![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/01/06/2.jpg\")
Fire at Fuerte Tiuna military complex in Venezuela, January 3, 2026.
\n“We live in a world that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power,” Stephen Miller told CNN host Jake Tapper, on January 5, 2026, spelling out the fascist program as he justified seizing Greenland by force. “These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”
\n\nEarly in the morning of January 3, the Trump administration carried out a made-for-TV raid on Venezuela, bombing at least seven targets in Caracas and kidnapping president Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Celia Flores. This was the culmination of a year-long pressure campaign during which the administration designated Venezuelan immigrants in the US as “narco-terrorists,” attempted to employ the Alien Enemies Act, bombed alleged “drug boats,” seized oil tankers, and deployed the US navy to blockade Venezuela.
\n\nThe Trump regime initially accused Maduro of heading “Cartel de los Soles,” a construct as concocted as “antifa.” Though they revised this accusation yesterday in order to formulate a less tenuous legal case, it is typical of their method that they begin with a false narrative and seek the means to impose it on reality. One of Donald Trump’s chief objectives was to post a photograph of Nicolás Maduro in chains, echoing the photographs that federal agencies have circulated of people abducted by ICE. Rather than offering improvements in anyone’s economic conditions, Trump offers his supporters the vicarious thrill of identifying with jailers and torturers. His goal is to dehumanize his adversaries and desensitize everyone to the kind of violence that will be required to sustain his reign and capitalism itself in an era of declining profits.
\n\nCorporate media is performing its classic role of loyal opposition, raising questions about the legality of the action while demonizing Maduro and lionizing his right-wing opponent, María Corina Machado. For anarchists and others who aim to oppose imperialism, it’s necessary to situate the attack on Venezuela in a larger context, reflect on what effective opposition could look like, and identify how we can take action in response.
\n\n Fire at Fuerte Tiuna military complex in Venezuela, January 3, 2026.
\nThe United States government has a long history of imperialist interventions in Latin America, including over a century of operations against Cuba, the bloody military coup in Chile in 1973, and George Bush’s invasion of Panama in 1989. The attack on Venezuela picks up where a series of more recent endeavors left off, from George W. Bush’s invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq in 2002 and 2003 to Joe Biden’s dismantling of the international “rules-based order” to enable Benjamin Netanyahu to carry out genocide in Palestine starting in 2023.
\n\nAt the same time, the program of the Trump administration represents a departure from previous norms. In seeking to carry out resource extraction by brute force without the slightest pretense of any other agenda, Trump joins Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu in inaugurating an era of naked rapacity for its own sake.
\n\nWhile Trump’s underlings have cited the rigged elections that took place in Venezuela in 2024 to justify the attack, Trump is not pretending to bring elections or “democracy” to Venezuela. Some sources claim that the opposition led by María Corina Machado is supported by nearly 80% of the Venezuelan population, but Trump maintains that they do not have enough support to rule; presumably, he means that they lack the support of the military. Trump himself would prefer to work with an autocratic regime that is beholden directly to him. He, too, would rather not answer to elections, whether in Venezuela or the United States.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/01/06/3.jpg\")
\nTrump is using war to stave off domestic crisis. While Trump and a contingent of anti-communist republicans have long pressed for regime change and the naval buildup in the Caribbean has been growing since August, this coup is timed to seize the media cycle in order to distract from worsening polls and a series of court losses regarding Trump’s efforts to deploy the National Guard. At the same time, evidence of Trump’s complicity in Jeffrey Epstein’s racket of child predation and rape is finally fracturing Trump’s base.
\n\nAs autocrats lose their hold on power, they become more dangerous and unpredictable. Netanyahu’s maneuvers to stay ahead of his corruption scandal—including his readiness to sacrifice hostages in order to continue perpetrating genocide—are instructive here. When crisis threatens them, such rulers create additional crises to distract those they rule. Any effective opposition should remember to keep the spotlight on what Trump is trying to conceal. That is what he fears most.
\n\nUnderstood as a media operation, the attack on Venezuela is an attack on all of us: an effort to intimidate everyone who might resist the Trump regime, to make us accept that state violence will continue escalating whatever we do, to convince us that we are not the protagonists of our time.
