almost immediately.

So it's been kind of, and I just mentioned all this because to show that it hasn't

been, you know, it wasn't just the attack on January 3rd, this is something

that's going back 25 years, right?

These attacks on Venezuela, the US attempts to control Venezuela to

enforce regime change in Venezuela.

And now going to Del Rodriguez, her being recognized by the Trump administration,

and they've done it in several ways.

You know, the, the Trump himself had said it, the State Department said it and now

the US courts are saying that hers is the, the legitimate government of Venezuela.

It's really important for many reasons.

One, it allows Venezuela to defend itself in US courts, whereas before

the people representing Venezuela were the fascists basically.

Uh, and this has been the case since 2019, and Venezuela has a lot of

pending court cases because one of the effects of the economic war was

that Venezuela couldn't pay back.

Its.

Debts because it wasn't allowed to take on new debts or to refinance

those debts or renegotiate those terms.

And so you have a lot of creditors going after Venezuela assets in the

United States, like for example, Citgo, which belongs to Venezuela

and maybe soon lost depending on how the court system plays out.

So this recognition of debt Rodriguez is incredibly important.

And there's also, um, the establishment of embassies again,

uh, for the first time since 2019.

And that's really gonna help from my perspective, I think, I think it's

fantastic because it's really gonna help a lot of the Venezuelans who find themselves

in ICE detention because these are people who don't have consular access because

Venezuela does not have a consulate in the US and it's gonna open soon.

And that's gonna really provide a lot of relief, I think, for families.

And it's gonna l lead to family re reunifications of people

who were separated by ice.

So I think what we're seeing now is a very positive sign from a ben sort perspective

of this reestablishment of relations.

And on the flip side of that, we know what that means, right?

It means that the CCIA is gonna be operating directly in AKAs again.

And that's, I think that's something that the Venezuelans can live with because

they've been able to, for the most part overcome all of these CIA operations with

the very notable exception of January 3rd.

Yes.

Yeah.

Where are these, uh, these, uh, um, what's his name?

Um, the Opposition Madrid.

And, and where are they at now?

You know, this, uh, um, what's his name?

Uh, uh, Leo Pado

Leopoldo Lopez.

Ldo Lopez, uh, Karina Machado.

Where are these people at now?

Yeah, that's a really important point because one of the things that the

Trump administration realized, or like in the day, the same, basically the same

day of January 3rd when nothing happened in Venezuela internally in terms of no

coup, no civil war, was that Maria Corina Malo, who is like basically anointed as

the new opposition leader in Venezuela, was that she has no power in the country.

And Trump himself said she has no respect in the country.

And so she's been really completely sidelined, you know, uh, it,

it became really embarrassing.

And beca, she became the butt of jokes in Venezuela because, uh, this is

woman who won the Nobel Peace Prize despite calling for sanctions against

Venezuela, calling for an invasion of Venezuela, not saying a single thing

when those boats were being attacked.

Not saying a single thing when Venezuela was bombed, other than

to praise the Trump administration.

So this basically, this Warmonger got the Nobel Peace Prize, and then

she went to Washington and gave it to her master, which is Donald Trump.

With the hopes that, oh, well, then that's gonna change his mind and he's gonna start

pushing from Maria Equity Andina Mattel to return to Venezuela so she can take power.

And, and the thing is, that's not happening.

And, and if anything, what we've learned is that the Trump administration

doesn't want Maria equity and Macello back in Venezuela because that's would

possibly upset the oil trade between Venezuela and the United States.

So he wants to keep her out of the country.

She's, right now, I think she was just in Chile for the inauguration of their

new president caste, uh, Lopez State is in, in Madrid, as far as I know.

Uh, you know, they're still conspiring against Venezuela,

but they've been very sidelined.

And now we're seeing kind of new leadership within Venezuela's

moderate, more moderate opposition.

And I say moderate, not in the sense that, you know, a lot of these people

are neoliberals and are neocons, and we wouldn't really call them

moderate in any other context, but they're moderate because they're okay

with engaging in dialogue with the Venezuelan government, and they don't

want a war in Venezuela, a civil war.

