This statement was received from the Grupo Comunista Revolucionario de Colombia. The translation is the responsibility of Revolution/revcom.us.

AWAY WITH PENCE! The Trump/Pence Regime Must Be Stopped!

August 14, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

The U.S. Vice President Mike Pence will be in Colombia this August 13 and 14 as part of a tour that includes Argentina, Chile and Panama.

Officially, Pence will hold meetings with government leaders and businessmen to “deepen bilateral ties of trade and investment in the region” and “continue support ... for cooperation in security, business involvement, agriculture, and infrastructure development.”

What Pence really comes to do is to get his lackeys lined up, in what they contemptuously have considered their “backyard,” in the service of their imperialist interests (what they call “ties” and “support”), but especially around the “regime change” plans in Venezuela.

In advance, a few weeks ago the presidents of Mexico and Colombia were visited by the director of the CIA, Mike Pompeo, “helping them to understand things” in the “transition” in Venezuela, as he himself pointed out at a recent forum in Aspen, Colorado.

This is not insignificant. The Christian fundamentalist Mike Pence and rabid fascist Donald Trump command the most powerful machinery of domination in the world along with a whole team of white supremacists, xenophobes, fundamentalists, and women-haters.

The Trump/Pence regime, in addition to being a grave danger to immigrants, Latinos and Muslims, to Black people and to women in the United States and beyond, also represents a grave danger to the entire planet and a grave danger to the truth and critical and scientific thinking everywhere.

While Trump functions as the leader and frontman of a whole regime, Pence has been the mainstay and main agent behind the scenes. A Catholic converted to evangelism, he is “a Christian, a conservative and a Republican, in that order,” in his own words. He makes no effort to hide his adherence to what he considers to be traditional family values nor his hostility towards abortion and marriage between same-sex couples. He believes that homosexuality is a disease that can be “cured.”

A total reactionary in everything. To put it bluntly, Pence is the Christian version of the Taliban in Afghanistan, imposing a fundamentalist religious order. They picked him to get the party’s elite, the evangelicals and the ultraconservatives, to swallow what the toad Trump represents, because they distrust him because in the past he supported Democrats, he was open on issues like abortion and he’s weighed down with too many scandals. Pence brings to Trump his conservative credentials and a key political experience to rely on in the Congress.

But what do the Yankee imperialists want to build up around here [in Colombia]? In a large swath of the world, Yankee imperialism is tied down in wars for empire, locked in clashes with the historically antiquated forces of Islamic jihadism, while mutually reinforcing one another in a deadly and oppressive dynamic for hundreds of millions of people.

The United States also confronts challenges from China as a rising economic and military power, and an inter-imperialist rivalry with Russia and Europe.

Although in Latin America the “pink wave” of the so-called “socialism of the twenty-first century” has been going backwards with the return of the old patriarchs in Brazil and Argentina and the destorcida [rudderlessness] begun in Ecuador, it is crucial for the Yankees to have completely under their control their so-called “backyard.” Hence the United States and the traditional ruling classes of the region avidly want to give the coup de grace to the Venezuelan Chavista regime.

Today Venezuela is in a deep economic crisis. And the government is carrying out harsh repression. Among progressive people there is a lot of confusion about how to evaluate these events. Some are inclined to support the Venezuelan government.

But the “Bolivarian revolution” was NOT a real revolution. In spite of the improvements during good times in the situation of sections of the people, this current regime is not socialist nor does it represent a model for liberation, it represents some bourgeois nationalist forces.

However, neither the United States nor Colombia has any right to interfere in the affairs of Venezuela.

The Yankee imperialists must be stopped from getting their way in Venezuela as well as in the rest of the world, including in the United States. The future of the world is at stake. We must support the forces in the United States who are organizing to stop the Trump/Pence fascist regime, especially the revolutionary communists there.

It is true that the possibility of driving Trump/Pence out of power is very difficult, but there also exists a real material basis for stopping this fascist regime. There is no guarantee that this will happen, but there is a guarantee that without struggle, this will not be achieved.

This is not something that only matters to the people in the United States. There needs to be global resistance to a global threat.

We are faced with a vital question: Which side do we take? Let’s take sides for humanity and act accordingly!

The Trump/Pence FASCIST regime is a grave danger to humanity and must be stopped! GET OUT OF HERE, YANKEES! YANKEE GO HOME!

Grupo Comunista Revolucionario de Colombia | August 2017

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