\n\nAs we argued in 2025, Trump has copied much of his playbook from authoritarians like Vladimir Putin. When Putin became prime minister in August 1999, his approval ratings were even lower than Trump’s are now. He solved that problem by means of the second Chechen war, which turned the polls around dramatically in his favor. Afterwards, every time his support slumped, he repeated this trick—invading Georgia in 2008, Crimea and Donbas in 2014, and Ukraine in 2022—slowly consolidating control of Russian society until he could afford to feed Russians into the meatgrinder of war a hundred thousand at a time.
\n\nPutin has used the war in Ukraine as a means of domestic control—and in Russia, this goes far beyond suppressing protests. As economic conditions worsen, Putin has to project strength and brutality continuously, but he also has to figure out what to do with an increasingly restless and desperate population. Shoveling young men from poor families in the hinterlands into the maw of war enables Putin to keep them busy; if a couple hundred thousand of them never return home, all the better—they will not show up in unemployment statistics and the police will not have to suppress their protests. Likewise, conscription has driven those who would likely lead a revolution to flee the country by the thousands. This is a strategy we shall see repeated elsewhere as the global crisis of capitalism intensifies.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/01/06/8.jpg\")
\nThe chief difference between the two contexts is that, while the United States is much more powerful than Russia, Trump’s hold on power is not nearly as secure as Putin’s. At the same time, coming out of the disastrous occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, US voters have considerably less stomach for operations that put the lives of US soldiers at risk.
\n\nTrump is not an especially disciplined tactician, nor is he a focused strategist. He always relies on threats and intimidation to achieve his goals, taking advantage of the cowardice and weakness of his contemporaries. Presumably, he is gambling that intimidation will serve to bend the governments of Latin America to his whims without the need for further military action. If that does not work, he likely intends to rely on military technology, private mercenaries, and other means of exerting force without having to send US troops to occupy Venezuela or other countries. But war, once summoned, imposes its own logic. If the Trump administration continues down this path, US forces may yet become embroiled in open conflict.
\n\nIn the wake of the attack on Venezuela, Trump and his henchmen have threatened to take similar actions targeting Mexico, Cuba, Colombia, Denmark, and other nations. They will certainly undertake these if they feel that they are acting from a position of strength, but even if things go badly for him, Trump may attempt to use such stunts to distract from his weakness.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/01/06/1.jpg\")
Cars stand in lines for fuel in Venezuela after the attacks. This, in the country with 17% of the world’s oil reserves.
\nCapitalism began in the midst of colonial plunder, and as profit margins decline throughout the global economy, governments are returning to this old-fashioned strategy of accumulation. This explains Putin’s land grab in Ukraine, Netanyahu’s ongoing attempt to use genocide as a form of gentrification, and Trump’s latest adventure in Venezuela.
\n\nIn a November 2025 “National Security Strategy” paper, the Trump administration explicitly committed to a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine, aiming to “restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere” as a means to “deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets, in our Hemisphere.”
\n\nTrump has embraced the self-aggrandizing renaming of this geopolitical strategy as the “Donroe Doctrine,” stating that “American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again.” This is about oil, as Trump has emphasized—Venezuela contains 17% of the world’s oil reserves—but it is also a means of jockeying for power with China, which is a major investor in and importer of the Venezuelan oil industry, purchasing 80% of Venezuela’s oil exports and propping up the Venezuelan oil industry with over $60 billion dollars of loans since 2007. This strategy precedes Trump: a renewal of the Monroe Doctrine with a focus on competing with China and Russia in the Global South was a key part of the 2024 Commission on the National Security Strategy created under the administration of Joe Biden. The 2024 Commission explicitly called for competing with China and Russia for leverage in Latin America with regard to the “development and harvesting of natural resources, and facilities and capabilities for projecting power.” While Trump represents the turn towards autocracy, the geopolitical and economic rationale was already in place.
\n\nIn other words, Trump’s heavy-handed brutality offers the ruling class a solution to a problem that capitalists of all stripes are confronting—the problem of evaporating opportunities.
