Caracas has long lived under the shadow of siege. Well before any single headline, the city learned to recognize the familiar signals: airspace violations recast as “exercises,” mercenary plots cloaked in deniability, economic strangulation sanitized as “sanctions,” and an unrelenting media narrative that treats regime change as inevitable. 

In recent days, these pressures converged once more. When I first read a tweet from US President Donald Trump on X claiming that the United States had “captured” Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and first lady Cilia Flores while bombing sites in Caracas, it registered as yet another piece of disinformation. Confirmation from reliable sources, including the Embassy of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela in the Philippines, only reinforced a bitterly familiar truth: No elected government that defies US imperial power is ever meant to feel secure.

Caracas is targeted precisely because it refuses submission. The bombs that killed people and the abduction of its president are meant to not only discipline Venezuela but also to warn every nation that dares imagine an alternative to imperial rule. This moment is not an aberration, but part of a sustained campaign—sanctions that have claimed tens of thousands of lives, repeated coup attempts, paramilitary incursions, cyber and media warfare, and open calls for foreign intervention. 

Venezuela has become a testing ground for 21st-century regime change, where coercion is normalized and sovereignty is treated as conditional. Yet it is against this sustained aggression that the Venezuelan people continue to organize, govern, and resist, demonstrating that sovereignty is not bestowed by empires but forged through struggle.

A witness from abroad 

Over the last six years, I have visited Venezuela in my capacity as president of the Philippines–Bolivarian Venezuela Friendship Association and as Bayan’s international liaison officer. Throughout these engagements, I have witnessed a  global people’s movement forging principled solidarity with peoples around the world who are waging struggles for social and national emancipation, alongside governments that defend sovereignty and the right to self-determination. The Bolivarian Republic stands as one such example—a state that has become a beacon of anti-imperialist resistance in the Global South.

Central to this struggle are the communes, which the Venezuelan people themselves continue to defend and deepen. These communes are not merely local administrative units, but grassroots structures of popular power: territorially rooted collectives where residents organize production, distribute resources, govern community affairs, and make decisions through participatory assemblies. They represent the cornerstone of the Bolivarian Revolution—spaces where democracy is practiced directly, the economy is oriented toward social need rather than profit, and sovereignty is exercised from below.

The crowd they tried to erase 

My first visit to Caracas was for a series of solidarity activities with commune leaders, discussions with foreign delegates who shared a common anti-imperialist vision, and educational exchanges with representatives of the Bolivarian Republic, including a former minister of the communes. We were also invited to attend the inauguration of President Nicolás Maduro, following his reelection. It was my first direct encounter with the scale and brazenness of disinformation surrounding Venezuela.

On our way back from the event, I was stunned by the sight of hundreds of thousands—perhaps even more—gathered in disciplined, collective celebration. Streets became assemblies. What I witnessed defied the narratives I had absorbed from afar: a mass of people not coerced, not passive, but visibly aware that this victory was their own, achieved by their decision and sustained by their participation.

I was eager to recount the experience to my comrades back home when I paused to see how the event was being rendered online. What confronted me was disorienting. Wikipedia had already rewritten history, naming Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s president, while US-based outlets and oligarch-controlled media in Caracas recast the immense rally in support of Maduro as a protest against him, alleging electoral fraud. I recognized the crowd instantly—it was the same sea of people among whom I had just walked, assembled on the same boulevard, now stripped of its meaning and inverted into its opposite. 

The realization was nauseating in its clarity: Reality itself was being overwritten, in real time, by those with the power to narrate it.

The weight of propaganda 

The renewed US assault on Venezuela—the attempt to seize the president of a sovereign state on the basis of long-discredited allegations—has been accompanied, as always, by a flood of familiar propaganda: accusations of authoritarianism, electoral fraud, and the supposed betrayal of what Comandante Hugo Chávez began. I have encountered this narrative often, repeated with confidence by people far removed from the country itself.

One such encounter is vivid in my memory. In the Philippines, months after another wave of disinformation, I was riding in a van to a conference on another Philippine island when a fellow passenger—middle-aged, university-educated, and eager—asked for my thoughts on Venezuela. I had not initiated the conversation. Speaking in good faith, I shared observations drawn from direct experience and study. What followed was not dialogue but recitation: a fluent rehearsal of US talking points, delivered by someone whose knowledge of Venezuela came solely from reports of the latest regime-change attempt. I ended the exchange quietly. 

That encounter stays with me as a reminder that propaganda does not merely misinform, but conditions people to speak with certainty about realities they have neither encountered nor socially investigated. A more serious study is necessary. 

This resolution fueled more meaningful encounters with Venezuelans from all walks of life and divergent political orientations. Of course, it is clear which ones clash with my own, so my account is based on solidarity with the same aspiration to national and social liberation and not some hackneyed liberal claim on standing above social divisions.   

Women and communes 

That approach shapes one of the more poignant encounters I’ve had with women commune leaders along with some fishermen. I also met with women organizers from the communes and local fishermen. In those meetings, the role of women in the communes emerged as a central theme. Organizers emphasized that women’s leadership within these grassroots structures is not simply a continuation of tradition but a deliberate practice they are actively expanding.