And that makes them moderate.

And so these people have now kind of found, a new, new wind, right, in

the sense that like they're, they, they have seen that the Venezuelan

fascists who have enjoyed not just the political support in the United

States for the past 27 years, but their logistical and financial support.

You know, almost to the exclusion of all of those moderates, you

know, the N-E-D-U-S-A-I-D, they fund Maria Corina, malos, NGO, sum, they

fund Delio de Lopez for many years.

And now these people, the were moderate opposition in Venezuela

is finding that they have more, much more space to operate.

Uh, in fact, Venezuela just passed this, um.

The National Assembly and the President approved it.

This amnesty law, which goes back to the 2002 coup and which, you know,

really contemplates amnesty for a lot of kind of political crimes.

One of the things that it does not contemplate am amnesty for is for

the people who either backed or supported or called for, uh, an

invasion of the United States, the sanctions, economic warfare or coup.

And so basically that includes Maria Lopez and a lot of their operators, but some of

the more kind of other people in Venezuela who may have taken part in some of the

political violence of the past 20 years.

Now they're being, you know, released from prison.

And there's really in Venezuela, this new spirit of reconciliation,

uh, because one of the things that January 3rd attack did was unite the

country in a really interesting way that people who hate Cha Ismo, who hate

Mato, were like, no, this is insane.

We don't want our country bonds.

We understand what happens when us bomb fall.

This is not what we want.

We want a different path.

And so the government of De Rodriguez, and really, uh, this is really following

Maduro because in the, in the weeks before Maduro was kidnapped, he was,

he had also given amnesty, uh, to move out, I think it was a hundred or

so people who he released from jail.

And so this new spirit of reconciliation has taken over in Venezuela, and I

think there's a really interesting project and peace building going

on internally in the country.

Yeah, indeed.

I was always taken aback from, with this happening, uh, the

ice raids and all that, right?

And this, um, anybody was celebrating you know, when, you know, bad Bunny,

I'm going, I'm going into the culture pop, you know, pop culture now.

Bad Bunny getting these, um, these awards at the, uh, the

Grammys, I believe they were.

And then the, uh, halftime show, you know, and then it was whole.

There was this, there was this, uh, euphoria about Latin American unity

and, and I think he started the, uh, um, the, uh, halftime show with, uh,

with a guy in front and dressed like a hiva saying that, you know, Qaim Latino.

And I was pretty much like an front toward this anti-Latino

policies here in the United States.

And there's ice rates and stuff like that.

Yeah.

Everybody been silenced about what's happening in Cuba right now, trying

to strangle Cuba to submission and what happened in Venezuela with

the, uh, uh, also Latinos here?

What's happening, what happened in Venezuela and January 3rd?

Uh, in fact actually I went to bed.

Uh, that day on January 3rd you know, that morning, uh, uh,

seeing that raid happening, right?

You know, people were, uh, uh, posting videos on, on Telegram about the bombing

in Venezuela and stuff like that.

And, uh, uh, the next morning I see all these texts, all these,

uh, uh, on my social media, all these people celebrating, you

know, the Venit celebrating.

And some of my friends, my social media friends, you know, most of 'em were, you

know, Puerto Ricans and stuff like that, or Dominicans, and when not, you know,

uh, celebrating with them, you know, saying, you know, uh, posting stuff,

congratulations to Venezuelan brothers and sisters, blah, blah, this and that, blah.

You know, so this and that.

And at the same time I was seeing, you know, when I started going through

other people I follow, I started seeing this huge mobilization of Venezuelans

in Venezuela coming out in droves and thousands hundred thousands talking

about we want our president back.

You know?

So there was like two different Venezuelans that we're seeing here.

You know, there's the ones in the diaspora, the one in Madrid,

the one in our, in South Florida, and the ones in Argentina.

And then, uh, um, the ones, uh, um, there, can you talk a little bit about that?

Yeah, I think that speaks a little bit to the polarization

of Venezuela, and honestly, it's been really difficult.

It's really difficult to talk to a Venezuela in the United States.

