While the closure of democratic spaces and repression continues to restrict popular participation, the country’s fate remains in the hands of irresponsible individuals amid the crisis.
A gringo thug has brought war and death back to the region, murdering people in the Caribbean with no regard for legality, justice, or human dignity, simply to demonstrate that Latin America belongs to him and that he can do whatever he wants here.
Meanwhile, a Nobel Peace Prize winner begs for her country to be bombed, offering more neoliberalism and promises to sell off public resources to maintain her alliance with the US. And an illegitimate president calls for unity amid the aggression while starving his people and continuing to persecute, imprison, torture, and dismantle democracy. Neither of them guarantees a way out of the crisis. Neither of them cares about the country or democracy.
Trump’s only concern is seizing our wealth, deporting migrants, and restoring US dominance in Latin America. María Corina Machado and Nicolás Maduro are willing to auction off the country and sacrifice the people to gain or maintain power.
We welcome any negotiation that helps preserve Venezuelan lives and peace. This is always better than war. Great collective efforts must be made to ensure a return to politics and to eradicate violence.
But we know that the interests of those involved in negotiations do not reflect those of the people. Therefore, we demand that any negotiations must not take place behind people’s backs. The nation’s fate must not be negotiated in secret, in the manner that mafias often do.
Moreover, not everything is acceptable. War is not acceptable. Surrendering sovereignty or negotiating power in exchange for mortgaging the country’s resources, which represents the wealth of this and future generations, is not acceptable. Foreign military bases on our territory is not acceptable.
It is unacceptable to maintain power without respecting democracy and popular sovereignty. It is unacceptable to continue trampling on the Constitution and human rights. It is unacceptable to offer starvation wages and continue using repression. There are red lines that must not be ignored in any negotiation. The rights of the people, the nation, democracy, and the Constitution are non-negotiable.
Solutions that ignore the people are no solutions at all. They are merely agreements between elites, which often disregard popular rights and conquests. Therefore, a genuine way out of the crisis requires restoring people’s protagonism and uniting social forces around a democratic, popular, constitutional, and peaceful agenda. From Comunes, we reaffirm our contribution to what we believe that agenda should look like:
- Defend the sovereignty and integrity of the nation: no to foreign military aggression, nor the handover of natural resources in exchange for maintaining or taking power; no to foreign military bases in our territory and no to the continuation of unilateral sanctions that violate social rights.
- Return to the Constitution: abandon the de facto state of exception under which the country is governed and withdraw any attempt to reform the text that today maintains the broadest level of support in the country.
- Freedom for political prisoners and those persecuted for their political positions: stop the repression and enact an Amnesty Law that guarantees full freedom.
- Restoration of wages and improvement of people’s living conditions: increase the population’s income through a general rise in wages and salaries.
- Repeat elections with a legitimate National Electoral Council (CNE) and fair electoral conditions: the collusion of public authorities against popular sovereignty that occurred on July 28, 2024, remains an open wound. It is clear that the state will never release the tally sheets from every voting centre, unless pressured to by an unlikely act of force. The alternative to violence is negotiations for credible presidential elections within the framework of the Constitution, returning electoral registration to intervened parties, an end to persecution, and full democratic guarantees for candidates and voters.
Caracas, November 27, 2025.
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