Panamerican Unity mural by Diego Rivera.
We, the undersigned scholars, students, and academic workers, unequivocally condemn the Trump administration’s January 3 strikes against Venezuela and kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores. The attacks are a flagrant violation of the United Nations Charter by a US president claiming, “I don’t need international law.”
The unilateral act of aggression is the culmination of a quarter-century of US hybrid warfare targeting the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, first under President Hugo Chávez and subsequently under Maduro. This regime change campaign has included draconian economic sanctions, repeated coup attempts, financing of anti-government NGOs, and corporate media disinformation.
As the Trump administration has evidenced in its invocation of the Monroe Doctrine and brazen threats against other left-led countries in the region, the egregious onslaught on Venezuela’s sovereignty constitutes an unprecedented kinetic escalation of Washington’s crusade to shore up its declining imperial hegemony across the hemisphere and around the globe. It moreover poses a serious menace to the regime of political sovereignty that was the lasting achievement of the Bandung era of national liberation, threatening to generalize across Latin America and the Caribbean the state dismemberment and semi-colonization visited upon Iraq, Haiti, DRC, Libya, Sudan, and Syria over the past three decades. Together with the ongoing genocide in Palestine, these wars of encroachment waged by the West represent an existential danger to humanity.
As such, we the undersigned demand the following:
- The immediate release and repatriation of President Nicolas Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores.
- The immediate and unconditional lifting of all US unilateral coercive measures against the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, its officials, and associated entities; the return of all pilfered Venezuelan state assets, including CITGO.
- The immediate withdrawal of all US military assets and bases from the region, as consistent with the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States’ (CELAC) 2014 declaration of the Americas a “zone of peace.”
- The payment of reparations to Venezuela for the destruction inflicted in the January 3 strikes as well as for the economic losses caused by US sanctions over the last decade; the UN General Assembly should appoint an independent commission of economists to calculate the total dollar amount owed to the Venezuelan state.
- The end of the US blockade against Cuba and payment of reparations likewise to be assessed by an independent UNGA-appointed commission.
As of January 16, 420 researchers and scholars have signed the statement.
Partial list of signatories (click here for the statement and full list in pdf form)
- Atilio A. Boron, Universidad Nacional de Avellaneda y Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA)
- Sandra Oblitas, Rectora de la Universidad Bolivariana de Venezuela (UBV)
- Miguel Mazzeo, Universidad Nacional de Lanús y UBA
- Mariela Castro Espín, Miembro Titular de la Academia de Ciencias de Cuba
- Steve Ellner, Latin American Perspectives
- Omar Hurtado Rayugsen, Presidente del Centro Nacional de Estudios Históricos, Venezuela
- Elias Jaua Milano, Centros de Estudios para la Democracia Socialista (CEDES)
- Ramon Grosfoguel, Associate Professor of Chicanx Latinx Studies, University of California, Berkeley
- Alejandrina Reyes, Rectora Universidad Nacional Experimental Simón Rodríguez / Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales Simón Rodríguez IISSR Centro CLACSO
- Archana Prasad, Jawaharlal Nehru University, India
- Juan Eduardo Romero, Historiador/Diputado Asamblea Nacional de Venezuela
- Claudio Katz, UBA/CONICET
- Fernando Buen Abad Domínguez, Universidad Internacional de las Comunicaciones/ Cátedra MacBride