As me, as of also a Venezuelan, because I understand that a lot of these people,

especially the ones who migrated, uh, say before 2020 ish are, come from

Venezuela's rich families upper middle class, higher, uh, they tend to be whiter.

They tend to have a lot more money than the average Venezuela.

And they have been basically co-opted or, you know, not even

co-opt necessarily, because some of 'em are just outright fascists.

And, and they have really contributed to this demonization of Venezuela

because they're the ones saying, oh, there's no democracy in Venezuela.

Oh, there's violations of human rights.

Oh, the Mado government isn't doing anything right.

But then when you analyze it, it's like, oh wait, that's not the case at all.

In fact, the biggest threat to Venezuela and the biggest violation

of human rights in Venezuela isn't caused by the Venezuela government.

It's caused by the US economic warfare against Venezuela that is crippling

the nation's health healthcare system.

It's social safety net, its education system, and so on.

And so then when, more Venezuelas, the kind of the, the working class

started coming to the US in 2021, it was kind of an interesting dynamic

because they had first moved to other countries in Latin America.

They made some money, they came back to Venezuela, and then they took on the

trek to the United States, which is.

You know, if you go buy land, they think people might have no

idea how expensive it is, right?

We're talking $10,000 minimum to travel from Venezuela to

the United States by land.

It costs a lot of money that you have to pay off a lot of, uh, organized

crime syndicates that smuggle you through various countries that

smuggle you through the dairy and gap.

And the Venezuelan far right seemed to be making money off this.

And not only that, when the, they, they arrived in Venezuela, it was

the far right that started this criminalization of Venezuelan migrants.

Uh, and so it, it's really kind of sad how the Venezuelan diaspora has

been acting towards not just their, the country, but towards their, their

fellow countrymen and women demonizing them and causing a lot of chaos.

And so, yeah, I, I understand that they were happy, uh, on January 3rd,

because that's what they've been working towards, is to, destroy the

b wiring revolution in some way.

But they're not that happy now.

And, you know, we don't see them cheering now, and that's because they

understand that there was no co in Venezuela, that their own leaders have

been totally sidelined and that they don't have as much influence within the

United States as they thought they did.

Just wanna jump in and do a quick time check.

I know Jovanni has to leave.

um, Leonardo, how much time do you have left?

Do you wanna continue?

Do you wanna close now?

I mean, however long y'all need.

I'm flex in terms of time.

Okay.

I know you wanted to talk about the international stuff that we haven't

really gotten to, like the more la Latin American, Caribbean in general stuff.

Jovanni, is there anything specific that you want asked in that here?

yeah.

Um, can you say a little bit about this whole shield the Americas?

they just talked about now they shield the Americas also.

Do you perceive that as a Condor 2.0?

Plant Condor 2.0 and for people to know what plant condor was back in

the seventies and eighties, where ci pretty much, um, and organized

the most brutal dictators were, you know, in Latin America, pretty much

to pursue left, uh, um, organizers and, uh, um, left leaders and whatnot,

trade leaders and stuff like that.

And it just, you know, just as cleans them out, you know.

Uh, so do you foresee this to be a, uh, uh, a type of blank cord of 2.0 and

also, uh, do you have any information of this ISEC Accord with, uh, with

Israel that they're talking about just like the, uh, the Abraham Accord.

Yeah.

In terms of the shield of the Americas, I think you're absolutely

right that it is looking like it's gonna be a planned Condor 2.0.

They're framing it again in terms of drug trafficking, in terms of narco

terrorism and, and in terms of security.

But I think what we're gonna see is, basically campesinos being bombed, being,

having their crops fumigated in order to be dis displaced from their lands.

For US corporations, and really this is kind of the culmination of.

I would say maybe the last 12, 13 years with US foreign policy, between, you

know, when the pink tide came into power 1999, uh, through what, let's say

2013, uh, the pink tide was in power.

This, the pink tide referring to leftist and progressive governments that

were in power in many, many countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Uh, there was an interesting dynamic going on was that the entire region, uh, was

pushing towards more regional integration.