\n\nTrump’s plan to have US oil companies take over resource extraction in Venezuela is part of a new phase of colonial plunder, a return to directly seizing assets from other countries. We have to understand this within the larger context of stagnation and financialization. Historically, this mirrors earlier periods of “systemic chaos,” 1 when declining profits compelled capitalists to pivot towards financial speculation and the machinery of the capitalist world system struggled until it was reconstituted into a new order through mass violence. The most relevant recent example is the period from 1914 to 1945, which saw both of the 20th century’s world wars.
\n\nSo this is not just about oil; it is a means of shoring up the conditions for capitalist profiteering in general, and a glimpse of larger-scale violence to come. We are entering a phase of relations based in pure force, not “rule of law” or diplomacy, and this attack—like Trump’s presidency itself—is a symptom, not a cause.
\n\nBut this represents a departure from the nationalist and populist imperialism of the past, in which regimes stole resources from the global periphery in order to improve the quality of life in the imperial core. Trump’s assault on Venezuela is calculated to benefit an increasingly small cadre of capitalists. The middle class and white working class are no longer “junior partners” to colonial ventures, and have increasingly less cause to identify with them.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/01/06/6.jpg\")
People in Caracas clean up after the United States bombings.
\nAt first, Venezuelan vice president Delcy Rodríguez struck a defiant tone, but she immediately backpedaled to more conciliatory rhetoric. This has prompted speculation that Rodríguez might be prepared to cooperate with the Trump regime, or is already cooperating.
\n\nA variety of scenarios are possible, and it is difficult to determine the truth. Perhaps the United States has put Delcy Rodríguez in a terrifying situation, but she is bearing up bravely; perhaps the Trump regime has already negotiated secretly with Delcy Rodríguez, and she intends to talk tough while facilitating the US agenda of resource extraction; perhaps something else is going on. Regardless, the vulnerability of Chavismo2 to the kidnapping of its leader—and the possibility that Rodríguez or other elements of the Venezuelan government are complicit, or will become complicit, in Trump’s plan to take control of Venezuelan resources—both underscore the fact that all hierarchies represent a point of failure for liberation struggles.
\n\nWe have already seen how the leadership of previous revolutionary left movements, such as the government of Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, has been forcibly integrated into the functioning of neoliberalism and compelled to impose capitalist austerity measures and state control on the populations under their rule. Confronted with these defeats, some people draw the conclusion that the only way to possess sovereignty is to control a powerful nation state that possesses nuclear weapons. This is the logic underpinning “campism,” the support for imperial powers like Russia and China that rival the United States.
\n\nYet Russia and China operate according to the same authoritarian, capitalist logic that the United States government does today—and those who choose to support them will have no more leverage over the actions of their leaders than Venezuelans do over the United States government. Those who seek to align themselves with one geopolitical state actor or another will inevitably end up defending genocidal autocrats from a position of total powerlessness. The real alternative is not campism, but an international grassroots resistance that extends across borders.
\n\nBut for that to become a persuasive alternative, people in the United States will have to develop the capacity to prevent the US government from overseas bombing and looting.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/01/06/4.jpg\")
The attack on Venezuela marks the escalation of a proxy war with China. Shifting the industrial base, including the tech industry, into wartime industry is one way to deal with the stagnating economy, but this will only be possible if the Trump administration can whip up more “national spirit” and patriotism. Arguably, the rush to consolidate the funding and proliferation of artificial intelligence is intended to create a more credulous and controllable population towards that eventual purpose.
\n\nIn the nearer term, we can expect to see the Trump administration attempt once more to use the Alien Enemies Act against Venezuelans and other targets. Trump’s and Miller’s previous attempt was defeated in court because the US was not, in fact, at war. Now that they have created a war, they will use this to declare a range of additional emergencies and justify additional clampdowns. We can also expect more racist violence against Latin American and Chinese people, as well as retaliation against US foreign policy from non-state actors or proxy actors, which the Trump administration will seek to take advantage of to advance its agenda.
