Featured image: The "Socialism or Barbarism" march in Rome, Italy, marking the 81st anniversary of the defeat of Nazi fascism, held in opposition to war, rearmament, and aggression against countries such as Palestine and Cuba and to reaffirm the perspective of socialism. Photo: Marco Di Gianvito/Zuma Press/Europa Press.
By Bruno Sgarzini – May 21, 2026
By equating Cuba and Venezuela with Trumpism, this supposedly “left-wing” sector leaves “political change” in the hands of a foreign power.
Latin American processes often generate unlikely alchemies—for example, the convergence of criticism from the far right and supposedly well-intentioned sectors of the left. For both camps, Venezuela and Cuba were long synonymous with bloody dictatorships—regimes that condemned their societies to hardship, symptomatic of “aging and backward” socialist models.
For those “leftists” that draw their inspiration from legacy journalism and academic journals funded with European money, there is a similarity—as two evils sprung from the same seed—between the “dictatorships” of Cuba and Venezuela and the Trumpism prevailing in the United States [which they also frequently characterize as a dictatorship].
That is why, when a leader, intellectual, or activist travels to Cuba to shine a light on the blockade against the island, they are accused of exploiting Cubans and going on all-expenses-paid left-wing safaris. For these alleged leftists, it is considered more virtuous to write a critique on social media or publish an article than to bring food to Cuba and organize collective actions of repudiation against the permanent aggression against the island and its citizens.
For the far right, the matter is simpler: Trump is one of the good guys, while Chavistas, and Castroists are the bad guys. End of story.
The great problem with either of these forms of logic is that in real terms, it ends up on the side of the oppressor—by action or omission. “Political change” becomes dependent on foreign action as a catalyst—on US military aggression led by Trump.
In practical terms, it hands over the power of that “decision”—which the left attributes to the desires of Cuban and Venezuelan societies—to an imperialism of plunder that, in cases like Venezuela’s, once the aggression is carried out, operates as a business conglomerate dividing up the spoils based on political favors and lobbying.
This “void” from which that critique operates promotes inaction and demobilization—again, by action or omission—and it is sustained, above all, by the lack of any political project of their own among these “leftists.”
The failure to propose an alternate model is reflected in the lack of figures with “political success” by their own parameters. Is it Gabriel Boric in Chile? Or Yolanda Díaz of Sumar in Spain? Mamdani in New York, who bears little resemblance to this sector’s official discourse? We cannot say for certain because this sector prefers to ride the wave of critical indignation rather than build political projects.
The fundamental problem of these “leftists”—without dismissing the validity of some of their arguments—is the construction of a political narrative that minimizes the cycle of US aggression against the sovereign countries of Latin America.
It is not a question of whether a Latin American government is more or less sympathetic; the problem is that the construction of an interventionist justification begins with Cuba and Venezuela and continues into Colombia and Mexico.
There is no lesser evil that frees this sector from the raw geopolitical trajectory of the White House: swift and decisive military victories in Latin America through bombings and threats.
It is of little use to aspire to a medal for the best political critique if the countries that these “leftists” claims to defend end up destroyed and their citizens’ rights become subordinated to a foreign power’s business conglomerate.
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
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Cameron Baillie is an award-winning journalist, editor, and researcher. He won and was shortlisted for awards across Britain and Ireland. He is Editor-in-Chief of New Sociological Perspectives graduate journal and Commissioning Editor at The Student Intifada newsletter. He spent the first half of 2025 living, working, and writing in Ecuador. He does news translation and proofreading work with The Orinoco Tribune.
