{"id":12761,"date":"2026-08-26T11:06:50","date_gmt":"2026-08-26T14:06:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ipa-aip.org\/?post_type=statement&p=12761"},"modified":"2026-08-26T11:26:49","modified_gmt":"2026-08-26T14:26:49","slug":"manifesto-of-the-alba-movimientos-fidel-castro-internationalist-youth-brigade","status":"publish","type":"statement","link":"https:\/\/ipa-aip.org\/fr\/statement\/manifesto-of-the-alba-movimientos-fidel-castro-internationalist-youth-brigade\/","title":{"rendered":"Manifesto of the ALBA Movimientos Fidel Castro Internationalist Youth Brigade"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

26 August 2026, Caracas, Venezuela.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n


We are Guevara\u2019s children,<\/em>
children of Ch\u00e1vez and Fidel,<\/em>
fighting for a liberated homeland,<\/em>
united in struggle until victory.<\/em>
Because Ch\u00e1vez is still here,
the people have not surrendered.
For the Patria Grande \u2014 our Great Homeland \u2014 and liberation.
Here stands the youth,
fighting capital.
Together we will free Maduro and Cilia.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

(ALBA Movimientos Fidel Castro Internationalist Youth Brigade)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We are the ALBA Movimientos Fidel Castro Internationalist Youth Brigade: 30 young people from 10 countries who, over the course of 11 days, took part in a process of political education and solidarity in Caracas, Venezuela, at the Robinsonian National School. We are young militants from Panama, Brazil, Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador, Chile, Colombia, Guatemala, Argentina, and Venezuela. We belong to 32 different organisations, including urban movements, peasant movements, unions, youth and student movements, women\u2019s movements, and political parties. With great pride, we named our brigade in honour of Fidel Castro, Commander in Chief of the Cuban Revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More than 20 years ago, the embrace between Fidel Castro and Hugo Ch\u00e1vez opened a new chapter of unity among the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean. Today, in the year of Fidel\u2019s centenary, and amid a conjuncture that is increasingly aggressive and voracious towards our countries, keeping this history alive is essential as we think through the unity needed to confront the common enemy of our continent: imperialism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As young militants living in the year of Fidel\u2019s centenary and the bicentenary of the Amphictyonic Congress of Panama \u2014 the 1826 congress convened by Sim\u00f3n Bol\u00edvar to advance the unity of the newly independent republics of Our America \u2014 we take on both a responsibility and a historic task. Reclaiming our history, the history of resistance in our region, of our organisations, and of our leaders gives us strength and, above all, offers us a horizon: socialism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Across our continent, we are witnessing the rise of far-right governments and forces: Jos\u00e9 Antonio Kast in Chile, Javier Milei in Argentina, Abelardo de la Espriella in Colombia, Rodrigo Paz in Bolivia, Keiko Fujimori in Peru, Daniel Noboa in Ecuador, and Nayib Bukele in El Salvador. In Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, despite being imprisoned, continues to mobilise his base, making the coming elections decisive for our continent. Keeping Luiz In\u00e1cio Lula da Silva in government, alongside defending the government of Claudia Sheinbaum in Mexico, is of great importance for our struggles and for the balance of forces in the region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The decline of empire does not come without consequences. Violence is intensifying through the growing militarisation of our continent \u2014 a violence that targets Black bodies, women\u2019s bodies, and young bodies. The plunder of our natural resources continues unabated and remains one of the driving forces behind the rise of far-right governments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The technological dispute now under way, together with the energy crisis produced by wars and conflicts in other regions, has made our continent a target of empire. In this context, imperialism seeks to revive its history and reorganise its plans for domination, as we see in the return of the Monroe Doctrine as an organising principle of US policy towards the region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Colonial projects remain in place, especially in the Caribbean. This is the case of Puerto Rico, which remains under US colonial domination, as well as Haiti, where a permanent crisis has been sustained through years of exploitation, plunder, and military interference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Venezuela, one of the world\u2019s largest oil-producing countries, imperialism spent years trying to overthrow the Bolivarian Revolution through coups, blockades, attempts to generate political crises, and the questioning of elections. Having failed to bring it down, imperialism decided it was time to attack. On 3 January 2026, they entered the country using their most advanced weaponry, killing Venezuelan combatants and 32 Cuban combatants, sowing panic and pain among the population, and kidnapping Nicol\u00e1s Maduro, Constitutional President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, and Cilia Flores, First Combatant, First Lady, and Deputy of the National Assembly. They did not merely kidnap two people; they kidnapped an entire country, and with it, our continent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Cuba, after 60 years of a criminal economic and energy blockade, the brave Cuban people \u2014 who have always lived with the difficulties imposed by imperialism \u2014 now face an increasingly desperate situation: the harshest moment of the blockade, marked by shortages of raw materials and basic goods on the island. Imperialism seeks to break Cuba silently, from within. It threatens Ra\u00fal Castro, historic leader of the Cuban Revolution, and seeks to create panic among the population.