October 29th, 2020
Fellow Africans of Brazil, Colombia and Guyana,
We, the undersigned representatives of Pan-African formations and progressive organizations based in South America and the Caribbean region, call on the descendants of captured Africans in Brazil, Colombia and Guyana, to refuse to be used by the regimes in our respective countries against our brothers and sisters in Venezuela.
The neo-colonial regimes in Brazil, Colombia and Guyana are covertly and overtly facilitating the US Empire’s encirclement of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. The US objective is clear – to effect regime change.
Many of our brothers and sisters in Brazil, Colombia and Guyana are unaware of the tremendous achievements made by the Bolivarian Revolution. This revolution has enabled First Peoples, including Africans, to move themselves from the margins to the centre of Venezuelan society. For the first time in Venezuela’s history, African Venezuelans are now well placed in the higher echelons of the armed forces, government agencies and the diplomatic service.
On the other hand, in Brazil, Colombia and Guyana, Africans remain economically and socially marginalized as a result of entrenched systemic racism. According to AfricanGlobe, an African is killed every 23 minutes in Brazil, in what Lindbergh Farias of the Workers’ Party of Brazil referred to as “a true genocide against Black youth”. In Brazil and Colombia, thousands of Africans, including high-profile political and community activists, have been murdered by State-sponsored para-military death squads in recent years. Some of these illegal arms of the Brazilian and Colombian regimes are working hand-in-hand with similar counter-revolutionary and racist organizations in Venezuela to persecute and kill leaders and activists of African-Venezuelan organizations supportive of the Maduro government.
Fellow Africans, we cannot and must not allow ourselves to be used by the forces of white supremacy against our brothers and sisters in Venezuela. The Bolivarian Revolution and the Maduro Government are not our enemies. Our enemies are those who are trying to destabilize this revolution and cause death, destruction and chaos in Venezuela and the region. We must stand firm and united against their divide and ruin tactics. We are therefore calling on all descendants of captured Africans in Brazil, Colombia and Guyana to resist their respective government’s collusion with US imperialism. Let us join forces to do all that we can to stop any military or non-military activity conducted by these US satellite-states against the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, and our brothers and sisters in that sovereign and independent nation-state.
In Unity and Struggle,
1) Assembly of Caribbean People
2) Black United Front, Trinidad and Tobago
3) Caribbean Movement for Peace and Integration
4) Caribbean Network in Defense of Humanity
5) Caribbean Pan-African Network (CPAN), All Chapters
6) Caribbean Regional Coordinating Committee of the Pan African Federalist Movement (PAFM) and the following National Initiating Committees: Antigua Barbuda, Barbados, Cuba, Dominica, Guyana, Jamaica, Haiti, Trinidad & Tobago, Virgin Islands
7) Clement Payne Movement, Barbados
8) Cross Rhodes Freedom Project, Trinidad & Tobago
9) Emancipation Support Committee, Trinidad & Tobago
10) Global Afrikan Congress, All Chapters
11) Global Confederation of Indigenous People
12) Nation of Islam, Trinidad & Tobago
13) Organization for the Victory of the People (OVP), Guyana
14) Pan-African Coalition of Organizations, Barbados
15) Pan-African Federalist Movement (PAFM), South America
16) Pan African Movement, Barbados
17) Pan-African Movement, Guyana
18) Twelve Tribes of Israel (All Mansions),
19) Universal Negro Improvement Association – African Communities League (UNIA-ACL)