\n\nThe midterm elections are scheduled for November 2026. Donald Trump and the Republicans are not favored; but Trump has crossed so many red lines already that he cannot tolerate any threat to his power. Whether by election interference, fraud, or, more likely, engineered crises that legitimize a state of exception, we can expect the midterms to be the least “democratic” elections in recent memory. Elections alone will not get us out of this mess.
\n\nAs Trump is beset by various crises, scandals, and obstacles, he will become more violent, unpredictable, and dangerous. This is a sign of weakness, but it is a weakness that is backed up by the full strength of the US military. We should expect military entanglements on a larger scale by October of this year, including further National Guard deployments and perhaps even martial law.
\n\nUnpopular wars without a clear mandate—especially wars that result in US casualties or other sacrifices at home—can spell downfall for a regime. It is our task to turn this war—along with Trump’s other errors, and the wars to come—into a millstone around the neck of the entire ruling class. It will require so much popular force to dislodge Trump that we should popularize similarly ambitious proposals—not simply demand a return to an unpopular centrist status quo. Revolutionaries must prepare to outmaneuver centrist attempts to rebalance the ship of state. It may seem hard to imagine now, but uprisings and revolutions unfold quickly. The “Gen Z” revolutions toppled regimes around the world over the course of 2024.
\n\nDemonstrations across the US have used familiar slogans like “No Blood for Oil.” Unfortunately, Trump has concluded that his followers want both—oil and blood. Anti-war movements tend to be inherently conservative, as they seek to influence state policy; but like the administrations before it, the Trump regime has made clear that it is not concerned about opposition. Rather than presenting demands through symbolic protests, we need to build horizontal movements capable of addressing needs through direct action. These should focus on the common conditions that ordinary people face from Caracas to Minneapolis: poverty, austerity, the pillaging of essential resources, control by violent mercenaries, rule by unaccountable tycoons. The resistance to Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity around the United States represents a promising step towards this.
\n\nIf, indeed, as Stephen Miller implies, governments do not represent the desires or agency of the people they rule over, if—as should now be obvious to all—they do not have our best interests at heart but simply act to seize as much wealth for themselves as they can, then no one is obligated to obey them. The only question is how to build up enough collective strength—enough grassroots force, enough horizontal power—to defeat them.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/01/06/5.jpg\")
The return of fascism on a global scale—and hopefully, the capability to defeat it.
\nTo begin with, readers should consult “We Denounce the Imperial Offensive on Venezuela,” an international statement from Latin American anarchist organizations published in December 2025.
\n\nFor deeper background on the situation in Venezuela, we encourage Spanish-speaking readers to peruse the archive of the now-defunct Venezuelan anarchist publication El Libertario, where one can find, for example, a critical evaluation of the Bolivarian social organizations from 2006, or a collection of texts about the role of the petroleum industry in subduing grassroots popular movements in Venezuela and integrating them into the global economy:
\n\n\n\n\n“Venezuela is part of the process of building new forms of governance in the region, which have demobilized the social movements that responded to the application of structural adjustment measures in the 1990s, re-legitimizing both the state and representative democracy in order to meet export quotas for natural resources to the chief markets of the world.”
\n\n-Ley Habilitante: dictadura para el capital energético (“The Enabling Law: Dictatorship for Energy Capital) in El Libertario # 62, March-April 2011
\n
We could understand Trump’s attack on Venezuela as a way of continuing that “process of building new forms of governance in the region” today.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/01/06/7.jpg\")
A list of those who have recently been incarcerated at a single detention center in Brooklyn hints at the increasing array of world-historical contradictions coming to the fore in our time.
