Diosdado Cabello addresses a Venezuelan crowd, demanding an end to US sanctions. Photo: VTV.com.ve.
On Monday, after condemning those who, from abroad, have incited workers of Venezuela to protest, the secretary general of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), Diosdado Cabello, called on the working class and the Venezuelan people in general not to fall into provocations and to trust in the capacities and work of the acting president Delcy Rodríguez.
“Venezuela has been subjected to the most perverse economic sanctions by the government of the United States, the European Union, and others who have believed they can sanction our country,” said Cabello. “However, those sanctions have had an effect on the homeland. Those who today go around, the widows and widowers of the Fourth Republic, speaking in the name of the workers, were the same ones who sold off workers’ social benefits. And they are there in the comfort of living abroad, calling to subvert order here in Venezuela.” Cabello spoke from Plaza Caracas, where he addressed, in downtown Caracas, a massive popular mobilization in support of the Bolivarian revolution and Venezuela’s socialist path.
He emphasized, before a sea of people, that “the working class is with the Bolivarian Revolution. They know it; so from outside, those who betrayed the working class come and send them, they send them to sacrifice once again. We invite them to come with us. Let’s demand that the sanctions against Venezuela cease, all united, and you will immediately see the results, not only in wages, but in the quality of life of Venezuelan men and women.”
Cabello’s message comes on the same day that right-wing sectors called for a mobilization to demand wage improvements. The activity of that sector is promoted by the National Trade Union Coalition. The route that the opposition planned to follow went from Parque Carabobo to Plaza Caracas.
The leader of the revolutionary socialist party, Diosdado Cabello specified that “some fall into the trap of those who want to deceive because they are the same ones who have always negotiated to leave workers out.”
In that context, he recalled that when on April 30, 2012, President Hugo Chávez enacted the Organic Labor Law of Workers (LOTTT), he settled a historic debt left by Fedecámaras, the CTV, and the governments of the Fourth Republic.
Later, Cabello stated: “Let us not fall into provocations of any kind; let us move forward; let us accompany our sister Delcy (Rodríguez), let us fully trust in the capacity, the work, and the consciousness of our comrade Delcy and the high political command that is with her.”
He added: “When Chavismo marches, it marches in peace, in calm. It is fundamental for the future to maintain revolutionary unity, of the parties of the Great Patriotic Pole, of the Bolivarian National Armed Force, and of the working class, of the men and women who do not rest day and night in any corner of the homeland. Let us maintain the unity of social movements.”
Cabello warned that the main task of the right wing today “is to try to divide us because they know that if they go to an election, we will win whatever elections come. They know that if they go to the streets, we will be in the streets. In any scenario, we must remain united like a rock.”
In response to these words, the public chanted the slogan: “They will not return.”
Lifting sanctions is key to promoting social well-being
General secretary Cabello made it clear that “the struggles of the working class are the struggles of the Bolivarian Revolution. That is why we are in the streets… because we know and are very clear that once the sanctions against our country cease, this country will be in the same conditions as when Commander Hugo Chávez was here.”
In that context, he highlighted that they will continue promoting and strengthening housing construction, “a powerful health system, as we must have,” as well as that the nation will again have “the highest wage system in America. We will return to an education with everything.”
He recalled that what Venezuela has had to endure has been very difficult as a result of the blockade. In that sense, he provided as an example the events that transpired during the COVID-19 pandemic, when Venezuela could not initially import vaccines. Eventually, the Constitutional president, Nicolás Maduro, was able to facilitate the import of vaccines.
When mentioning both the Constitutional president and his wife, deputy to the National Assembly (AN), Cilia Flores, who since January 3 have been imprisoned in the United States after their abduction by US troops, Cabello sent the presidential couple a message of solidarity and revolutionary greeting.
“We know that sooner rather than later we will have them with us, in their same struggles, in the struggles for workers and for the humble people,” he stated while the crowd chanted in unison: “Solidarity and revolutionary greeting.”
After this greeting, Cabello resumed his speech: “We march together with the people demanding the end of sanctions.” In response, the people chanted: “The people, enraged, demand their rights!”
The main struggle is to move the country forward
In his speech, Cabello asserted that the Venezuelan people have many struggles ahead, and one of the main ones is to move the country forward—to continue demonstrating that despite everything that imperialism and right-wing sectors have done, Venezuela remains standing.
