Reflect. Think about yourself, about those around you, and you will reach the same conclusion as I have. Since the signing of the disastrous economic adjustment package with the International Monetary Fund in February 1989, Venezuela has never experienced such a unanimous feeling of bewilderment, contained anger, and repulsion at others deciding for us.
In October 2025, a Hinterlaces survey had 83% of respondents state that they would be willing to confront a foreign military invasion. The attack came [on January 3], we were denied the possibility of resistance, and now we face an invisible invasion. An insolent foreign presence that barely appears on screen, but tramples us, crushing the executive, legislative, judicial, and moral attributes of sovereignty one after the other, stealing over $13 billion worth of oil from us in just half a year, resources that no one knows where they have gone, and remodeling our country so that the plundering can continue indefinitely.
Along with the looting, a shroud of opacity has fallen over Venezuela, relegating everything that matters to mystery, except for occasional voices that infiltrate informal media. María Alejandra Díaz Marín warns us from Colombia about the attempt to remove all constitutional limits that hinder the looting. Mario Silva contrasts what politicians used to say and what they say now. Ramsés Reyes confesses that he “spits blood.” José Sant Roz proclaims in Ensartaos: “I tremble with indignation when I hear people say ‘Iran is not Venezuela,’ ‘Cuba is not Venezuela.’”
Comparisons are odious, but more odious is avoiding them to escape self-criticism.
For my part, I preach that anger is a more valuable natural resource than the oil and gold that the US is plundering from us, because anger is infinitely renewable and more fruitful than resignation. I admire all the countries that have shaken off the yokes of empires. I appreciate those who reproach us for apparently having stopped doing the same. I do not even invoke the sacred wrath of the [1813] Decree of War to the Death, which liberated what are now six countries. The assertion that Venezuela is not like this or that country reiterates that freedom and sovereignty do not fall from the sky nor are automatically defended. They are conquered through the extreme pedagogy of the unbearable.
Venezuela is not Iran. Nothing could be truer. Since 1941, Iran had been living under the dictatorship of Shah Reza Pahlavi. The nationalist Majlis movement succeeded in having Mohammed Mossadegh appointed as prime minister in 1951, and he nationalized the oil industry. The hegemonic countries blockaded the Iranian state from selling oil. In 1953, the CIA and MI6 incited street demonstrations, a military coup ousted Mossadegh, and Shah Reza Pahlavi was installed as a dictator, handing over oil to Europeans and yankees and presiding over a repressive autocracy. Only in 1979, after an endless 37 years of fierce monarchical dictatorship and the continuous theft of oil by foreign powers, did waves of Iranians depose the puppet and confirm that autonomy is not gifted: it is defended. They took their affirmation of cultural identity to the extreme. They faced the selective assassination of their scientists and leaders until they became impregnable. They won wars against neighboring Iraq, instigated and armed by the United States, and now against the US Empire itself. They divided their defensive system into “mosaics” capable of continuing to resist when others would have fallen. We are not like the admirable Iranians. But they teach us a rough path to become like them.
We are not like the Cubans. When José Martí arrived in Caracas in 1881 and first visited the statue of Simón Bolívar, it had already been 57 years since we had gained independence and formed what are now six countries. The Liberator included in the Panama Congress of 1826 the goal of the emancipation of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Hispaniola, and planned to achieve it with an expedition that domestic secessionism thwarted. The Apostle [Martí] and Cuba still had to endure a bitter lesson. For Martí, death in his first battle. For his homeland, the humiliation of an independence interfered with by the US invasion of 1898, and a sovereignty tarnished by the Platt Amendment. And still remaining was the bitter record of 60 years of dictatorships and corruption covered up by the United States, until Commander Fidel Castro arrived and put a stop to it. Martí never felt humiliated because in his time Cuba was not like Venezuela. He sacrificed his fragile existence in the Promethean attempt to overcome it, and his legacy pierces our conscience like red-hot iron.
China is not like Venezuela. Starting from 1848, it was attacked by England amid the Opium Wars. Through the Infamous Treaties, Western powers filled it with military bases and puppet governments. Starting in 1931, the Japanese invaded Manchuria; the rest of the world threatened, blockaded, or ignored China. Only after a bitter century of humiliations could the country, in 1948, resume the arduous path that led it to becoming the world’s leading power.
No, Venezuela is not Algeria, or Vietnam, or Korea, or Afghanistan, or India, or Pakistan, or Somalia, or Yemen. Venezuela preceded them. In 1810, we had a foolish homeland that had to learn to stand on its feet, and in 1825 it taught the world lessons. Today we must understand, along with so many admirable nations, that there is no independence greater than that which is conquered, nor sovereignty greater than that which is defended.
Once again, the current metropolis [the US] is losing its hegemony. Its bases are demolished, its mercenaries put to flight. Its Congress denies funds for its reckless aggressions, its energy sources slip away, its fraudulent unbacked currency vanishes, emerging powers surpass it in economy, social advantages, science, culture, and defense. The path diverges between the road to extinction and that of Utopia.
What Venezuela needs to relearn is to be like Venezuela.
Translated by Orinoco Tribune. Minor edits by Venezuelanalysis.
Source: Luis Britto García blog
The post Venezuela Is Not Iran appeared first on Venezuelanalysis.
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