‘They played a key role’: How American leftist groups collaborated with Maduro for more than a decade

Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro and his socialist regime spent years coordinating with American leftist movements such as Black Lives Matter (BLM) before the U.S. removed him from power.

BLM activists, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and other groups met with Maduro, spoke at events alongside him or became official observers for Venezuela’s heavily-criticized elections for more than a decade, according to the groups’ public statements and online posts documenting the meetings. Some of the same organizations called for protests in the U.S. against the Trump administration’s Jan. 3 arrest of Maduro and his wife on drug and weapons charges.

The Venezuelan regime won influence with activists to its own benefit long ago, in part through a 2006 speech by former President Hugo Chavez that called for Americans to form an organized front against their own country’s interests, according to Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation.

“They played a key role in setting up the U.S. Social Forum from the World Social Forum which was the network of networks for the Left,” Gonzalez, a former foreign affairs journalist and State Department official, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. He credits Chavez’s speech with sparking the 2007 inaugural meeting of the World Social Forum’s U.S. branch in Atlanta, Georgia.

“We must save the world, the people can save this world, but essential to this formula to save the world are the people of the U.S., the conscience of the U.S. people, the resurrection of the U.S. people … All of us must unite; join together in a victorious offensive against the empire,” Chavez said.

BLM movement co-founders Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi have both attended World Social Forum events, while a left-wing think tank that employed BLM co-founder Patrisse Cullors was part of the U.S. Social Forum’s inaugural planning committee.

Gonzalez also alleged in an October report that Chavez once paid Tometi to foment political revolution in the U.S., citing an anonymous former Venezuelan government official who defected to the U.S.

Cameo Appearances

Years before federal agents brought him to court in New York City, Maduro visited Harlem in 2015 for an event focused on Venezuelan rights alongside BLM’s Tometi, as shown on a Venezuelan government website. The BLM movement went on to defend the Venezuelan government against criticism by U.S. officials, including after Maduro’s arrest.

The BLM Global Network Foundation did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.

Manolo De Los Santos, head of the New York-based People’s Forum, also spoke at the People’s World Congress for Peace in Caracas, Venezuela, in 2021, with Maduro announcing him in front of their audience, video footage shows. Maduro again gave a shout-out to De Los Santos by name in a 2024 speech in Caracas.

The 2022 International Summit Against Fascism, hosted in Caracas, also featured Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) founding member Eugene Puryear, whose group gained prominence in the U.S. starting in 2023 by organizing pro-Palestinian protests. The PSL has since played a role in protesting against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) across the country.

Maduro’s government hosted the Caracas summit with delegates from 53 countries, with the dictator giving his own speech, left-wing outlet People’s Dispatch reported.

“There is a particular variant of fascism that is imprinted in the political culture of the United States,” Puryear said on video. “It goes to the roots of the ethnic cleansing of Indigenous people, the imprisonment in slave labor camps of African people.”

The PSL and People’s Forum swiftly organized pro-Venezuela protests across the country in the days following Maduro’s arrest, complete with signs and marchers, The New York Post reported. Both organizations did not respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.

Allyship between Venezuelan officials and American leftists can be chalked up to the fact that “they are all collectivists,” Gonzalez told the DCNF. Their posturing against Western “authoritarianism” is merely a “ruse,” he said.

“The Left loves authoritarianism, or even better, totalitarianism,” Gonzalez said.

‘Election Observers’

Weeks after Maduro’s Harlem visit, Tometi announced on X that she was “doing my duty as a global citizen and serving as an election observer” in 2015, posting a picture with an official uniform. “Such a relief to be in a place where there is intelligent political discourse,” she said in another post about the trip.

The DSA, National Lawyers Guild (NLG) and the Alliance for Global Justice (AFGJ) — all U.S.-based — also sent “election observers” to the country in 2024. The three groups did not respond to requests for comment.

Both the Trump and Biden administrations, as well as Latin American countries, have denounced the incumbent Maduro’s win that year as fraudulent. Legacy news outlets in the U.S. also cast serious doubt on the results based on their own analyses, citing vote tallies, reports of irregularities and government tactics such as blocking candidates from running.

“The delegation witnessed no instances of fraud or serious irregularities, and found overall voter satisfaction with the electoral process,” the NLG said. “We observed a deeply participatory and pluralistic process where the Venezuelan people are directly engaged in the social and political life of their nation.”

The organization said it talked to voters on-site who reinforced that view.

“Because there is broad faith in election procedures and the overall electoral system, as our interviews suggest, mainstream media within the US has ramped up negative media representations of the Maduro government in the weeks leading up to the elections,” the NLG wrote. “This is a flagrant attempt to delegitimize the Bolivarian Republic, downplay widespread popular support for the Maduro government, and present the divided opposition as more unified and influential than it actually is.”

“We commend the Bolivarian Republic for its commitment to electoral democracy in the face of such brutal repression by its powerful neighbor to the north and stand with the voters who cast their ballots in support of democracy, justice and liberation,” the group wrote.

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