A community leader, Molly, explained: “Women have always been responsible for holding their families together, especially in times of severe crisis. Our new role as commune leaders take in this practice but now it is reinforced by political power bestowed upon us by the Bolivarian process. It has not been easy, but actual and formal power can make a difference in combating patriarchy.” 

Her words underscored how the communal movement is reshaping gender roles by combining lived experience with formal political authority. Molly also introduced a fisherman who grew up watching his mother shoulder the burdens of survival with little power or recognition. He told us that seeing women take formal leadership in the communes was new to him.

“So women as commune leaders is not a familiar experience for me,” he said. “We did not have communes; we only had poor living conditions and we were never sure where to get food or how to survive the next day. I will not say that I have fully understood our present situation, but at least I can say that we are united on a plan and respecting women and their capacities is not against that plan.”

His reflection captured a personal and collective transition: from uncertainty and scarcity to a sense of shared purpose where women’s leadership is recognized as integral to the community’s future. 

Voices of defiance 

And this future is now under siege. My first impulse upon confirming the news of the bombing and kidnapping was to contact my dear friend and comrade, Luina. Months earlier, in September, she shared with me a piece she wrote for an India-based revolutionary bulletin. Luina is a teacher and organizer, and her spirit embodies the quiet, unyielding defiance that I witnessed during my visits to Venezuela. In the wake of yet another imperial tremor, her words echo with a clarity that cuts through the noise: 

“… To those reading from afar, we say: your solidarity strengthens us. It reminds us that we are not alone. It unites us in the conviction that dignity is not negotiable.The militarization of the Caribbean and the Essequibo, the sanctions, the media and diplomatic pressure—all are part of a strategy to dismantle a political project that refuses to surrender. But Venezuela does not kneel. We resist at sea, in classrooms, in neighborhoods, in children’s notebooks and elders’ banners.

“The Bolivarian Revolution is not perfect, but it is ours. And as long as there is a teacher who teaches, a student who questions, a mother who cooks with what she has, and a people who say ‘no one decides for us,’ sovereignty will remain alive. The history of the Caribbean teaches us that intervention always comes disguised. But it also teaches us that the peoples who remember, resist. And those who educate, liberate.” 

This is the Venezuela I came to know. It is a nation whose confidence is not drawn from wealth, but from the palpable pride of daily struggle, shared with a joyful enthusiasm that disarms any visitor. I recall walking through the Comuna Socialista José Félix Ribas, where women workers greeted us with snacks and proudly presented garments sewn in their own workshops. “Hecho en Caracas,” they said—a simple label that was a blazing emblem of defiance. These were not just products; these were manifestations of a collective undertaking, built by hands that believe in the dignity of creating what they need.

Building sovereignty from below

This confidence is cultivated. It stems from a profound political process that began with the re-founding of the republic under Hugo Chávez, a process that deliberately broke the monopoly of land and oil, recognized Indigenous rights, and invited the historically excluded—farmers, workers, the marginalized—to write the nation’s laws. 

The backlash was swift and brutal, including a failed coup in 2002. But it was thwarted by a unique union: the civilian population and a military that had been integrated into this project of national liberation. What emerged was a state that, even under the most crippling economic siege, prioritizes its people. Where else in a neoliberal world, gripped by sanctions, do you find a government straining every resource to provide free education, food subsidies, and housing for the poorest? This capacity to serve is the revolution’s bedrock.

The heart of this project, as I learned from commune leaders and ministers alike, lies in the comunas. These are not just administrative units but the incipient cells of a socialist vision. These are sites of production, with communal banks and textile plants. The state, for instance, sources millions of school uniforms from these very communes. The idea is to build an economy resilient to the global commodity chains that make nations vulnerable. A key insight emerged from the struggle: Workers and even some local factory owners realized that when production is solely for export, it becomes a weapon for economic sabotage. True sovereignty, therefore, means fighting not just to control production, but to determine where the products go—to serve the community first.

What Luina and her comrades demonstrate is that sovereignty is not an abstract concept debated in diplomatic halls. It is the power of a fisherman seeing women lead his commune and understanding it strengthens their collective plan. It is the patience of a people explaining their experiences in their own language, inviting you to see what they have built. Their struggle teaches a fundamental lesson: Imperialism and a sovereign Global South cannot coexist without persistent, organized resistance. The communes are where that resistance is being forged, hand in hand, stitch by collective stitch. The Bolivarian Revolution, under siege but alive, shows that a better world is possible—one where the people themselves write their destiny and unbowed by empire.

(Author’s note: A more detailed version of the Bolivarian communes can be found in a book chapter: Raymundo, S. (2021). International solidarity against U.S. counterinsurgency. In I. Ness & S. Davis, eds., Sanctions as war: Anti‑imperialist perspectives on American geo‑economic strategy. 333-344.  Brill.) CS

Sarah Raymundo is president of the Philippines-Bolivarian Friendship Association, international liaison officer of Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan-Philippines), and assistant professor at the Center for International Studies-University of the Philippines Diliman. 

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