By: Ricardo Abud
When Simón Bolívar warned that the United States seemed destined to plague America with misery in the name of freedom, he did not imagine that one day it would be precisely a government that bears his name that would silently, gradually, and calculatedly open the doors to the influence of the power that for decades he had pointed out as the main enemy.
For more than two decades, Venezuela's Bolivarian Revolution built its identity and legitimacy on one non-negotiable pillar: anti-imperialism. It was not a mere slogan, but the backbone of a historical narrative that mobilized millions of people, justified every tension with Washington, every strategic alliance with Beijing or Moscow, and every nationalization.
Oil was not just a resource; it was a sovereign weapon, the lever with which Venezuela dared to look the northern power in the eye and say: enough is enough. With these symbols, the historical interventionism of the United States in Latin America was rightly condemned in many cases.
Today, that nationalist and sovereign narrative exhibits terminal fractures that can no longer be hidden under a rug of worn-out slogans. The political tragedy of present-day Venezuela lies not only in the persistent external siege, nor in the traditional imperial threats. The most dangerous contradiction arises when those who proclaimed themselves heirs of Simón Bolívar and protectors of independence end up being singled out by broad sectors of the population as administrators of a silent and calculated surrender of the country.
Popular discontent stems not only from the economic collapse that has devastated workers' wages or from institutional decay. It arises, fundamentally, from a profound sense of national humiliation. For many Venezuelans, it is inconceivable to witness the growing signs of US influence over key energy, oil, and strategic decisions, while those in power continue to employ a revolutionary rhetoric that no longer aligns with reality. These denunciations no longer come solely from the traditional opposition; they are emerging with increasing force from critical Chavista sectors, former left-wing activists, nationalists, and ordinary citizens who once sincerely believed in building a sovereign project.
Public outrage deepens and becomes increasingly vocal when public statements emerge from Washington portraying Venezuela not as a sovereign nation, but as a space subservient to foreign geopolitical interests. Recently, former President Donald Trump claimed that Venezuelan oil revenues would have been enough to pay “25 times” the cost of a war against Iran and presented the energy relationship with Venezuela as practically a profitable venture for the United States. In previous statements, Trump even went so far as to speak openly of “taking the oil” and compared the Venezuelan situation to scenarios of strategic energy control in the Middle East.
Beyond the provocative rhetoric and Trump's personal style, the political content of those words carries enormous historical weight. When a former US president speaks of Venezuelan oil as economic compensation for foreign military conflicts, what is revealed is the persistence of a historical imperial logic: Venezuela continues to be seen by Washington as a strategic oil reserve and a key piece in the scheme of hemispheric domination. For any Venezuelan pro-independence movement, these statements amount to a public admission of how the great powers continue to view national resources as geopolitical spoils.
The political problem is even deeper and more painful because the official silence in the face of these claims fuels the perception of subordination and weakness of the Venezuelan government. Many citizens are now wondering how a government that for years made denouncing U.S. imperialism its raison d'être can now allow scenarios that would have been unthinkable decades ago. Even during right-wing governments harshly criticized in the past for their closeness to Washington, such as that of Carlos Andrés Pérez, numerous political and social sectors maintain that any sign of a strategic foreign presence that compromised Venezuelan territorial sovereignty would never have been tolerated with such passivity. The mere possibility of U.S. aircraft landing on Venezuelan soil or the expansion of mechanisms of direct political influence from the U.S. embassy would have provoked an immediate and unequivocal national reaction in other historical times.
This is why fear is growing in broad sectors of the country that Venezuela is moving toward indirect forms of political and economic control that will irreversibly erode its capacity for sovereign decision-making. Some critical sectors, even within the popular movement, warn that if this institutional deterioration, this opacity in agreements, and this increasing energy dependence continue, even more aggressive mechanisms of subordination could become normalized: operational control over key energy resources, financial impositions that condition social policy, covert military agreements, or even the establishment of foreign military presence under any technical or geopolitical pretext. What would previously have been considered treason and would have generated a strong response from the State is now being discussed in hushed tones within the ranks of the ruling party itself, while the revolutionary rhetoric for public consumption remains intact.
The Venezuelan tragedy is also deeply marked by the ruthless persecution of internal critical thought. Those who, from a genuinely anti-imperialist position and with a true Bolivarian tradition, dare to denounce these contradictions and demand transparency in the agreements are immediately discredited as “traitors,” “CIA infiltrators,” or “serving imperialists.” The state propaganda machine attempts to transform any honest questioning of sovereignty into a political crime in order to silence the debate. But the message from critical sectors is clear: remaining silent in the face of the progressive surrender of the country is not revolutionary loyalty; it is historical complicity in the plundering of the nation. No true anti-imperialist can accept the impunity with which Bolívar's sacred name is used while relations of economic and geopolitical dependence are normalized, reducing Venezuela to a mere bargaining chip between global and local elites.
Massive corruption plays a central role in this moral collapse of the political project. One cannot seriously speak of a revolution while the country has been systematically plundered by power networks comprised of high-ranking officials, state-linked businesspeople, financial operators, and oil executives who became obscenely wealthy during the years of greatest oil boom and, worse still, during the years of brutal social collapse that have impoverished the population.
From a coherent sovereignist and revolutionary perspective, this corruption is not a regrettable excess; it is a counterrevolution in itself, a private appropriation of the Venezuelan people's collective resources under the discursive umbrella of revolution. Therefore, the genuine defense of national sovereignty today demands concrete justice, not more propaganda: real investigations, the opening of archives, trials with due process but without guaranteed impunity for those responsible, and the effective recovery of the resources stolen from the Venezuelan people. Grandiose televised speeches and selective arrests used as tools of internal political propaganda are not enough. Venezuela needs to dismantle the structures of impunity that have destroyed the country's institutional credibility and morale.
Because sovereignty is not defended solely by confronting external pressures from powerful nations. It is also destroyed from within when a political leadership transforms state power into a mechanism for personal and group survival, when the revolution becomes a privileged bureaucracy that enjoys luxuries unimaginable to the people, and when anti-imperialist rhetoric is cynically used as a mask to negotiate quotas of political and economic control behind the nation's back.
Many Venezuelans today feel that the nation is trapped between two suffocating forms of domination: the historical pressure from foreign powers interested in oil and an internal leadership incapable of upholding genuine principles of independence, sovereignty, and national self-determination in practice. This devastating combination breeds despair, cynicism, and social division. However, it also opens a necessary and urgent discussion for the country's future: rescuing the concept of sovereignty beyond empty slogans. True anti-imperialism is not about repeating slogans while silently negotiating the fate of the country's strategic resources. It is about defending national independence against any foreign power and against any internal elite willing to mortgage the nation to preserve its privileges of power. Venezuela does not need propaganda; it needs truth, historical memory, justice, and national dignity.
THERE IS NOTHING MORE EXCLUSIONARY THAN BEING POOR
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