Above photo: A protester holds up a sign that reads in French, “Security is a right, Haiti deserves it” during a demonstration in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, April 2, 2025. Odelyn Joseph / AP Photo.
“Only Unity Will Make Us Free.”
As U.S. militarism intensifies across Latin America and the Caribbean, regional social movements are making the firm declaration that only a unified, mass-driven front can build a true “Zone of Peace” and counter imperial domination.
On November 8-9, 2025, the social component of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) met in Santa Marta, Colombia, as the CELAC-EU Summit took place on November 9-10. The purpose of the CELAC-EU Summit was to enhance strategic cooperation between Latin America and the Caribbean and the European Union in a time of heightened United States militarism targeting the Bolivarian peoples of Venezuela and now Colombia.
A major theme of the summit was the unique geostrategic and historic role that Latin America and the Caribbean as a region have in the creation and strengthening of a multipolar world free of the dictates of the over 200-year-old Monroe Doctrine. As the final declaration from the CELAC Social states:
We are facing an international situation characterized by the continuity and deepening of the multidimensional and civilizational crisis of capitalism on a global scale, with the decline of US imperialism’s hegemony as a defining feature. Its counterpart in the international system is the strengthening and consolidation of a multipolar and polycentric structure, in which political, economic, military, and technological power is increasingly distributed globally. Multilateralism is the only alternative for building models of international cooperation and complementarity that pave the way for a shared future for humanity, one that strongly advocates for the political and peaceful resolution of armed conflicts and for addressing the multiple economic, social, and ecological-environmental crises generated by the capitalist system.
As part of CELAC Social, members of the Popular Steering Committee for a Zone of Peace in Our Americas (PSC) participated in the summit with a focus on calling on the grassroots organization of the masses of the peoples of Our Americas to unify our struggles against the common enemy- the US/EU/NATO Axis of Domination. According to the PSC in their press release,
We have to unite to defeat the imperialist aggression against the Bolivarian people of Venezuela, fishermen off the coast of the Caribbean and Pacific from Ecuador, Mexico, Trinidad and Tobago or Venezuela, to the struggle for Haitian self determination against a new US led occupation force under the cover of the so called international community via the UN, to the struggle against ICE community raids in the streets of NY, LA and Chicago among others.
CELAC was created in December 2011 to promote regional unity in the face of US imperial hegemony with many of the regional leaders of the time lending efforts to the formation, including Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, who was recovering from cancer surgery and who attended the inaugural summit in Caracas in 2011. “As the years go by, CELAC is going to leave behind the old and worn-out (Organization of American States) OAS,” said Chavez. “Only unity will make us free. This is the path: Unity, unity, unity!”
Fourteen years after these prescient words from the late Comandante Chavez, U.S. militarism against Venezuela has only heightened, extending throughout the Caribbean, Pacific and in fact the entire region. This aggression is not unique and is included in an all-out unabated assault on humanity by the US and its Zionist colonial outpost in West Asia, so-called Israel, as they continue the genocide of Palestine. Now, a Haitian styled UN “peacekeeping” force, yet another US-led invasion of Haiti, will be underway with the cover of what is known as the international community. The Pink Tide in the Americas has come and gone as U.S.-instigated lawfare throughout the region has defeated the more tepid social democratic governments. The more explicitly socialist governments have remained steadfast as US assaults against them have only increased.
The U.S.-created Lima Group failed in its objective of overthrowing Venezuela through lawfare and sanctions. But what soft power could not achieve is now playing out via threats of all-out war. As the crisis of capitalism and imperialism heightens, fascism is deployed where liberalism was hesitant about the same objectives – overthrowing the Bolivarian Revolution.
What does this moment teach us? In order to achieve the objectives laid out by Comandante Chávez and the vision of CELAC, only unity will make us free. As Brianna Alvarado Ramos of the Diaspora Pa’lante Collective, a member organization of the Popular Steering Committee for a Zone of Peace in Our Americas, stated in Santa Marta,
Our fight for the independence and sovereignty of Puerto Rico and Haiti recognizes that the US military will not peacefully relinquish its dominance and hegemony over our region, as our occupation allows them to launch further attacks in the region, as we’re seeing now with the attacks in the Caribbean. This requires us to build a mass movement across the region based on anti-imperialist popular education. We must form serious strategies to combat the militarization in our region, prioritizing the independence of colonies and facilitating popular education about the dangers of the US military in our region. We must build a united front in Nuestra América that is actively organizing against all US military exercises and demanding the expulsion of all US military bases from our occupied lands.
The Popular Steering Committee for a Zone of Peace in Our Americas called for participation of popular organizations and social movements in the Urgent Week of Action in defense of Venezuelan sovereignty, with a regional day of action on November 19th to mobilize the masses of Our Americas in unified and coordinated action to build a Zone of Peace by unifying the struggles of our peoples. Hugo Chavez would not make it to the 2014 CELAC Summit in La Habana, Cuba, where the regional body would declare a Zone of Peace, but his words ring truer today than ever before – only unity will make us free, but it must be the unity of the masses that lead, build and fortify a true Zone of Peace.