\nIn The Long Twentieth Century, Giovanni Arrighi argues that the past 700 years have witnessed a predictable pendulum swing between relatively “peaceful” and stable periods of trade expansion, during which growing markets enable capitalists and states to profit without significant competition, and investments in production or trade generate reliable profits, and increasingly chaotic periods of financial expansion, during which inter-capitalist competition drives down profits and investment capital seeks profit primarily through financial speculation. As the global economy stops growing, capitalists and national elites increasingly turn towards force and plunder to sustain profits, culminating in periods of “systemic chaos.” These periods are remarkably violent, characterized by military expenditures and plunder; historically, they only end when a new hegemonic force imposes a new global order and restores the conditions for capitalist accumulation. 20th-century American hegemony and the international system introduced by the United Nations played that role after the Second World War, but both have been in decline since the shift towards financialization and the rise of “neoliberalism” in the 1970s, and are now displaying their irrelevance as more and more forces attempt to seize profits by pure force instead of capitalist investment. Pundits bemoaning the end of the international rules-based order and expressing nostalgia for the United Nations are missing the forest of economic stagnation for the trees of individual bad actors like Trump and Putin. Any real resolution to the period of barbarism that we are entering will have to be grander in scope and more ambitious than the “Age of Revolution” of 1789-1848. ↩
\nChavismo is the socialist movement associated with former Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez. ↩
\nA year has passed since the uprising that threatened the government of Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua—a largely left uprising against a nominally socialist government. Today, as the US government seeks to promote a civil war in Venezuela in order to expand its sphere of political and economic interests, the questions raised by the Nicaraguan insurrection are more pressing than ever. What should people do who oppose both Maduro’s authoritarian version of socialism and Guaidó’s authoritarian version of democracy? Does “anti-imperialism” just mean supporting governments connected to rival empires like Russia and China? What about the Sandinistas, feminists, indigenous peoples, environmentalists, students, and campesino movements who oppose Ortega? What about the Venezuelan socialists and anarchists who oppose Maduro?
\n\nAnd, at the same time, what does it mean when both neoliberal US politicians and the EZLN support a protest movement in Nicaragua? What does it mean when anarchists, communists, and the US military all support the experiment in Rojava—but with completely different agendas? How do we support movements like the ones that oppose the Ortega government in Nicaragua without simply providing cover for capitalists to manipulate social movements into opening up new markets? How do we ensure that anti-authoritarian movements are not exploited as a way to install new authorities? How do we strategize to resist reactionary forces inside of popular movements without sabotaging the movements themselves?
\n\nFor years, we have corresponded with anarchists and grassroots organizers in Venezuela, Nicaragua, and elsewhere who have described situations that sound a lot like the ones that poor people and people of color face in more explicitly capitalist countries, despite the supposed socialist agendas of the presiding governments. While some of the participants in resistance to the Maduro and Ortega regimes are clearly motivated by the desire to profit on the introduction of even more oppressive economic policies, others are driven by legitimate grievances and a real desire for equality and self-determination—just like those who rose up against the Brazilian government under Dilma Rousseff in 2013 or the people who rose up in Ferguson in 2014 under Obama’s administration. If international revolutionary movements do not offer the poor and desperate opportunities to fight for liberation from all forms of state oppression, some of them will end up naïvely enlisting in uprisings orchestrated by neoliberals.
\n\nWe have to build powerful movements that do not legitimize any form of capitalism or state power. Otherwise, we will be forever forced to choose between the lesser of two evils—and geopolitics will suffer from the same foreclosure of possibility as the two-party system in the US. Both neoliberal capitalist governments and authoritarian socialist regimes cynically make use of each other’s in order to promote themselves as the only possible alternative. This has been going on for almost a century; it’s up to us to create a real alternative.
\n\nIt’s striking how readily many leftists in the global North have supported the yellow vest movement despite the participation of outright fascists, but have ignored the uprising in Nicaragua or stigmatized it as reactionary. We have a lot of work to do.
\n\nThe following report was supplied by Miranda de las Calles and Mark Alexander.
\n\nOur previous coverage:
\n\nThe April 19 Uprising in Nicaragua
\n\nUpdate from the Nicaraguan Insurrection
\n\nDifferent Currents in the Nicaraguan Insurrection
\n\nTaking Stock of the Nicaraguan Insurrection
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/05/16/5.jpg\")
\nIt’s been a long year since the popular uprising in Nicaragua. To recap: starting in April of 2018, following years of corruption, authoritarianism, nepotism, economic violence, and environmental destruction perpetuated by the Daniel Ortega government, people took the streets in a way not seen in Nicaragua since 1979. The uprising was led by students, workers, feminists, campesinos, and indigenous people from a variety of economic, social, and political backgrounds. The main demands were for Ortega to resign; to allow new democratic possibilities including educational autonomy, participatory democracy, and a radically new judicial system; and to offer reparations for all the violence perpetrated by the state, the police, and paramilitary forces.
