Above photo: Robert Longa surrounded by children and other members of El Panal Commune (Caracas, Venezuela). Resumen Latinoamericano.
To discuss the post-kidnapping situation in Venezuela with a seasoned Chavista fighter and a leader of the grassroots Commune movement, Carlos Aznárez, editor of Resumen Latinoamericano, interviewed Robert Longa, a leader of the Alexis Vive Patriotic Force and El Panal Commune, located in the 23 de Enero Parish of Caracas. Workers World publishes excerpts from Longa’s comments.
Translated and edited by John Catalinotto from the original full article at resumenlatinoamericano.org, Jan. 13, 2026.
Robert Longa: There are indeed psycho-emotional injuries among our people. We are now experiencing a glimpse of what the peoples of the Middle East are going through. We said that if this was something that shocked and traumatized us, I can imagine what the children are going through, what the peoples of the Middle East are going through when their buildings are being destroyed.
If our people now hear the noise of a motorcycle and our children are frightened, I don’t want to imagine how traumatic it is for the Palestinian people, the Lebanese people and all these peoples who have been victims of imperialism. As Ernesto Che Guevara said, imperialism is the great enemy of humankind.
What we have experienced firsthand has shocked and surprised us, but it was, as Gabriel García Márquez would say, a chronicle of a death foretold. They had told us it would happen. They have created a mess to cause an explosion, seeking to create a civil war in the people of Venezuela so that they and some “saviors” could then intervene.
Carlos Aznárez: But they encountered the resistance of an entire people …
Longa: I have to tell you that, in the midst of all this pain … in the midst of the escalating warmongering that the people of Venezuela, as our working-class president Nicolás Maduro said, remain firm and disciplined. There has been no looting here, there has been no outbreak of popular violence. Here there is cohesion with the political-military leadership of our Revolution, and that is not going to change.
Wage all the cognitive warfare you want, wage all the communication warfare you want, because we stand firm with the Bolivarian Revolution, firm with the leadership of Acting President Delcy Rodríguez and our captain Diosdado Cabello. [Instead], we are becoming more radical in the process of the Bolivarian Revolution. The only transition that will take place here is the transition to the communal state and the consolidation of 21st-century socialism.
This is not a war of the Venezuelan people; this is a war of the popular movement of the world and mainly of the popular movement of the Patria Grande. It is time for the popular movement to begin to build its own face and fill the world with hope. The dignity and solemnity of our president give us the confidence that we are on the right path.
And that solemnity of our President and First Lady, comrade-in-arms Cilia Flores, gives us motivation. If the President is resisting within the clutches and jaws of the empire, as José Martí would say, we who are here have no other option but to resist and prepare the resistance with intelligence: more production, more popular mobilization.
The empire is afraid of the people in the streets. Here we are not preparing for adventurism. Here the dialectical analysis is “we are not in a Leninist phase,” because we are still the government; we are not going to seize power. We are in an organic, Gramscian construction, with conscious leadership cadres who are in tune with popular sentiment.
As the Vietnamese general Von Nguyen Giap would say: class consciousness and patriotic hearts in tune with the Bolivarian Revolution. In this process of radicalization, we cannot fall into political infantilism, but rather we must maintain the entire design and political program that our president had already outlined in this 2026 offensive: of course, guaranteeing life and liberty, a battle that the president is already winning in the very jaws of the Empire with public opinion, its judges, and its justice system.
It pains them that in Venezuela, at this time, we have fought a multifaceted war and emerged victorious; that our communes are already producing; and we are in a process of radicalization and industrialization of the commune under a class-based conception.
Aznárez: The interesting thing is that from day one, the people have been on the streets, holding countless marches.
Longa: Without a doubt. Our President has been consistent with all his speeches of nerves of steel. The dignity of our President and our First Combatant Cilia has demonstrated the mettle of which we are made and has boosted the morale of the Venezuelan people. We are still here, mobilizing with our people, because we must fight with great intelligence to have our President back soon and continue organizing the popular offensive.
The empire boasts of its political narcissism, its arrogance, its neo-fascist logic in saying that they control everything, but they are only fooling themselves. Because they know that if they go to direct and total war against Venezuela, the continent will rise up in insurrection. Because we have full confidence in the revolutionary political sentiment of the peoples of the Patria Grande, who will undoubtedly come with brigades to fight, and we will set the Amazon on fire.
We are sure that solidarity, public opinion, our brothers and sisters around the world, our Latin American brothers and sisters will be present, as Fidel Castro says, to raise an empire of public opinion and popular mobilization. The resistance will not come from Caracas alone but from the Rio Grande to Patagonia.
