Maduro proposes to ALBA to create a “united resistance” amid tension with the U.S.

Caracas.- Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro proposed this Sunday to the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) to create a “united, popular, prolonged resistance”, amid the military deployment that the United States maintains in the Caribbean under the argument of combating drug trafficking and that Caracas denounces as a “threat” that seeks to bring about a change of government. “Let’s combine the united, popular, prolonged resistance of the ALBA peoples with the permanent offensive of building solid foundations in a joint, common, cooperative, mutually beneficial economy,” the president pointed out at the XXV ALBA Summit, on the occasion of the 21st anniversary of its founding, broadcast by the state channel Venezolana de Televisión (VTV). Maduro indicated that it has been 25 weeks of “aggression, psychological terrorism, military threat” from the United States near Venezuelan waters, with which, he said, the vision of the national defense system has been adjusted, taken from the ancestors, both indigenous and Simón Bolívar and other heroes of independence. He also denounced the seizure of an oil tanker by the United States, near the waters of Venezuela, as a “pirate assault and kidnapping,” which, in his opinion, represents the “total breakdown of legal and diplomatic paths of coexistence” in the region.

Maduro claims there is a “colonization project”

The Venezuelan president said that 21 years after the founding of ALBA, “a new colonizing project is intended, no longer just against America,” but, he affirmed, “against the whole world.” «We know it, but here in Latin America and the Caribbean, the colonizing project will not pass, we will be free, entire peoples will be free and with the experience we have and the love that moves us we will go step by step, uniting more and more in action, concrete results, the capacities of our countries», he pointed out. The United States Government, which does not recognize the legitimacy of Maduro in Venezuela and accuses him of leading the Cartel de los Soles – a supposed group linked to drug trafficking – has deployed a military presence in the region since mid-year with the argument of combating drug trafficking, but which the Chavista leader interprets as an attempt to remove him from power. For its part, Venezuela has been in permanent military mobilization throughout its territory for months in response to what it denounces as a “threat” of invasion by the U.S., in reference to the air-naval deployment, which is the largest in the history of the North American country since the first Gulf War (1990-1991), according to a study by experts from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).