And we saw, um, multilateral organizations like select the community of Latin,

Latin American and Caribbean states UN asu, the Union of South American

Nations America Sewer, the common market of the South was strengthened.

Uh, we saw Petro Carve, which is this Venezuelan Cuban program aimed

at helping people in the Caribbean overcome, uh, high energy prices.

And that was really drawing the region together.

And then the United States, you know, the Bush administration didn't really

pay too much attention to Latin America.

I mean, they did some really nasty things and at times, including the

attempted COVID Chavez, but mostly their focus was in West Asia.

Uh, the Obama administration in the first term, same thing.

But in the second term, they really started focusing on Latin America and

the Caribbean and trying to divide the two the region into kind of who's friends

with the United States and who isn't.

And now we're seeing those plans kind of culminate because that's

the shield of the Americas.

It was basically the governments that are very much aligned with Trump and.

Like this, the fascists in Latin American and the Caribbean

are very closely connected to Trumpism in the United States.

And that's a phenomenon that we've been seeing for the last nine years

that keeps getting deeper and deeper.

And so it was those countries that, that attended this shield

of the Americas, but there's been no counterbalance on the left.

Yes, we have Guba, we have Nicaragua, we have Venezuela, but uh, the other kind

of big countries, Mexico maybe being the exception, uh, but even Columbia and

Brazil, they are, haven't really taken a stance, challenge the United States

in of particularly significant ways.

And we're seeing that with Cuba, right?

Cuba right now is being starved of oil.

Its people are really, um, suffering.

And Brazil hasn't done much of anything.

Columbia hasn't done much of anything.

And so there's no longer that left Unity that used to exist in

Latin America maybe 15 years ago.

And at one point that Unity was almost bipartisan because some of the creators

of these institutions, these multilateral institutions that I mentioned were

from right-wing governments that wanted better regional integration

for kind of market reasons, right?

Uh, but the United States really put an a, a, an end to that and has really

kind of caused a schism in Latin America between those who totally follow Trump

and, and his point of view, and those who have a different point of view.

And unfortunately, some of the bigger players in Latin America

have been either silenced or bought out by the Trump administration.

Thank you for that.

So this is gonna be edited and thank you Henri, for editing this

out and editing out my awkwardness.

What do you think that means?

What's the end goal?

Of this meddling in our region?

Yeah, I mean, I think Trump has laid it out pretty clearly, both in

kind of the national security strategy and his so-called Don Rowe doctrine.

Right?

Which is that he really wants to, for the United States to be the main player.

In this entire hemisphere.

And that to the Trump administration means not only sidelining Russia and China and

Iran to the greatest extent possible.

And really it's mostly about China because Russia and Iran don't have

too much influence in Latin America.

But it also means that controlling resources throughout

the hemisphere, uh, for us corporations, and that is really key.

Uh, and, and you know, when we look at the, the Monroe Doctrine and we

have to understand it as the tool of imperialism that's seeking to

subjugate the entire hemisphere.

And one of the main ways Subjugates is through this division that I

was just talking about, right?

And so Latin America and the Caribbean have to find a way

to buy, come closer together.

Uh, you know, it was in 2014 that the select the community of Latin American and

Caribbean nations declared the Caribbean and Latin America to be a zone of peace.

Meaning they didn't want warfare, they didn't want, they wanted all

kind of political disagreements to be resolved through dialogue.

And that was really a, a, a kind of a groundbreaking document to have this

entire, you know, almost an entire hemisphere be united and wanting peace

and then wanting no foreign interference.

And the United States at first was like.

Playing nice with that.

And they were like, oh, they didn't sign on.

Of course, and I don't, I'm not sure they were even invited

to, but they accepted it.

But meanwhile they were working behind the scenes to undercut that.

You know, I think what we're seeing is as the United States finds itself

obviously still very much involved in, in, in West Asia as we're seeing with

this war on Iran, but in a different way.

They, they're kind of trying to limit the losses of American Empire, particularly

when it comes to Chinese economic power.

And one of the ways that they see of being able to limit those losses is

to control what they perceive to be their quote unquote backyard, right?

