Last week, the neo-fascist government in the White House announced what had been foreseeable since 3 January – when it abducted Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores and detained them in a New York prison. Trump announced on social media that a so-called ‘agreement’ had been reached with Delcy Rodríguez’s ‘interim’ government to seize 17 oil fields in Venezuela – with an estimated 65 billion barrels in reserves – for 100 years, with the aim of ‘replenishing’ US crude oil reserves.
What imperialism has imposed on its puppet government in Caracas is blatant colonialist plunder. This kind of imposed ‘agreement’ is only possible within the framework of an openly colonial situation, which has been met with silence from most of the right-wing opposition and open complacency on the part of the ruling PSUV party. The situation threatens the republican character of the South American nation – and casts a menacing shadow over the entire region.
The radical left and the original Chavismo are mounting significant resistance to the protectorate’s establishment, demonstrating that the working class is reorganising to fight against the colonial situation, whilst the remnants of the military-police alliance appear to have adapted to the new situation.
The culmination of capitulation
Over the last six months, the regime led by the Rodríguez brothers (Delcy and Jorge) and Diosdado Cabello – who have become viceroys of the colony following their betrayal of Maduro – has amended the hydrocarbons and mining laws to guarantee the most profitable conditions for US transnational oil and gold companies. The United States has, outside the international legal order, assumed the power to sell Venezuelan oil and manage these funds at its discretion, whilst treating the gold reserves that had remained stored in the vaults of the Central Bank of Venezuela as spoils of war.
The heads of the Southern Command, the CIA, the State Department and the Department of Energy stroll around Venezuelan territory as if they were the owners of the country, whilst relations with the Zionist state of Israel are being re-established. Any vestige of anti-imperialism has been wiped out by the grovelling subservience of Venezuela’s leaders to the Trump administration.
Meanwhile, the situation for workers is becoming increasingly dire, with a monthly minimum wage of 15 US cents, whilst the labour rights won through struggle over recent decades have all but vanished. Nevertheless, spaces of resistance are multiplying, though there is as yet no sign of a leap towards national coordination of internal struggles and resistance against the colonial assault on the country. The grassroots organisation of protests against power cuts, the precarious drinking water supply, selective repression and low wages demonstrates a rebuilding of the social fabric from below.
Against this extremely grave backdrop, the oil agreement signed between Donald Trump and Delcy Rodríguez jeopardises the present and future of the Venezuelan nation and threatens the whole of Latin America.
For this reason, we in the Fourth International stand in solidarity with the people, the working class and the revolutionary-class-based organisations of that country, supporting everything that leads to levels of organisation and coordination capable of driving forward mobilisations and struggles that will defeat the spurious Trump-Rodríguez agreements. The slogan that emerged from the very heart of the people, following the earthquakes in June, encapsulates the principle that we in the Fourth International support: ‘only the people can save the people’.
Down with the Trump–Rodríguez colonial agreements!
Trump, his corporations and his military out of Venezuela and Latin America!
Executive Bureau of the Fourth International
31 August 2026