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Latin America and the Caribbean are rich in natural resources, which have long drawn the predatory gaze of empire. But ours is also a region of historic struggles, revolutions, and peoples who resist to the end. In other words, ours are peoples who threaten the current hegemony. This history of struggle, which imperialism tries to erase, is part of its political project of domination over our region. But they underestimate the power of resistance of peoples who know what they are fighting for and who know their historical mission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Across the continent, our lives remain marked by neoliberalism, which presents individualistic ways of life as solutions to collective problems. Where the dominant logic is individualism, predation, and control, having revolutions in what empire considers its \u2018backyard\u2019 represents an unprecedented threat to the cannibals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is in this context of violence, constant aggression, and attempts at destabilisation that we came to learn from the Bolivarian Revolution. During these 11 days in Caracas, we studied, walked the streets, spoke with the people, and sought to understand reality from its most concrete and everyday dimensions. We studied popular and communal feminism, the history and present of the Bolivarian Revolution, and the history of ALBA Movimientos, anti-imperialism, and socialism. This history speaks to the broader history of struggle and resistance throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. We learned about the communes, the Venezuelan economy, the country\u2019s history, and the organisational processes within the Bolivarian Revolution, together with those who build it every day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We were received by Deputy Tania D\u00edaz; the Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (United Socialist Party of Venezuela, PSUV), Venezuela\u2019s governing socialist party; the Sim\u00f3n Bol\u00edvar Institute, a Venezuelan institution dedicated to international solidarity and anti-imperialist political education; the Ministry of Youth; and the youth of the party. We listened to these institutions and came to better understand the country\u2019s current political projects, its forms of care and support for the population, and, above all, the support directed towards Venezuelan youth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We paid tribute to the combatants who fell on 3 January. We spoke with those affected, heard their stories, and felt their pain. Together with comrades from the Partido Verde de Venezuela (Green Party of Venezuela), an ecological political organisation in Venezuela, we planted trees as a symbol of rebirth, cultivation, and renewal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We walked through the communes of El Panal, 5 de Marzo, and the Ezequiel Zamora Communal Circuit. We listened and were moved by the stories the Venezuelan people told us about Commander Ch\u00e1vez and President Maduro: stories of collective construction, of advances made over the years through the strengthening of popular power, and of the attack of 3 January. We heard the people call for the return of their president and first lady.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We travelled to La Guaira, the state most affected by the earthquakes of 24 June 2026. We walked among the rubble and saw images we will carry with us forever. But we also saw a level of solidarity, action, and collective work unlike anything we had ever witnessed, from both the people and the government. We came to understand the power of rooting a political project in the transformation of human relations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We spent three days in temporary camps in the Capital District and La Guaira: the Luis Hurtado Higuera Camp in El Junquito; the Narciso Gonell Camp in Catia La Mar; the Temporary Camp for Older Adults; and the Comprehensive Social Care Post in the state of La Guaira. We worked alongside the people. We helped in the kitchens, spoke with residents, and played with the children. We were able to feel and understand the material basis and concrete expression of a government project whose greatest strength lies in the territories and in the people who inhabit them. We came to better understand the attempted imperialist management of shelters and camps through NGOs, and we reject such acts. Popular sovereignty remains alive, even in a time of such pain. We are witnesses to this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We brought medicines in our suitcases. We received supplies of antibiotics, corticosteroids, painkillers, medical materials, personal hygiene kits for women, powdered milk for children, diapers for adults and children, and emergency kits collected in our countries and delivered to the temporary shelters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While imperialism seeks to revive its old methods and strategies, we affirm that we will not allow history to repeat itself: not the history of coups, plunder, attacks, massacres, and the degradation of our countries; not the history of exhausting our forces, our lives, our economies, and our societies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The only history we will allow to repeat itself is the history of revolutions, struggles, guerrillas, solidarity brigades, and unity among peoples.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In light of all this, we declare that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n