- Néstor Kohan, Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA)
- Paris Yeros, Federal University of ABC (UFABC), Brazil
- Carlota McAllister, York University
- David Kazanjian, University of Pennsylvania
- Max Ajl, University of Tunis & University of Ghent
- Lucas M. Koerner, Harvard University
- Reinaldo Iturriza López, Centros de Estudios para la Democracia Socialista (CEDES)
- Freedom Mazwi, University of Zambia
- Esther Lezra, University of California Santa Barbara
- Sarah Raymundo, University of the Philippines
- Francisca López Civeira, Universidad de la Habana
- Anna Zalik, York University
- Matteo Capasso, Northwest University, China
- Josefina Saldaña-Portillo, New York University
- Ilka Boaventura Leite, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina
- Nazia Kazi, Stockton, Stockton University
- Javier Sánchez, Universidad de Antioquia
- Bikrum Gill, Virginia Tech
- Javier I. Echaide, University of Buenos Aires (UBA) / CONICET, Argentina
- Corinna Mullin, City University of New York
- Iván Pincheira, Universidad Academia Humanismo Cristiano, Chile
- Nina Farnia, Albany Law School
- Martha Prieto Valdés, Académica de Mérito de la ACC-Cuba
- Esteve Morera, York University
- Farwa Sial, SOAS
- Mojubaolu Olufunke Okome, Brooklyn College, CUNY
- Gabriel Rockhill, Villanova University
- Patrick Higgins, University of Houston
- Luccas Gissoni, Universidade Federal do ABC
- Edh Rodríguez, ANEP/CFE (Uruguay)
- Hilda Saladrigas Medina, Universidad de La Habana-ACC
- Jennifer Ponce de León, University of Pennsylvania
- Olmedo Beluche, Universidad de Panamá
- Maria Haro Sly, Johns Hopkins University
- Nidia Matilde Beltrán Prieto, Directora y docente UBV
- Pedro Lovera Parmo, Universidad de Santiago
- Immanuel Ness, Brooklyn College
- Sara Aldabe, UBA-CONICET
- José Romero Losacco, Instituto Venezolano de Investigación Científica (IVIC)
- Rosa Elizabeth Acevedo Marin, Universidade Federal do Pará, Brasil
- Ernesto Wong Maestre, CEEP UBV
- Ethel Tungohan, York University
- Adam Miyashiro, Stockton University
- José Antonio Hernández Macías, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM)
- Vicente Battista, Escritor/Argentina
- Jaime Caicedo Turriago, ASPU Asociación Sindical de Profesores Universitarios, Colombia
- Renate Bridenthal, Brooklyn College, CUNY
- Maribel Almaguer Rondón, Universidad de Camagüey, Cuba
- Maria Auxiliadora César, Universidade de Brasilia
- Claudia Chaufan, York University
- Arturo Guillén, Departamento de Economía de la UAM Iztapalapa
- Raul Kroeff Machado Carrion, Fundação Maurício Grabois – Brasil
- Olga Fernández Rios, Instituto de Filosofía y Vicepresidenta Academia de Ciencias de Cuba
- Paula Vidal, Universidad de Chile
- Stefan Kipfer, York University
- Alberto Quintero, IVIC
- Sandra Angeleri, Independent Scholar
- Douglas Marín, Universidad Central de Venezuela
- Ben Norton, Tsinghua University
- Christo El Morr, York University
- Cory Fischer-Hoffman, Independent Scholar
- Taylor R. Genovese, SUNY – Dutchess
- Ranu Basu, York University
- Disamis Arcia Muñoz, Universidad de La Habana
- Magnus S. Kjærgaard, Aarhus University, DK
- Jordan Corson, Stockton University
- Adrienne Pine, UC Riverside
- Jesús Peña, UNEARTE
- Ana Sáenz, Centro Marie Langer
- Greg Albo, York University
- Mayda Álvarez Suárez, Academia de Ciencias de Cuba
- Alejandro Pedregal, Aalto University
- Jeannette Graulau, Lehman College
- Marcelo Colussi, Escritor / Guatemala
- Timothy Kerswell, Development Watch Centre
- Jaime Acosta Gonzalez, UC Riverside
- Christian Flores, UNEARTE
- Maria Luiza Pinho Pereira, Universidade de Brasília
- Marxlenin P. Valdés, IDEAS Multimedios
- Adrian Ortega Camara Lind, Beijing Normal University
- Harjeet Badwall, York University
- Tamara Lajtman, IEALC, UBA
- Jorge Luis Oviedo Castillo, REDH Honduras
- Joaquin Barrutia, Emory University
- Carlos San Vicente, UCV
- Michael Pelias, LIU Brooklyn
- Josefina Morales, UNAM