Which is the rest of the Western hemisphere.

And, and so I think that's the end game, is to ensure that they're

the ones who have total control in Latin America and the Caribbean.

I don't know that that vision is gonna go is gonna survive the Trump administration.

I'm not sure who, if whoever's next is gonna really push that forward.

Uh, because we're seeing a really interesting divide in foreign policy

now between some Democrats and the Republicans, where, where usually they,

they work in lockstep, especially when it comes to Latin American and the Caribbean.

Uh, now, you know, I'm kind of heartened because there's this there's this

thing called the new Good Neighbor policy that's being pushed by some

progressive Democrats, and it really calls on the United States to engage

in relations with its neighbors based on mutual understanding, dialogue

and respect, and basically the fundamentals of international law.

And this is like a, an idea that has a lot of precedent, right?

Because even when the Roh doctrine was first introduced 200 years

ago, there was a lot of active resistance to that idea in Congress.

There were a lot of people who wanted, you know, not us domination of the

entire region, but more regional integration and friendly relations.

And so.

My message really is like, you know, we can't lose hope in the face of

this onslaught by the United States, uh, not just in West Asia, but in

Latin America and the Caribbean.

And we have to understand that not only is there resistance going on throughout

the global south to the United States, but there's resistance right here at home.

And that the more we draw those connections between what imperialism means

to the rest of the global south and what that same sort of militarism means to

our communities right here at home, and how that trillion dollar Pentagon budget

affects us every single day, whether it's through bad education, why that's

undrinkable or, you know, poor housing.

Those are things that we could have, we could have dignified housing for

everyone if the depend island budget was cut, even just a little bit.

And so drawing that connection is, to me, one of the fundamental

roles I have as a peace activist.

Uh, and to really in like open people's eyes to the fact that US

imperialism isn't just about killing black and brown people overseas.

It's killing black and brown people right here at home.

And the poor working white working class as well,

I'm waiting for these fighter jets to stop doing what they're doing.

They're just landing.

Wow.

Is that every day?

It's, it was every day.

Constantly throughout the day and into the night and in the wee hours of the morning.

And then.

What's interesting is like the days and weeks leading up to the attack on

Venezuela, the amount of F 30 fives coming and going was astronomical.

It was constant.

This I see the flight line from my bedroom window.

I cannot escape this noise or how it vibrates the house.

I've said this a couple of times on the podcast already.

People are probably sick of me complaining, but it's like this

constantly, and it died down two days before the attack.

Like they moved assets to different locations, but immediately

after the attack, so many of them were returning here.

So I was hearing them come back from doing that.

And now like you mentioned before, being concerned about Cuba the way

that movement of aircraft now has escalated in the last couple of days,

subsequent to what you mentioned earlier about the US and Cuba having talks

and how, like the pattern goes with this now I'm also very concerned that.

This heightened movement of aircraft.

Now I'm seeing more osprey coming and going like, like it used to be in the

beginning, before the attack on Venezuela.

More, definitely more F 30 fives, f sixteens, attack helicopters.

Seeing that movement, again, coinciding with this, what's happening in the

geopolitical narrative sphere makes me very nervous that the, and especially

with the now, um, Cuba being completely blacked out, that's rather convenient.

Yeah, that's really scary.

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

And, you know, talking about having hope right now, I know

that's hard for a lot of people.

How do we hold onto to that hope?

Like you're mentioning resistance and, and a lot of these things

that are visible to a lot of us.

How can we keep that momentum going and in your perspective where do you see

points of resistance being possible?

Because here in Puerto Rico, I'll sideline with a story real quick.

There have been protests consistently led by mothers against the war, Madres Ra.

And also other groups, um, here in PR attended, like the numbers in

each protest are, are shrinking, unfortunately, but we're not stopping.

The protests happen in front of each base, so there are protests here regularly.

I believe there's one coming up this month.

And we're doing our best to speak out against this as Puerto Ricans

and to demand that our government, which is a Trump government, Trump

supporting government unfortunately.

