Statement rejecting the recent threats and accusations by the US government against Venezuela
El CLACSO Working Group on Studies of the United StatesThe group, comprised of academics from more than 10 Latin American and Caribbean countries, expresses its profound concern regarding the United States government's intentions to escalate its aggression against the people of Venezuela. It is well known in international public opinion that a dangerous scenario of military intervention is looming, one that we must avoid, especially at a time when our continent and all of humanity are focused on preserving life in the face of a pandemic that is sowing uncertainty, pain, and death in its wake. Unsubstantiated accusations attempt to link the legitimate government of Venezuela to drug trafficking. These accusations are unacceptable, except to governments that submit to the dictates of Washington.
We denounce their war movements, which include the announcement of operations with military deployment and the location of warships in the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific and in the vicinity of Venezuelan sovereignty. It is a pretext, but we already know where the American decision is going when it builds a pretext. It is Colombia, and not Venezuela, that appears compromised in the reports of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Nor is that area of our geography, but the Pacific and Central America the preferential route, where the greatest cocaine traffic to the United States occurs.
Facing the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), which has declared our region as a "zone of peace", the decision of the US government establishes, against all international regulations, a war situation that severely threatens stability, security , as well as the principle of non-intervention and self-determination of the peoples. The deplorable unilateral decision that involves a deployment of forces to our region, after its intrusive strategic objective of regime change in Venezuela, to finally take over the oil reserves that are essential to it, carries the potential to aggravate a conflict with costly consequences, painful and unpredictable that would affect the entire continent.
Faced with this scenario, we join the vital reasons that assist our peoples who, invoking the solidarity and security of the region and the world, demand with a deep sense of justice, the political will to end unjustified sanctions and blockades against Venezuela and Cuba, as the United Nations and ECLAC have expressed it. Maintaining such decisions by the US government only worsens the most basic conditions required to meet the needs for food and access to medicines and hospital supplies due to the advance of the pandemic.
We express our full agreement with all those positions that, at this adverse juncture for humanity, express their conviction in favor of peace, cooperation and solidarity; at the same time that we strongly condemn the interventionist policy of the United States towards our region.
No to US military intervention in Venezuela!
No to the blockade and economic sanctions against Cuba and Venezuela!
April 2020
CLACSO Working Group
Studies on the United States
This statement expresses the position of the Working Group on US Studies and not necessarily that of the centers and institutions that make up the CLACSO international network, its Steering Committee or its Executive Secretariat.
