Geopolitical discussions are seductive to many because they involve powerful players, strategy, individual personalities, and conspiracy. Perhaps most importantly, they include ideological worldviews that center debate on personal beliefs. All of this serves to validate the individual and creates a false rhetorical space that gives the impression of engaging in the same discussions as the powerful. However, this is not the case.
In practice, this framing moves attention away from the most important component of political discussion, the people directly involved. These frameworks, while serving a purpose in specific domains, mimic the perspective of those in power when applied to politics. The result is a way of describing events that decides who counts as a political subject and who does not.
There are conflicting messages about Venezuela across media platforms, mostly rooted in geopolitical narratives. Mainstream conservative outlets highlight Venezuelans celebrating Maduro’s capture, paired with comments dismissing those protesting U.S. actions as standing against the people of Venezuela. Many left-wing sites portray Maduro’s capture as an act of imperialism and demand his release while sidestepping documented abuses.
The next level of analysis tends to focus on perceptions of the Bolivarian Revolution, centering on individual leaders. While Hugo Chávez, Maduro, and the Venezuelan government are all important to that discussion, they do not own it. The Bolivarian process is not a fixed position, but an ongoing struggle.
At its core, this process has involved a continuous dynamic between grassroots social movements and political leadership. That relationship has never been settled or one-directional. It has often been described as a revolution within the revolution, encompassing land reform, feminism, labor organizing, indigenous movements, student movements, and community organizing.1 These forces have shaped and challenged the political project over time.
Barrio assemblies, Consejos Comunales, Comités de Tierra Urbana, and other grassroots initiatives have developed largely outside the reach of the central government. Official party structures like the PSUV remain in place, but much of the organizing activity operates from outside it. While the Venezuelan Constitution codified changes ranging from labor to women’s rights, many of these promises remain unrealized. It is important to understand that the Venezuelan left does not argue against the Bolivarian Revolution, but in favor of its implementation.
This theme appears consistently in outlets like Aprorrea, a pro-Bolivarian site that has been critical of the Maduro government, and left-wing political groups like Marea Socialista. Marea Socialista originated in Chavista organizing and only split from the PSUV after citing the government’s turn toward centralization, clientelism, and authoritarian capitalism.
Marea Socialista published a statement after the 2024 and 2025 elections arguing that Venezuela was trapped under an authoritarian government. The statement described a system of power sustained by repression, military–police control, bureaucratic corruption, and elite control of the state. It went on to discuss the material consequences for Venezuelans that included the collapse of salaries under a “zero wage” policy.
This economic devastation was accompanied by severe repression of unions, labor organizers, and social activists. Foreign sanctions compounded harm to ordinary Venezuelans while also serving as a pretext for these measures. Electoral politics was not a viable option for leftist parties unwilling to negotiate with the government. Without compliance with the government, they were denied authorization.
Constitutional reforms were rejected by groups like Marea Socialista because they were seen as a way to justify the government’s authoritarian actions through emergency decrees and repression. The reforms were not viewed as benevolence, but as an attempt to take away rights enumerated in the 1999 Constitution.
While some outside leftist commentators present Maduro as a socialist opposing U.S. imperialism, many leftists inside Venezuela see him as a capitalist authoritarian who betrayed the Bolivarian Revolution. Such rhetoric hardly exists in U.S. media and can be uncritically conflated with support for pro-U.S., right-wing opposition. This faulty analysis reflects the limits of geopolitical framing.
Marea Socialista published a statement on January 4th condemning the actions of the U.S.: “We repudiate the attacks that took place during the early hours of Saturday, January 3 of the new year 2026, when the United States, on orders from Donald Trump, militarily attacked, with bombings, the territory of Venezuela, in various military and governmental points in Caracas and in the states of Miranda, Aragua and La Guaira.”
It went on to demand the immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces and called on governments worldwide to condemn the intervention. At the same time, it stressed that, despite “deep and insurmountable differences with the Venezuelan bureaucratic-authoritarian regime,” it stood in defense of the country’s sovereignty against imperialism.
The history of the Bolivarian Revolution, its conflicts with the state, the actions taken by the Maduro regime in violation of the 1999 Constitution, and the responses from leftist groups such as Marea Socialista expose the limits of geopolitical framing. Together, they reveal how this framing produces a false choice that fails to reflect the will or lived realities of people in Venezuela.
Outsiders arguing over how events in Venezuela should be interpreted does little to clarify what is actually happening on the ground. More often, it produces moral scripts that punish Venezuelans who do not respond in the expected way. Venezuela should instead be understood as a society in ongoing struggle. That struggle is not defined by global leaders or domestic authoritarians. Instead it is led by barrio assemblies, labor unions, feminist organizing, indigenous movements, student movements, and left-wing organizations working from below. It is there, rather than in geopolitical abstractions, that Venezuela’s political future is being contested.
Republished, with permission, from The Right Podcast Substack.
- Carlos Martinez, Michael Fox, and JoJo Farrell, Venezuela Speaks!: Voices from the Grassroots (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2010) ↩︎
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