\n\nA year later, the government continues to utilize violence against the Nicaraguan people, independent media outlets have been forced into exile, human rights organizations have stopped operating, and all dialogue and mediation has failed. In the following report, we go over some of the historical context for the Nicaraguan uprising and present an update on the situation as it stands today.
\n\nIn part because of the history of conflict between the state and the people in the Caribbean, there is a longstanding tradition of autonomous activism in the Caribbean region. Community activists have had to work outside of the structures of the state to combat issues such as state-sanctioned sexual violence against young girls and women and various forms of economic colonization. A brief history of the region can show the roots of the tendency towards self-organized community activism and direct action on the Caribbean side.
\n\nThe Spanish empire colonized the pacific region of Nicaragua, while the Caribbean was set up as a “protectorate” of the British empire, which colonized it in a different way. There are multiple ethnic and cultural differences between the two regions as well: 96% of the people of the Pacific are relatively homogenous (mestizo) and speak Spanish. The Caribbean is populated by multiple ethnic groups—Miskitos, Afro-Caribbean, Garifunas, Sumu, Rama, and others—speaking multiple languages.
\n\nIn 1894, with the assistance of the United States, José Santos Zelaya (president of Nicaragua from 1893-1909) annexed the Caribbean coast. The state branded the annexation as a “reincorporation”;—however, people on the coast still refer to it as the “overthrow.” This is the origin of a longstanding struggle pitting indigenous and black people of the Caribbean against the Nicaraguan state to reaffirm their rights to their ancestral lands.
\n\nHere are a few notable examples of autonomous activism in the Caribbean coast:
\n\nIn 2009, in opposition to the Nicaraguan government, nearly 1000 people organized by community activists in Bluefields to occupy over 860 acres of communal land on which to grow their own food and build dignified housing. This was the birth of the “Back to the Land Movement.”
\nIn April 2009, indigenous people from the Caribbean declared independence from the state due to racism, poverty, hunger, and land colonization. They have asserted that they have “enough will and ability to govern themselves for the well-being of their own community.”
\nMestizo land colonization is the biggest crisis facing Black and indigenous communities in the Caribbean. Some people have armed themselves and resorted to insurrectionary direct action to protect themselves from this threat.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/05/16/1.jpg\")
Photo courtesy of Courtney Parker (intercontinentalcry.org).
\nThe Ortega government’s response to the spontaneous rebellion in Nicaragua has been similar to the strategy that they have been utilizing against the indigenous and Black people of the Caribbean coast for decades. The strategy includes the arbitrary use of state violence against anyone the state considers to be a threat, mass surveillance, increased police and military presence, and the criminalization of community activity.
\n\nFor the people of the Caribbean, the experience of militarization has continued steadily for many decades without much change. As capitalists have used the police and military to secure their interests in the Caribbean region, the state has used the war on drugs to justify and legitimize the militarization. In spite of Ortega’s anti-imperialist rhetoric, his government has worked closely with the DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) to advance the racist “war on drugs.” Ortega also works with ICE (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement) to implement US anti-immigration policies.
\n\nIn 1987, Nicaragua signed a law establishing two autonomous regions on the Caribbean coast: \nthe RACNN (North Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region) and RACCS (Southern Caribbean Autonomous Region). However, the autonomy law has had little effect in practice: today, Black and Indigenous communities have been under attack by settlers that have taken over communal lands. The colonos (mostly mestizo ranchers) have been attacking and kidnapping people. Many people on the coast believe that the Ortega government is offering the colonos lucrative loans, assisting them in illegally purchasing the land, in order to establish control of the region.
\n\nLarge plots of indigenous communal lands are being occupied and used to raise cattle. This is inflicting a devastating impact on the people and the environment. The most blatant illustration of the Ortega government’s contempt for the people of the Caribbean is his proposal to build an environmentally devastating canal that would displace thousands of Black and indigenous people.
