Hundreds march in San Jose against Trump's attacks on Venezuela, kidnapping of President Maduro
January 4 – Over 200 protesters gathered at Mexican Heritage Plaza in East San Jose on Sunday in response to the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores. The action was organized by local activist group San Jose Against War (SJAW) to demand “Hands off Venezuela!”
The protest began with chants of “No blood for oil!” and “No U.S. war!” Protesters held paper signs reading “Stop U.S. war on Venezuela!” and “Free Maduro now!” As the rain dampened the paper signs, the protesters stuck the signs to their rain jackets.
Richard Hobbs, of Human Agenda, noted an absence of historical context in mainstream journalistic practices, and described the attacks on Venezuela as “similar to the golpe de estado in Guatemala in 1954, the golpe de estado in Chile in 1973, in Brazil in 1966, and also the soft coup that just happened in Honduras.”
Hobbs shared that when he served as an election observer in Venezuela 18 months ago, he witnessed “hundreds of thousands of supporters of Maduro in the streets, not a single picture made the New York Times, the Washington Post or Le Monde.” Hobbs also noted how the opposition that raised alarms over electoral fraud provided no evidence.
John Duroyan, of Students for a Democratic Society at San Jose State University, said, “We're sick of the lies pouring out of news pundits, out of three-letter agencies, the CIA, the FBI, all their lies and propaganda!”
Duroyan continued, “Trump makes the same fatal error as his predecessors. Like Bush in Iraq, like Nixon and Johnson in Vietnam, he'll sink billions of dollars, and lives, into the destruction of a people. But the American people are having none of it!”
Jose Solorio, a teacher and lifelong resident of San Jose, stated, “It seems that the United States does all of the things that we should fear from the fictitious drug cartels who supposedly pull the strings in Venezuela.”
Solorio continued, “The United States does not care about Venezuelans. It hardly cares about its own people, as seen by the ICE raids and rampant homelessness we see in our own city of San Jose. All my Mexican siblings know that the same cartel rhetoric is peddled against our own people. We know that the real cartels are here in the United States. The U.S. has never cared about stopping drugs or helping those whose lives are ruined by the drug trade. The U.S. has only ever cared about its bottom line.”
Drusie Kazanova spoke about San Jose Against War's divestment campaign, explaining how the fight for Palestinian liberation, the fight for Venezuelan sovereignty, and the fight for liberation here in the U.S. are all connected.
Kazanova stated, “We are pushing for ethical investment. That means the city would divest all funds from war profiteers, from border militarization, from ICE, from detention centers, from private prisons, from all of the industries that we know abuse and terrorize our people here at home and around the world.”
Protesters then took to the streets, occupying a lane of traffic while chanting and marching over a mile in the rain to the intersection of Story and King.