Cabello noted that the nation has risen thanks to the efforts of Venezuelan workers, of students, peasants, fishermen, PDVSA workers, those in the electricity sector, teachers, professors, nurses, doctors—“who have set aside any personal situation to promote the future of the homeland and to provide our children a free, sovereign, and independent country.”
“Nothing will take us off our path; even if the march is slow, it is still a march,” he emphasized.
Cabello recalled that the infamous decree issued by former US President Barack Obama in March 2015, in which Obama alleged that Venezuela was an “unusual and extraordinary threat,” caused enormous harm to the people. That action by the US led to the more than 1,140 sanctions that have been imposed against Venezuela since.
Cabello recalled that despite the sanctions, “this people has resisted with heroism, with dignity, courage, and consciousness, and the people know that the path is the path of the Bolivarian Revolution; there is no other path.”
Unity above all
Finally, Cabello reiterated the importance of the Venezuelan people remaining united, as the Liberator Simón Bolívar and the leader of the Bolivarian Revolution, Hugo Chávez, both emphasized.
In that sense, he recalled the call of “unity, struggle, battle, and victory” issued by President Chávez on December 8, 2012.
“He told us: unity, struggle, battle, and victory,” said Cabello. “Victories sometimes take time to arrive, but they always arrive for those who work for them with tenacity, with constancy, with clarity of purpose. Let us remain united and we will have victory assured.”
“Remember, brothers and sisters, that whatever happens—and I say this with full awareness—whatever happens, and under any circumstance, we will prevail; this people will always prevail,” he concluded.
The blockade against Venezuela continues
On February 18, the US regime extended for an additional year the sanctions imposed on March 8, 2015, by then-president Barack Obama, through Executive Order 13692, which declared Venezuela a supposed “unusual and extraordinary threat.”
Since 2015, both Obama and the presidents who followed him—Donald Trump in his first (2017–2021) and second term (2025–), as well as Joe Biden (2021–2025)—have imposed more than a thousand sanctions.
On four occasions over the past two months, the acting president Delcy Rodríguez has requested that the Trump regime lift the blockade against Venezuela. The most recent call for sanctions relief was issued on Saturday, March 14, when she rejected a proposal by the president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, regarding zero tariffs in all bilateral trade, due to the inequality that, she explained, is generated by US sanctions against Venezuela.
After explaining to President Petro why the zero-tariff initiative could not proceed, the acting president once again asked the occupant of the White House, Donald Trump, to completely lift the blockade that nation maintains against Venezuela.
“President Trump, it is the feeling of a people, but it is also the way in which Latin America, to which you have referred, can move forward together with balanced growth, where Venezuela also contributes to regional growth,” stated Delcy Rodríguez. “From here, Venezuela, in national unity, calls for the lifting of sanctions, for the blockade to cease, and for relations of cooperation, friendship, joint work, and shared work to prevail, in relations of equality and respect.”
With this appeal, it is the fourth time that the acting president has urged Trump, since late February, to lift sanctions against Venezuela. On February 26, 2026, 48 hours after Donald Trump referred to Venezuela as a “new partner and friend,” acting president Delcy Rodríguez addressed a message to the US president requesting that he end the blockade and sanctions against the nation. That was the first call.
A day later, on February 27, the acting president of Venezuela, Delcy Rodríguez, again demanded an end to the economic blockade imposed by the US, noting that it has significantly affected the local economy due to restrictions on the hydrocarbon sector.
On March 2, Rodríguez once again requested that the US president lift the blockade and the illegal unilateral coercive measures (euphemistically referred to as “sanctions”) that the US maintains against Venezuela.
“We have told President Trump, who considers us his ‘friends,’ his ‘partners’—we have told him that we welcome and acknowledge that consideration, but … the blockade against Venezuela must end now, the sanctions against Venezuela must be lifted; the Venezuelan people deserve it,” she emphasized during a meeting on Monday, March 2, at the Félix Lalito Velásquez Sports Complex in Sucre.
Delcy Rodríguez was sworn in by the National Assembly as acting president on January 5 in accordance with the decision issued two days earlier by the Supreme Tribunal of Justice, which appointed her to fulfill that responsibility following the criminal abduction of the Constitutional head of state, Nicolás Maduro.
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(Diario VEA) by Yuleidys Hernández Toledo
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.
