On Sunday, 20^th May 2018, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, supported by the Communist Party of Venezuela, was re-elected to office. Despite winning all bar two of the many elections and referenda in the course of recent history, President Hugo Chavez and President Nicolas Maduro and the entire Bolivarian revolution have faced relentless US hostility and efforts towards “regime” change since 1998.

Over the years, the US has very substantially broadened the scope of its aggression against Venezuela by employing economic sanctions and devising systematic plans to isolate it. It has used food and medicine as a weapon of economic war by a major power against the working class and poor of Venezuela.

Right-wing violence against the Venezuelan government re-erupted in 2017, accompanied by US-inspired efforts to demonise and isolate the Venezuelan government, including attempts to suspend Venezuela from the OAS as a prelude to external intervention. Like the resurgent right-wing campaign of violence, this also failed.

The European Union, disgracefully, but not unexpectedly, condemned the election and plans to impose further sanctions against Venezuela.  International observers, among whom were senior politicians, academics, election officials, journalists and civil servants from across the world, concluded that the elections were conducted fairly and that any irregularities were exceptionally few and of a very minor nature.

Honduras has a long history of US interference and domination, with Honduran domestic oligarchs working hand-in-hand with transnational corporations. President Manuel Zelaya was overthrown in the US-backed 2009 coup d’état, resulting in a reign of terror and repression which has existed ever since. Political prisoners detained during last year’s corrupt election process (an election recognised by the US, despite widespread allegations of fraud) and the pro-democracy demonstrations denouncing electoral fraud, are being held in pre-trial detention in horrific conditions in maximum security, military-run prisons.

Poverty, inequality, insecurity, and violence are widespread in Honduras coupled with massive militarisation and the murder, disappearances, threats, and human rights violations of militants and activists.

Imperialism has a long history of interference, aggression and intervention in Central and Latin America and the Caribbean, attacking economic and political sovereignty, funding and supporting right-wing death squads, propping up bloody dictatorships, devising and assisting the brutal repression against communists and progressive forces and serving the interests of the monopolies against the workers, the poor and their political, social and cultural organisations.  In Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela,  Panama, Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Haiti, Cuba, Grenada, every attempt to build a hew future and pursue an alternative path for development has been vigorously attacked by imperialism and those attacks continue today throughout the region.

Currently, imperialism continues its offensive in the region against left and progressive forces. Conscious of the struggle of our comrades in the workers and communist parties and the progressive forces in Central and Latin America and the Caribbean, the Workers Party of Ireland declares its solidarity with the peoples of the region struggling against imperialism and internal reaction, against the capitalist system that generates poverty, misery, unemployment and war, for democratic rights, social progress and socialism.

Gerry Grainger

International Secretary

Workers Party of Ireland