Where do you see those points of resistance kind of expanding and

growing and getting stronger or keeping it peaceful resistance?

And then I guess this is a two part question, and that's my dog.

He wants to go to bed, but the role of Puerto Rico in all of this too as

a colony, as basically a reactivated military base, that these attacks

are primarily being launched from.

Being that we are a colony.

Is there a sense of.

Connection, uh, within the peace activist world.

I'm no longer a part of it really.

But like, are people connecting the dots to the colonization of Puerto Rico and

the military readiness of the US to do all of this that it's doing in our region?

Yeah, I'll start with that second question first.

I think people are connecting the dots, there's, you know, I'm a peace

activist and there's a couple of partner organizations that have been

really, really active, particularly in the, in the last six months.

Uh, I'll give a shout out to one that the Aspo Ante collective, uh, which is

kind of a nationwide, where Puerto Rican folks from, from all over the country

that are, who have been very active and anter imperialists, and they are bringing

Puerto Rico into the conversation a lot.

The thing is that it's really hard to bring any country into the conversation

when the Trump administration just moves so quickly from topic to topic, right.

And when our own attention span shifts so quickly.

You know, immediately after January 3rd, the focus was all on Venezuela.

And we had statements from organizations that like, had never

really talked about Venezuela before.

I'm thinking, move on, put out a good statement.

The A-F-L-C-I-O put out a good statement, and then what happened

about a week and a half later, Rachel, Nicole Good was killed in Minnesota.

Alex Preddy was killed in Minnesota and everything exploded with ice.

So Venezuela was immediately this topic shifted.

Then a couple weeks after that it was all Greenland, and then it

was Cuba, and then it was Iran, and now it's Cuba again and Iran.

And so, you know, with the Trump administration kind of pushing

forward because they understand that they have to like, they have to

do something almost every week to.

Serve as kind of a pressure valve because the Trump administration is

under immense pressure, particularly from the Epstein files, but, uh,

for many, many reasons, right?

Uh, and so that makes it difficult to keep any one country or any, or,

or Puerto Rico in the conversation.

But certainly those of us, especially those who do Latin American solidarity,

are always very quick to talk about Puerto Rico because it is a colony

and, and it's colony that the many people in the United States don't

even realize it's a colony, right?

And they don't really even know what to think about Puerto Rico.

Uh, and so keeping that alive, keeping that discussion alive is really key.

And especially drawing that connection you made, right?

The Puerto Rico as a military base from which it's may be

attacking other countries.

And now that we've seen the United States attack South America, south American

country for the first time ever, uh, you know, might it be, see we've seen more of

that in the future, particularly if this so-called Shield of the Americas becomes

ki becomes kind of a, of a drone war for Latin America and the Caribbean or the

drones gonna be leaving Port Puerto Rico.

So absolutely that, that's kind of a key state, a key issue that

we have to continually bring up.

Uh, I don't know that it's in the forefront of most peace activist

minds because everything of everything else that's going on, but it's

certainly at the forefront of Latin America, solidarity, activists minds,

which I consider myself as well.

And then in terms of hope, you know, I think one of the things

that does give me hope is this kind of the total reaction to the.

The abuses of ICE and the human rights violations by ice, because that's, we've

seen nationwide protests against ice.

We see people organizing at a very community level with, you know, ICE

Watch and, and, and, and so forth.

And so I think that gives me a lot of hope because in terms of vice specifically,

I think it's really, really easy to draw the connections between US imperialism

and what's happening here at home, because ICE is really just a force to

crack down on the migrantes that the US is causing to come here in the first

place, uh, in, in certain respects.

And, and, there are other things that can be hope.

Right now.

I, I think the peace movement is taking a lot of flack because we haven't seen

lots of people on the streets protesting against the war in Iran, uh, because

the protests have been really small.

But then when we look at the polls, we see that this is really maybe the

most unpopular war ever, uh, especially for a war that has just begun.

Uh, and so I think that speaks to the fact that the, the United people of the United

States are sick of these endless wars.

And really that's one of the things that Trump was campaigned on, right?

