Venezuela is not Iran or Cuba, but those nations teach us that sovereignty is not given, but conquered through resistance. Venezuela must forge its own path toward sovereignty.
Originally published in Orinoco Tribune.
Reflect. Think about yourself; about those with whom you interact, and you will reach the same conclusion as I have. Since the signing of the disastrous Economic Package with the International Monetary Fund in February 1989, our country has never experienced such a unanimous feeling of bewilderment, contained anger, and repulsion at others deciding for us.
In October 2025, according to a Hinterlaces survey, 83% of respondents stated that they would be willing to confront a foreign military invasion. The attack came, we were denied the possibility of resistance, and now we face an invisible invasion. An Insolent Plant from Abroad that barely appears on screen, but tramples us, crushing one after another the executive, legislative, judicial, and moral attributes of sovereignty, steals from us in just half a year oil worth $13 billion that no one knows where it is, and remodels our country so that the plundering can continue indefinitely.
Along with the looting, a shroud of opacity has fallen over Venezuela, relegating everything that matters to mystery, except for the occasional voice that infiltrates informal media. María Alejandra Díaz Marín warns us from Colombia about the attempt to remove all constitutional limits that hinder the looting. Mario Silva contrasts what politicians used to say and what they say now. Ramsés Reyes confesses that he “spits blood.” José Sant Roz proclaims in Ensartaos: “I tremble with indignation when I see them say ‘Iran is not Venezuela,’ ‘Cuba is not Venezuela.'”
Comparisons are odious, but more odious is avoiding them to avoid self-examination.
For my part, I preach that anger is a more valuable natural resource than the oil and gold that they are plundering from us, because anger is infinitely renewable and more fruitful than resignation. I admire all the countries that have shaken off the yokes of empires. I appreciate those who reproach us for apparently having stopped doing the same. I do not even invoke the sacred wrath of the Decree of War to the Death, which liberated what are now six countries. The assertion that we are not like this or that country reiterates that freedom and sovereignty do not fall from the sky nor do they defend themselves. They are conquered through the extreme pedagogy of the unbearable.
Venezuela is not Iran. Nothing could be truer. Since 1941, Iran had been living under the dictatorship of Shah Reza Pahlavi. The nationalist Majlis movement succeeded in having Mohammed Mossadegh appointed as prime minister in 1951, who nationalized the oil industry. The hegemonic countries blockaded the Iranian state from selling oil. In 1953, the CIA and MI6 incited street demonstrations, a military coup ousted Mossadegh, and confirmed Shah Reza Pahlavi as a dictator, who handed over the oil to Europeans and Americans and presided over a repressive autocracy. Only in 1979, after an interminable 37 years of fierce monarchical dictatorship and the continuous theft of oil by foreign powers, waves of Iranians deposed the puppet and confirmed that autonomy is not given: it is defended. They took their affirmation of cultural identity to the extreme. They faced the selective assassination of their scientists and leaders until they became impregnable. They won wars against neighboring Iraq, instigated and armed by the United States, and now against the Empire itself. They divided their defensive system into “mosaics” capable of continuing to resist when others would have fallen. We are not like the admirable Iranians. But they teach us a rough path to become like them.
We are not like the Cubans. When José Martí arrived in Caracas in 1881 and first visited the statue of Bolívar, it had already been 57 years since we had gained independence and formed what are now six countries. The Liberator included in the Panama Congress of 1826 the goal of the emancipation of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Hispaniola, and planned to crown it with an expedition that our secessionism thwarted. The Apostle and Cuba still had to endure a bitter lesson. For Martí, death in his first battle. For his homeland, the humiliation of an independence interfered with by the US invasion of 1898, and a sovereignty tarnished by the Platt Amendment. And still remaining was the bitter record of 60 years of dictatorships and corruption covered up by the United States, until Commander Fidel Castro arrived and put a stop to it. The Apostle never felt humiliated because in his time Cuba was not like Venezuela. He sacrificed his fragile existence in the Promethean attempt to overcome it, and his legacy pierces our conscience like red-hot iron.
China is not like Venezuela. Starting from 1848, it was assaulted by England to force it to buy opium. Thriough the Infamous Treaties, the Western powers filled it with military bases and puppet governments. Since 1931, the Japanese invaded Manchuria; the rest of the world threatened, blockaded, or ignored China. Only after a bitter century of humiliations could the country, in 1948, resume the arduous path that led it to becoming the world’s leading power.
No, Venezuela is not Algeria, it is not Vietnam, it is not Korea, it is not Afghanistan, it is not India, it is not Pakistan, it is not Somalia, it is not Yemen. Venezuela preceded them. In 1810, we had a Foolish Homeland that had to learn to overcome until in 1825 it taught the world lessons. Today we must understand, along with so many admirable nations, that there is no independence greater than that which is conquered, nor sovereignty greater than that which is defended.
Once again, the current metropolis is losing its hegemony. Its bases are demolished, its mercenaries put to flight. Its Congress denies funds for its reckless aggressions, its energy sources slip away, its fraudulent unbacked currency vanishes, emerging powers surpass it in economy, social advantages, science, culture, and defense. The path diverges between the road to extinction and that of Utopia.
What Venezuela needs to relearn is to be like Venezuela.
Luis Britto García is a Venezuelan writer, playwright and essayist. His fiction has been recognised twice with the Casa de Las Américas Prize, for his works Rajatabla and Abrapalabra. In 2002 he was the winner of Venezuela's National Prize for Literature, given as a lifetime achievement award
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