Over 400 researchers and scholars from around the world signed a statement condemning the Jan. 3 US attacks and demanding reparations for Venezuela
We, the undersigned scholars, students, and academic workers, unequivocally condemn the Trump administration’s January 3 strikes against Venezuela and kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores. The attacks are a flagrant violation of the United Nations Charter by a US president claiming, “I don’t need international law.”
The unilateral act of aggression is the culmination of a quarter-century of US hybrid warfare targeting the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, first under President Hugo Chávez and subsequently under Maduro. This regime change campaign has included draconian economic sanctions, repeated coup attempts, financing of anti-government NGOs, and corporate media disinformation.
As the Trump administration has evidenced in its invocation of the Monroe Doctrine and brazen threats against other left-led countries in the region, the egregious onslaught on Venezuela’s sovereignty constitutes an unprecedented kinetic escalation of Washington’s crusade to shore up its declining imperial hegemony across the hemisphere and around the globe. It moreover poses a serious menace to the regime of political sovereignty that was the lasting achievement of the Bandung era of national liberation, threatening to generalize across Latin America and the Caribbean the state dismemberment and semi-colonization visited upon Iraq, Haiti, DRC, Libya, Sudan, and Syria over the past three decades. Together with the ongoing genocide in Palestine, these wars of encroachment waged by the West represent an existential danger to humanity.
As such, we the undersigned demand the following:
The immediate release and repatriation of President Nicolas Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores.
The immediate and unconditional lifting of all US unilateral coercive measures against the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, its officials, and associated entities; the return of all pilfered Venezuelan state assets, including CITGO.
The immediate withdrawal of all US military assets and bases from the region, as consistent with the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States’ (CELAC) 2014 declaration of the Americas a “zone of peace.”
The payment of reparations to Venezuela for the destruction inflicted in the January 3 strikes as well as for the economic losses caused by US sanctions over the last decade; the UN General Assembly should appoint an independent commission of economists to calculate the total dollar amount owed to the Venezuelan state.
The end of the US blockade against Cuba and payment of reparations likewise to be assessed by an independent UNGA-appointed commission.
As of January 16, 420 researchers and scholars have signed the statement.
Partial list of signatories (click here for the statement and full list in pdf form)
Atilio A. Boron, Universidad Nacional de Avellaneda y Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA)
Sandra Oblitas, Rectora de la Universidad Bolivariana de Venezuela (UBV)
Miguel Mazzeo, Universidad Nacional de Lanús y UBA
Mariela Castro Espín, Miembro Titular de la Academia de Ciencias de Cuba
Steve Ellner, Latin American Perspectives
Omar Hurtado Rayugsen, Presidente del Centro Nacional de Estudios Históricos, Venezuela
Elias Jaua Milano, Centros de Estudios para la Democracia Socialista (CEDES)
Ramon Grosfoguel, Associate Professor of Chicanx Latinx Studies, University of California, Berkeley
Alejandrina Reyes, Rectora Universidad Nacional Experimental Simón Rodríguez / Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales Simón Rodríguez IISSR Centro CLACSO
Archana Prasad, Jawaharlal Nehru University, India
Juan Eduardo Romero, Historiador/Diputado Asamblea Nacional de Venezuela
Claudio Katz, UBA/CONICET
Fernando Buen Abad Domínguez, Universidad Internacional de las Comunicaciones/ Cátedra MacBride
Néstor Kohan, Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA)
Paris Yeros, Federal University of ABC (UFABC), Brazil
Carlota McAllister, York University
David Kazanjian, University of Pennsylvania
Max Ajl, University of Tunis & University of Ghent
Lucas M. Koerner, Harvard University
Reinaldo Iturriza López, Centros de Estudios para la Democracia Socialista (CEDES)
Freedom Mazwi, University of Zambia
Esther Lezra, University of California Santa Barbara
Sarah Raymundo, University of the Philippines
Francisca López Civeira, Universidad de la Habana
Anna Zalik, York University
Matteo Capasso, Northwest University, China
Josefina Saldaña-Portillo, New York University
Ilka Boaventura Leite, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina
Nazia Kazi, Stockton, Stockton University
Javier Sánchez, Universidad de Antioquia
Bikrum Gill, Virginia Tech
Javier I. Echaide, University of Buenos Aires (UBA) / CONICET, Argentina
Corinna Mullin, City University of New York
Iván Pincheira, Universidad Academia Humanismo Cristiano, Chile
Nina Farnia, Albany Law School
Martha Prieto Valdés, Académica de Mérito de la ACC-Cuba
Esteve Morera, York University
Farwa Sial, SOAS
Mojubaolu Olufunke Okome, Brooklyn College, CUNY
Gabriel Rockhill, Villanova University
Patrick Higgins, University of Houston
Luccas Gissoni, Universidade Federal do ABC
Edh Rodríguez, ANEP/CFE (Uruguay)
Hilda Saladrigas Medina, Universidad de La Habana-ACC
Jennifer Ponce de León, University of Pennsylvania
Olmedo Beluche, Universidad de Panamá
Maria Haro Sly, Johns Hopkins University
Nidia Matilde Beltrán Prieto, Directora y docente UBV
Pedro Lovera Parmo, Universidad de Santiago
Immanuel Ness, Brooklyn College
Sara Aldabe, UBA-CONICET
José Romero Losacco, Instituto Venezolano de Investigación Científica (IVIC)
Rosa Elizabeth Acevedo Marin, Universidade Federal do Pará, Brasil
Ernesto Wong Maestre, CEEP UBV
Ethel Tungohan, York University
Adam Miyashiro, Stockton University
José Antonio Hernández Macías, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM)
Vicente Battista, Escritor/Argentina
Jaime Caicedo Turriago, ASPU Asociación Sindical de Profesores Universitarios, Colombia
Renate Bridenthal, Brooklyn College, CUNY
Maribel Almaguer Rondón, Universidad de Camagüey, Cuba
Maria Auxiliadora César, Universidade de Brasilia
Claudia Chaufan, York University
Arturo Guillén, Departamento de Economía de la UAM Iztapalapa
Raul Kroeff Machado Carrion, Fundação Maurício Grabois – Brasil
Olga Fernández Rios, Instituto de Filosofía y Vicepresidenta Academia de Ciencias de Cuba
Paula Vidal, Universidad de Chile
Stefan Kipfer, York University
Alberto Quintero, IVIC
Sandra Angeleri, Independent Scholar
Douglas Marín, Universidad Central de Venezuela
Ben Norton, Tsinghua University
Christo El Morr, York University
Cory Fischer-Hoffman, Independent Scholar
Taylor R. Genovese, SUNY – Dutchess
Ranu Basu, York University
Disamis Arcia Muñoz, Universidad de La Habana
Magnus S. Kjærgaard, Aarhus University, DK
Jordan Corson, Stockton University
Adrienne Pine, UC Riverside
Jesús Peña, UNEARTE
Ana Sáenz, Centro Marie Langer
Greg Albo, York University
Mayda Álvarez Suárez, Academia de Ciencias de Cuba
Alejandro Pedregal, Aalto University
Jeannette Graulau, Lehman College
Marcelo Colussi, Escritor / Guatemala
Timothy Kerswell, Development Watch Centre
Jaime Acosta Gonzalez, UC Riverside
Christian Flores, UNEARTE
Maria Luiza Pinho Pereira, Universidade de Brasília
Marxlenin P. Valdés, IDEAS Multimedios
Adrian Ortega Camara Lind, Beijing Normal University