Is ending these endless wars and his people bought it, his, you know,

his supporters bought it, and now we're seeing his own movement kind

of start to break apart a little bit, especially around the edges.

And you have high profile people like, uh, I don't know, Laura Ingraham

and took Carlson really questioning the US War in Iran, especially the

atrocity committed on the very first day when the US bombed a school, right?

A girls school.

And then, so I think.

That sort of discourse, that sort of narrative is going to become more

prevalent as we get closer to the midterm elections in this country.

And I'm not one that puts a lot of faith in the electoral system in

this country, but it's what we have and, and it's one of the ways we

have to express our displeasure.

And so I think that we're gonna see a lot of protests too this summer.

I think this summer is gonna be as filled with protests as the Black Lives Summer

from black Lives Matter protests of 2021.

And particularly because also because rather we have the, the World Cup

being held in the United States and I'm part of a coalition and Code Pink

is part of a coalition that's calling for a boycott of the World Cup and

calling for protests at the World Cup.

And I think we're gonna see a lot of that.

And on top of that, you have this other kind of whole movement

called the No Kings Movement, which really is an international,

I mean, in the sense that like they don't really talk about war much.

And at some times, at some point, you know, when the Peace

movement has tried to kind of.

In, inject itself into the No Kings scenario.

Sometimes they get rebuffed and other times they're very welcome.

But I think because the war in Iran is so popular that they're gonna have to

expand what they're talking about to not just be no Kings, but also no empire.

And I think that moving that conversation forward, it's gonna be a really key

for the peace movement as a whole.

and, you know, hope, like you said, it is hard to come by in the United

States, but there's just been so much grassroots organizing and it kind of,

it may have started during the pandemic, even just with mutual aid networks that

sprang up to help each other's neighbors when, because it became clear that our

government wasn't gonna do it for us.

And these mutual aid networks have just grown and they've become tighter

and they've e expanded their focus.

And so I think that's gonna be kind of a vector through which peace

might eventually be possible for us.

I wholeheartedly agree and not just because I work in mutual aid now.

It, I think honestly, strategically the value of mutual aid work and

the capacity it lends, if Mutual Aid networks can be better supported and

greater expanded, I think that would better equip the masses in the US

to do and maintain a general strike.

Because I think a lot of people don't participate in protest, and don't

participate in Strikes because of.

A lack of support.

You have a lot of people who have children, a lot of people who

are ill, a lot of people who have different mobility needs that

are unsupported most of the time.

And then you have, um, also the economic inaccessibility of

traveling to protest locations, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

So I think and then when we consider like why, what are the barriers to

general strikes, sustained general strikes, like we can see historical

examples of those being really powerful.

And there have been many attempts.

And I think being able to strengthen those mutual aid networks will

absolutely make sustained general strike accessible and possible because

people will have their basic needs met with those networks in place.

And same with going out and doing mass protest.

And I, I don't know.

I have hope that's what gives me hope.

Mutual aid is what gives me the most hope.

That, and all of the educating that people are doing.

And even though we don't like confrontation, confrontation is

necessary sometimes in terms of like confronting ideas, confronting people

with facts, confronting people, and disrupting false narratives.

Like all of those things are so essential.

So is there anything else that you want, anything that we haven't touched

on yet that's really important to you that you want people to take home?

From this,

I think we've touched on most things.

I just wanna kind of reiterate what Cuba's going through because you know,

uh, we see a lot of, in the media talk about, uh, humanitarian crisis in Cuba,

but it's not a humanitarian crisis.

It's a crime against humanity.

It's a crime that's being imposed by the United States that's

really starving Cuba of oil.

And that means a lot, right?

I mean, when we think of a country not being able to import oil, we might

not draw the connection that Cuba, you know, I think roughly 80% of its

electricity comes from fossil fuels burning oil to create electricity.

We don't have oil.

You have nationwide blackouts.

A nationwide blackouts means that hospitals don't have power.

If a hospital doesn't have power, a patient on a dialysis

machine is at risk of dying.

You know, and I think really when we look at this US warfare against Cuba,

we also have to highlight the fact that the first victims, excuse me.

