Venezuela & ALBA News 6.17.2026: Venezuela’s Revolution Today; Cuba Stands Strong; Evo on Bolivia

Venezuela

Revolution “Betrayed”? What’s Really Happening in Venezuela? w/Cira Pascual Marquina & Chris Gilbert Since the illegal U.S. abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and First Combatant Cilia Flores, Global North commentators have rushed to declare the Bolivarian Revolution betrayed or defeated. The recent extradition of Alex Saab has only intensified these accusations. Chavista intellectuals Cira Pascual and Chris Gilbert discuss Venezuela’s new reality and the tendency of Global North observers to interpret the Bolivarian process through abstract ideological schemas rather than its concrete historical development. Read: “A Great Leap into Reality: Venezuela Today” by Chris Gilbert and Cira Pascual Marquina:  https://mronline.org/2026/05/28/a-gre… 

Nicaragua Solidarity Coalition Reaffirms its Support for Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution and Opposes all U.S. Interference The U.S. empire has also intensified its campaign of psychological warfare. This not only includes the old tactic of blaming the Revolution for the impacts of sanctions, but now targeting the Revolution’s supporters with rumors of betrayal spread through the media and social media. This U.S. tactic, which has been similarly employed elsewhere around the world, is intended to divide the Venezuelan people, sow despair, and demobilize revolutionary resistance and international solidarity. We will not fall for these tricks. Chavistas–revolutionaries in Venezuela–remain unified in their opposition to U.S. imperialist aggression.

For international solidarity, our primary role is to expose and fight against the ongoing violence and coercion the U.S. has imposed on Venezuela before and since January 3. We demand that the U.S. government and the forces of imperialism keep their Hands Off Venezuela! Our responsibility is to organize actively to oppose imperialist interference from wherever we are, particularly in the imperial core. US Hands off Venezuela! End the Sanctions! Free President Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores!

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Cuba

Granma: Cuba President Diaz-Canel: Cuba will not surrender! Cuba persists and resists! And that persistence is intolerable to the empire! Raúl, like Fidel, is also irreplaceable and holds a very special place in the heart of this nation for his exemplary career, the consistency of his ideas and his battles, and because he, too, is a pillar of this bastion of dignity and justice that Cuba continues to be, facing today the most voracious and ruthless of empires, without lowering our flags, without abdicating our dreams, and without surrendering.

The enemy has employed every possible tactic against Cuba: the infiltration and formation of armed groups in the mountains, sabotage, terrorism, bacteriological warfare, assassination attempts, economic and ideological subversion, psychological and media warfare—all directed and financed by powerful U.S. intelligence agencies. Our nation is living through crucial times, threatened as never before by imperialism, which once again believes it can subdue us and destroy the Revolution. To this end, and before the eyes of the world, violating all norms of International Law, the United States government is committing an act of genocide that imposes terrible limitations on the daily lives of our people.

The perverse way in which the United States is carrying out a plan against Cuba aimed at provoking a humanitarian crisis throughout the nation, with the grave effects already being felt by children, the elderly, pregnant women, the disabled, and, in general, all our people without exception, can only be described as a crime against humanity.

On May 1st, after a resounding demonstration of popular support for the Revolution, they tightened the blockade even further in an act of evident rage and frustration. That day they announced a new Executive Order laden with threats, sanctions, confiscations, and fines for any company, bank, institution, or individual that trades with Cuba, invests in Cuba, or supplies Cuba with even the most basic food, medicine, and hygiene products.

While this genocide against the Cuban people is underway, its perpetrators brazenly lie to the world, denying their crimes.

This is how the empire operates: it not only destroys, but also constructs a narrative to make the destruction seem deserved or inevitable. To this end, they disseminate inaccurate images of Chinese or Russian bases that do not exist in Cuba. This confirms the desperate fabrication of plans to attack us. The greatest cruelty of the blockade is its prolonged duration. And the greatest offense to Cuba, which suffers it, and to the world that rejects it, is the cynical attempt to impose a reverse narrative: that of the failed state as the guilty party.

The purpose of destabilizing the country through economic strangulation is as perverse as its accompanying false narrative, which inverts the cause of the problems to obscure the true culprits.

Granma: Díaz-Canel explains priorities designed to overcome current difficulties President Diaz-Canel said, “the United States cannot forgive itself that, at this point, with all the maximum pressure they have exerted, the Revolution continues to exist and the country continues to function. And they themselves don’t believe what they talk about and repeat so much about a failed state.” He noted a failed state wouldn’t have been able to survive, not even for weeks, a situation like the current one.

Mint Press News: Interview with Abby Martin on her Cuba After Castro film

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Bolivia

El Pais: Evo Morales: ‘Our demands will only be met when we are in power’ What’s brewing now is an uprising – a rebellion of the Indigenous movement – against the neoliberal model and against the neocolonial state. When I say it’s an uprising against the neoliberal economic model, it’s because the people don’t want basic services to be privatized. Rodrigo Paz has already introduced 10 laws – in mining, gas, energy, lithium – to privatize [resources]; that’s where the uprising comes from.

Bolivia in Crisis: In Conversation With Evo Morales Hunger drives this mobilization; unemployment, the loss of purchasing power, the lack of dollars, the issue of inflation, the lack of food, the lack of medicines – a convulsion. I see a rebellion, therefore, against the neoliberal model and the neocolonial state…this is no longer just a class struggle, but a struggle for identity. And now, the people are realizing that [President] Rodrigo Paz, born in Spain… And the Aymara brothers say, no, just like Christopher Columbus, a Spaniard is going to dominate us. I see it as a sociological issue, not just a political issue, not just an economic issue. Last week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on his Twitter, “Make no mistake, the United States firmly supports the legitimate constitutional government of Bolivia. We will not allow criminals and drug traffickers to overthrow democratically elected leaders in our hemisphere.” He calls us drug traffickers and criminals. And the Armed Forces, by order of their commander, are organized into two anti-riot command teams although the Armed Forces do not want to participate in the repression. And the military doesn’t want to get involved, a good part of the army.

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Events

June 25 (London): The 25 Year War on Venezuela with Francisco Dominguez

June 27 (NYC): No War on Cuba

June 27 (Los Angeles): Cuba After Castro film

July 6 (Chicago): Community Kitchen Dinner for Cuba will be fundraising for Global Health Partners

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