We are not helpless in the face of US imperialism: A 2026 Venezuela reading list

*This post is penned by a Latin American friend of the bookshop*

The world has never been more simultaneously disconnected and intrinsically linked. What happens in Venezuela, or Sudan, or Palestine has direct links to each of us.

It’s been impossible for me to stop watching the news over the past week following the kidnapping of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife on 3 January. Trump followed that particular breach of international law with threats to invade Greenland and vociferous support for the ICE agent who murdered Renee Nicole Good in an illegal stop in Minneapolis; the last vestiges of American democracy continue to shred. The names and places may change but the tune - the violence - is horrifyingly familiar.

It can feel difficult to parse a stance amid all the moving parts, especially when knowledge on a particular topic is so deliberately obscured. Unbiased opinions on Venezuela are difficult to come across in the West- indigenous or domestic accounts rarely translated. A little over a year ago, July 2024, another friend of the bookshop shared another message of solidarity with Venezuelans (here)

When we don’t know enough, it’s hard to care about something in ways that are meaningful or actionable.

So - what should our take on recent events in Venezuela be? More than one thing can be true at once.

The Chávez/Maduro regime resulted in a significant diaspora, and socioeconomic crisis in Venezuela that was felt all over Latin America. That many will be happy to see a change doesn’t change the fact that this was an invasion. Western media reports focused on rejoicing Venezuelans, glance over the chaos that an imperialist intervention could result in. Outlets are encouraged to write about Maduro being “captured” or “seized” and skate over the fact that the US will now be in charge of Venezuela’s considerable oil reserves.

We’ve seen the impact of US imperialism in Iran in 1953, the Congo and Cuba in 1961, Vietnam in 1967, Turkey in 1971, Chile in 1973, El Salvador in 1981, Guatemala in 1982, Grenada in 1983, Nicaragua in 1986…the list goes on. It should be no surprise that with such a shared legacy of colonialism, self-serving violence and extraction, the ‘special relationship’ between the UK and US endures so well.

There will be much unfolding in Venezuela and the Americas in days and weeks to come and it feels we have a collective duty to witness and push back on this latest chapter in violent US exceptionalism.

What can you do?

• Prioritise listening to Venezuelan and Latin American voices.
• Lobby your MP & the UK Foreign Office to take a stance on US imperialism, challenge them to explain the limits of our nation’s so-called special relationship with the US.
• Join the demo called by the Stop The War coalition and Scottish Trade Unions Congress: Saturday 10th Jan at 11AM outside the US Consulate

• Read – not only about violence and suffering, but also about thriving and joy.

We’ve compiled a list of books on Venezuela, Latin America, US intervention and oil. This list is not exhaustive and it does not include as many Latin American voices as we wish it did. To return to the words of Dr Roxani Krystalli when she wrote of Colombia’s protests a few years ago: Language politics matter for solidarity struggles …This post highlights resources that address English- speaking audiences. This is both necessary, given our location in Scotland, and necessarily limited, in that it is steeped in the English-language dominance many of us seek to dismantle when we read, write, and practice solidarity.

As a direct result of the way we view the Global South in the West, it is hard to find books on US imperialism in Latin America, especially those written by and about Venezuelan people. This doesn’t mean they don’t exist; they’re just not often translated into English or widely available through mainstream publishing houses, many small presses are rushing through new print runs in response to new interest. These books are a start all the same. Read a variety of sources, don’t assume someone speaks for an entire culture, people or place.