Venezuela & ALBA Weekly Newsletter

Venezuela & ALBA News 5.23.2025: US Tries to Disrupt National Assembly election; NED back at its work; Two Free Palestine Graduation Speeches

Venezuela

Venezuelanalysis: Venezuela’s 2025 Legislative and Regional Elections: A Quick Guide Venezuelans return to the polls on Sunday, May 25, to elect a new National Assembly, governors for 24 states, and regional legislative councils. This is the 32nd electoral event under the Bolivarian Revolution.

Orinoco Tribune: Minister Cabello Confirms Arrest of 38 Mercenaries Amid New Terrorist Plot 38 were detained, including 17 who entered from Colombia, prompting Caracas to suspend flights from its western neighbor. They are linked to a rightwing conspiracy to sabotage the May 25 regional and legislative elections. They were planning to plant explosives at embassies, hospitals, public transport, electricity infrastructure and police stations. The operation also meant to target government officials and opposition figures taking part in the upcoming vote. The detainees included mercenaries, smugglers and explosives specialists. Cabello said, “A few days ago, we received information that I warned about. I confirm it, explosive attacks specifically targeting embassies in Venezuela. They say in their meetings that if they bomb an embassy, the whole world will find out, and there will be talk of the government’s ‘weakness.’ People who have no scruples whatsoever.”

TeleSur: The US Threatens to Intervene in Guayana Esequiba Ahead of Venezuelan Elections US Ambassador to Guyana Nicole Theriot reaffirmed Washington’s full support for Guyana in the territorial dispute. She stated the US is prepared to support the Guyanese military.

Her statements echoed the tone of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who warned that any Venezuelan action against Guyana or ExxonMobil’s oil interests would be “a big mistake.”

Venezuela has categorically rejected accusations of its own military assaults, describing them as part of a “false flag operation” and denouncing what it calls an international disinformation campaign aimed at undermining its sovereignty and disrupting the May 25 elections.

Meanwhile, the United Kingdom and the European Union have stepped up their support for Guyana, driven by clear energy interests, as more than 60% of Guyanese crude oil is exported to the European market.

John Perry, Roger Harris: US Reinstates Funding to Propaganda Outlet: NED Weaponizes “Democracy” in Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba NED is to continue weaponizing “democracy” in Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba. The brief freeze and rapid partial reinstatement of National Endowment for Democracy (NED) funding in early 2025 helped expose it as a US regime change tool. Created to rebrand CIA covert operations as “democracy promotion,” the NED channels government funds to opposition groups in targeted countries. In 2018, Kenneth Wollack bragged to the US Congress that the NED had given political training to 8,000 young Nicaraguans, many of whom were engaged in a failed attempt to overthrow Nicaragua’s Sandinista government. The NED current program includes in Latin America and the Caribbean alone over 260 projects costing more than $40 million. NED disingenuously operates as a 501(c)(3) private nonprofit foundation. However, it is nearly 100% funded by annual appropriations from the US Congress and governed mainly by Washington officials or ex-officials. In reality, it is an instrument of the US state.

Popular Resistance (Steve Ellner): A Simplistic Analysis Of The Maduro Government Leaves Much Unsaid (on Gabriel Hetland) Ellner gives a thorough reputation of the claims made by some who abandoned solidarity with the Venezuelan revolution and began attacking it. Ellner does approach it as if it were an academic debate, and he swallows the claim these people make that they are leftists; we should judge people not by what they say of themselves, but by what they do.

Peoples Dispatch: They took her baby – The struggle of a nation and a mother to reunite a family after US deportation Maikelys had been separated from her parents for almost a year, when their family was detained at the US border on May 14, 2024, under President Biden. Reports indicate that immigration authorities cited the young parent’s tattoos justify detaining them separately and placing the baby in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement. The Biden administration maintained that they were protecting the child –not a US citizen – from her parents. The father, Maiker Espinoza Escalona, was one of more than 200 Venezuelans deported in March, first to Guantanamo Bay and later to the infamous CECOT mega-prison in El Salvador, where he remains, cut off from all communication.

Coral Wynter: Review of Anya Parampil’s ‘Corporate Coup’ documents US meddling in Venezuela Parampil studies how successive US leaders, Democrat and Republican, used criminal acts, illegality and outright lies, backed by a compliant mainstream media, to try to carry out regime change in Venezuela. The book gives a history of the US coup operations against the country. It also contains a huge bibliography, as well as a final chapter on the international political future in the light of recent international upheavals.

TeleSur: Venezuela Rejects US Supreme Court Decision to Strip TPS from Venezuelan Migrants President Maduro condemns the US Supreme Court ruling allowing the Trump administration to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for 350,000 Venezuelans, calling for the return of migrants to a stronger Venezuela. The Trump administration’s move to end TPS, upheld by the Supreme Court, jeopardizes the legal status of these migrants, exposing them to potential deportation.

Bolivia

Juventud Rebelde: Bolivia, on the verge of different elections The MAS split has deepened in recent months: Evo Morales, a popular leader and undisputed symbol following the unprecedented electoral victory of a leftist and indigenous movement in 2005, has been barred by the Constitutional Court from seeking reelection, which he and his followers in Chapare reject. President Luis Arce recently resigned from his long-awaited candidacy in favor of unity and to block the right. Meanwhile, with the same declared unitary purpose, the figure of the young senator and former coca grower leader Andrónico Rodríguez, another MAS cadre, has emerged. He announced his intention to register as a representative of the Third System Movement and without resigning from the MAS.

Courageous University Graduation Speeches on Palestine

STANDING OVATION!!! | Cecilia Culver, The George Washington University 2025 Commencement Speech

Logan Rozos NYU commencement speech condemning Gaza Genocide The university then withheld his diploma.

NOTE: NYU FJP is gathering letters of support: nyuf4jp@proton.me
President is at linda.mills@nyu.edu
Board chair is Evan Chesler at erc2038@nyu.edu
Provost Gigi Dopico at gdb3@nyu.edu

Open for signature | Unified Call to Confront Famine in Gaza: Launch the Diplomatic Humanitarian Convoy Now Over 700 organizations have signed on. “We are witnessing, in real time, the deliberate starvation of a civilian population as a method of warfare. Over two million Palestinians in Gaza are living in famine. Since 2 March 2025, Israel has blocked all humanitarian supplies and life-saving assistance – constituting the longest total siege Gaza has ever experienced.”

Nicaragua

Nicaragua Solidarity Coalition listing of  their educational webinars on Nicaragua  Watch these webinars on their YouTube website. The most recent: Nicaraguan programs of maternal & child health: A cross-national comparison.

Events

Delegations to Cuba, Nicaragua:

Cuba

Nicaragua 

Casa Ben Linder Email casabenjaminlinder@gmail.com to apply:

  • July 2025: Solidarity in Action: Nicaragua’s Popular Revolution
  • November 2025: Salud & Solidaridad: Hands-On Healthcare in Nicaragua

This is also available at ChicagoALBASolidarity.org. If you have events to publicize, send them to venezuelaweekly@afgj.org or stansfieldsmith100@gmail.com.