We have landed in Caracas. Here is why.

Today, the Venezuelan people are mobilizing in the streets to demand their release and to reaffirm their determination to defend the Bolivarian Revolution from foreign assault and intervention.

To commemorate this episode alongside the Venezuelan people, learn about the Bolivarian Revolution, and witness the effects of the long-standing hybrid war against it, the Progressive International has landed in Caracas with a Peace Brigade.

The Brigade brings together leaders and organisers from movements across Africa, South Asia, Latin America, Europe, and North America. Over the course of nine days, the Brigade will visit sites of US bombings, meet with community leaders, study the impacts of US sanctions, and visit three Venezuelan communes — key pillars of the Bolivarian Revolution.

The Bolivarian Revolution arrived at a moment when history had been declared over and the ideological confrontation between capitalism and socialism was seen as settled.

Instead, the Venezuelan people showed the world that the project of liberation remained both alive and urgent. In the nearly-three decades that followed Hugo Chavez’s electoral victory, the Bolivarian Revolution would achieve historic advances in poverty reduction, equality, health, literacy, housing, and food sovereignty.

For seeking to articulate a sovereign politics in a region beholden to Washington’s Monroe Doctrine, Venezuela would be severely punished. It has endured more than a decade of economic warfare through unilateral coercive measures imposed by the US and its allies — measures condemned by the United Nations as illegal and immoral, yet which continue to strangle the country's economy and deprive its people of essential goods.

That assault has only escalated in recent months, with attacks on fishing vessels, a naval blockade, an attack on the state’s leadership itself, and a campaign of blackmail and coercion that continues unabated.

It is in this context of revolutionary construction under siege that the Peace Brigade arrives with a message of internationalist solidarity. What is happening in Venezuela is not an isolated episode. From Palestine to Cuba to Iran, there is a brazen attempt to roll back the gains of the struggles against colonialism and restore the rule of Euro-Atlantic imperialism on a planetary scale. To defeat this process, we work to build solidarities with those struggling on the frontlines.