When we look at the US warfare against Cuba, we, I really have

to highlight the fact that the first victims are children, right?

In Cuba child mortality, the number one cause of child mortality for kids

zero through five right now is cancer.

And the really sad thing is that it's treatable cancer, but the

Cubans can't get those medicines because of the US blockade.

And so, it's a lot of killing without bombs that's going on in Cuba.

And I would urge folks that if you can travel to Cuba, if you can't travel

to Cuba, find someone, an organization that is and donate so that they

can bring humanitarian into Cuba.

And like you said, all the last thing I would say is really political

education that's gonna be so key right now, because people are really

desperate for answers to be able to analyze everything that's going on.

And without that political education, we just leave it up.

We just leave it up to kind of more mainstream sources, then everything's

gonna continue on the same, and we're not gonna be able to break three of

imperialism of the US War machine.

But political education like this podcast is really key to that.

Right on.

Thank you so much Leonardo, for giving us your time tonight.

And um, of course, whenever you have another opportunity to come back, I'm sure

there's a lot more we can dive into, um, especially with, with Cuba and especially

with not knowing what's gonna happen next.

But yeah I echo that tremendously.

I know I've, I've been to Cuba multiple times.

Gone to a lot of the peace conferences there have been on delegations

there and, and crossed from Havana to Guantanamo and seen, and then

that was during the droughts.

That was, um, that was, those were during Trump and Biden that I went.

Um, so it was after things thawed and then got cold again.

But I, I actually owe Cuban doctors my life.

Um, and I owe Venezuela my life too.

Because I was an election observer in the 2020 elections, presidential

elections in Venezuela and got COVID.

And I survived COVID because the Venezuelan government supported my life.

They didn't allow me to go without healthcare.

And that whole journey I got to see really up close and personal and

talk with folks in the hospital, in the COVID ward and hear a bunch of

different perspectives of why their daily lives were the way that they were.

Not everyone shared the same opinion.

And I mean, that's human nature, right?

And especially when we don't see the arm of who's actually hurting us,

we're going to, to lash out and blame whoever looks like they have power.

And the Cuban doctors that were there in Venezuela gave me a treatment, and I just,

I'm, I'm about to cry, but the nurses, the Venezuelan nurses, as much as they

were struggling and they didn't, the, the hospital didn't have an x-ray machine.

They couldn't do a chest x-ray on me.

They didn't have a lot of the things that they needed.

And people were dying, like one of the ladies that I made friends

with died on the unit because they didn't have access to what they

needed to be able to treat her.

So I, I definitely my heart is with Venezuela, my heart is with Cuba.

Not just because of what their love and solidarity and knowledge and compassion

did for me personally, but because also we're relatives, and human beings.

So yeah, if there's any, any kuban.

So Vanessa,

I love you all.

Thank you.

Thank you for existing Thank you for fighting.

Thank you for.

For being who you are and sharing the love that only us Latin Americans

have for each other and for the world.

But yeah.

Leonardo, do you have any way for people to follow you to follow your work?

And any other last words that you have for our listeners?

Well, first of all, I just really want to

thank you for the invitation.

It's been a really a pleasure to have this conversation with you

all, and those are really beautiful words that you just shared.

Uh, and I echo them as well.

Uh, if you wanna follow me, you can follow me on X. It's at Leonardo EFA.

I'm also an organizer with Code Pink and I'm gonna pitch an action that we're

doing if you go to www.codepink.org/act.

Cuba, we have a, an action calling for the Senate to pass

a war powers resolution on Cuba.

Uh, the threat against Cuba right now is very real.

It's a military threat and we cannot underestimate it.

And we've gotta push our representatives, our senators to take action.

Uh, you know, it might not be successful, but we still have to do it anyway to show

them that there is pe our people in the United States who do not want this war.

Thank you so much for allowing me to be here today.

Right on.

Alright, well, thank you Leonardo again for sharing your

time, thoughts and experience.

And everybody at home that's listening.

Stay safe, stay healthy, don't stop, don't give up on hope.

And, um, we'll see you all the next time.

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