\n\nThe state has determined that struggles for communal land rights and indigenous and Black self-determination are contrary to the security goals of the (mestizo) Nicaraguan state. Consequently, Black and indigenous people are stigmatized as criminal drug dealers. At the same time, those who rebelled or demonstrated any form of solidarity with the April 18th rebellion are stigmatized with the label of terrorists and golpistas (coup d’etat plotters).
\n\nOrtega’s war on drugs has been propelling the county towards mass incarceration. During his tenure, the Nicaraguan prison population has seen one of the sharpest increases in the world: from 2007 to 2018, the prison population more than doubled, increasing from 119 to 276 prisoners per 100,000 of the national population. Black people are disproportionately represented among the prison population. In Bluefields, for example, over half of the prison population is Black, although Black people represent only a quarter of the total population. Most of Nicaragua’s prisons are operating at more than double the capacity, and Ortega’s solution to the issue of overcrowded prisons has been to build more prisons using funds seized from the drug war.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/05/16/2.jpg\")
Image courtesy of CEJUDHCAN.
\nHere, we’ll briefly review some of the developments in the year since the uprising was suppressed.
\n\nThe United Nations Refugees Agency claims that since April 2018, 62,000 Nicaraguans have sought refuge in Costa Rica, living in precarious conditions and facing local xenophobia. Nicaraguans in Costa Rica have been creating solidarity and support infrastructures to the best of their ability.
\n\nIn response, the Orteguista government has created a new program offering safe return to refugees, but nobody trusts this program. One student returning from exile was immediately arrested in Managua.
\n\nIn December of 2018, the GIEI, a Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts, produced a 400+ page report based on evidence and testimony on the ground in Nicaragua concluding that the Ortega government committed crimes against humanity. This claim is supported by the Organization of American States, the UN, and the European Union. This report further isolated Ortega from the rest of the world; in Latin America, Ortega is only supported by the governments of Cuba and Venezuela. Ortega has virtually no allies in Europe, and many European organizations have cut ties with Nicaragua. This report has legitimized the demands of protest movements on an international scale and has isolated the Orteguista government.
\n\nWith Ileana Ros-Lehtinen leading the charge, the United States government passed the Nica Act in December 2018 with bipartisan support. This act completely changes the relationship between Nicaragua and the United States. The United States has applied direct sanctions to government officials and to the Ortega family. Slowly, the diplomatic relations with Nicaragua will rupture, leading to more economic instability and sanctions.
\n\nUnfortunately, many Nicaraguan people depended on foreign aid, which funded hospitals and clinics. They will now face economic uncertainty. This has been compared to an embargo, which also affects Nicaragua’s diplomatic and economic relationship with other countries. The Nicaraguan bourgeoisie will also be affected by the Nica Act.
\n\nIn a communiqué from the Consejo Indigena de Gobierno (Council of Indigenous Government), the Zapatistas extended their solidarity and support to the people of Nicaragua. In a meeting at the Second General Assembly with Campesina leader Francisca Ramirez from Nicaragua, the Zapatistas stated that Ortega had betrayed the ideals of the Sandinista revolution.
\n\nA new attempt at dialogue between the government and the so-called “Civic Alliance” started in February 2019. This was the first time the government had been willing to negotiate since June 2018. This new attempt has generated growing frustration over the lack of accountability and response by the government but also for the “soft” approach of the Civic Alliance. The Civic Alliance is largely tied to the capitalist class. Also, not a single woman was seen on either side of the negotiating table. These negotiations have slowed down, as the government has not met the many deadlines that have been established. The first agreement is to release all political prisoners and then to open a process of democratization. The Civic Alliance is focusing on electoral reform and speeding up the 2021 elections. Their macro strategy is framed as pragmatism: the idea is that first Ortega will step down, then we figure out what kind of country we want to live in.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/05/16/3.jpg\")
The “Civil Alliance.”
\nNicaragua is a predominantly Catholic country that observes many religious celebrations. The current crisis and situation has turned processions, religious celebrations, and Sunday services into political spaces in which people denounce the violence of the government. People have been gathering and protesting inside of churches. The bishops, who have been neutral for the last 20 years, are now sending messages of social justice and political change.
\n\n\nhttps://twitter.com/LestherLAleman/status/1117609433041911815\n\n\n
Monsignor Baez, the most outspoken bishop in Nicaragua, has been compared to Monsignor Romero in his demands for justice in Nicaragua. Pope Francis has suggested Baez seek refuge in Rome for a while, a decision that most Nicaraguans lament, as they now lose a public powerful critic against the Orteguista government. The pope claims that peace can be achieved through dialogue.
\n\nIn February 2019, the state freed about a hundred political prisoners, giving hope that more liberations were on the way. The state has been holding political prisoners hostage as currency for the negotiations. Over five hundred political prisoners remain in custody. Two months ago, the government stated that it would release all political prisoners within a 90-day period. As of yet, there has been no sign of this happening. Some prisoners are refusing to leave prison until everyone is released at the same time. Despite the government’s claim that it will release prisoners, it continues to detain people who participate in spontaneous protests.
\n\nSeveral political prisoners have organized protests inside the prisons by escaping to the roofs of the prison buildings, dancing, chanting, and constructing barricades inside of the prisons. Police have used tears gas and rubber bullets to suppress these protests.
\n\nIn addition, the head producer of the news outlet 100% Noticias and the journalist Lucía Pineda were arrested in December and have been held in solitary confinement since January.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/05/16/4.jpg\")
“Freedom for political prisoners!”
\nThe traditional principles of anarchism—self-organization, mutual aid, and direct action—have gained traction in the Pacific region of Nicaragua since the April 18th rebellion. For example, activists put up roadblocks throughout much of the country that almost managed to topple the Nicaraguan government. The city of Masaya, a traditional Sandinista stronghold, declared that it would no longer recognize the government of Daniel Ortega and formed a commission to self-govern. Not surprisingly, this provoked violent retaliation from the state.
\n\nRight now, the most common form of direct action is the piquet or “sting.” It involves a call for decentralized small-scale manifestations all around a city, in which affinity groups of any size can rapidly protest and then disappear. Some examples of these piquetes involve rapidly taking the streets, disrupting food courts in malls, calling out chants in public buses, doing banner drops, intentionally causing traffic congestion with your car, dropping gallons of white and blue paint in the street, setting up impromptu memorial graves, protesting inside a church, tying balloons to street poles and trees, and more. The goal of these piquetes is to overwhelm the police and create panic in their ranks, since they try to rapidly locate and disrupt such actions.
\n\nWhat are the next steps for anarchists in Nicaragua?
\n\nThe Nicaraguan people still face uncertainty. It’s important to strengthen social movements now, in order that they will have more power later. In Nicaragua, this means supporting the campesino movement, the feminist movement, and the Afro-Descendant and Indigenous movements from the Caribbean coast, all of which promote strong critiques of capitalism and the state. These movements have started to establish and articulate what the differences are that distinguish them from pro-neoliberal and pro-state movements. The most progressive of the student movements is the Coordinadora Universitaria por la Democracia y Justicia (CUDJ). There is a lot of support and affinity for anarchist thought in this student organization.
\n\nYou can check out Hora Cero, an online self-run news and critique program born from CUDJ.
\n\nAnarchist solidarity networks are slowly emerging in Central America and worldwide. Writing and sharing information are speeding this process, but it is taking place out of necessity. On social media, anarchists are taking advantage of widespread discontent against the state, bourgeois interests, and authoritarian violence, and have thus far succeeded in resisting right-wing and neoliberal attempts to co-opt the struggle.
\n\nOn the ground in Nicaragua, it is very hard to organize meetings or public events, but several people have formed study groups to share, debate, and develop ideas. Piquetes continue to happen spontaneously.
\n\n\nhttps://twitter.com/LastWhoStand/status/1118933377791483904\n\n\n
Economic Analysis of Ortega’s “Socialist” Policies and Ties to the IMF
\nCommittee for the Liberation of Political Prisoners—Click “Descarga” for a list of political prisoners compiled by the committee for the liberation of political prisoners.
\nCoverage in Socialist Worker
\nCoverage in Left Voice
\nCoverage in The Intercept
\n\nhttps://twitter.com/i/status/1159528605682143234\n\n\n" } ] }