Speakers at Bloomington rally denounce U.S. attack on Venezuela, call out history of intervention

On Sunday afternoon (Jan. 4) at least 60 Bloomington residents gathered on the Monroe County courthouse lawn to protest what the Associated Press has described as a “lightning military strike,” that removed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from power.

At the hastily noticed rally in downtown Bloomington, speakers condemned what they described as a U.S. imperialist attack on Venezuela, and tied the action to a much longer history of American intervention across Latin America and the rest of the world.

A subset of the protesters marched from the corner of Walnut Street and Kirkwood Avenue eastward along Kirkwood to the edge of Indiana University campus at Sample Gates, chanting slogans like “Yankee, go home!” and “When democracy’s under attack—stand up, fight back!”

AP reported that in a pre-dawn attack early Saturday (Jan. 3), U.S. forces carried out air and ground operations around Caracas, targeting military sites and capturing Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, at their residence inside a military installation.

The attack followed months of escalating U.S. pressure, including naval deployments and strikes tied to alleged drug trafficking. U.S. President Donald Trump said afterward that the United States would “run” Venezuela temporarily while a political transition takes place, though he offered few details on what that would entail.

U.S. authorities said Maduro faces federal charges including narco-terrorism and weapons offenses and was transported to the United States to stand trial, according to AP reports.

In his remarks delivered to the crowd in Bloomington on Saturday, Indiana University anthropologist Shane Greene distanced himself from Maduro. “I am not here to talk about Maduro. Not a fan. It’s fine if you are. I am not a fan,” Greene said. He added, “I’m also not here to speak on behalf of Venezuelans … The whole fucking point of this is they should be deciding this shit for themselves.”

Greene is former director of IU’s Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. Greene talked about the Bolivarian Revolution, which is the political and social project launched in Venezuela by Hugo Chávez after his 1998 election. Greene called the Bolivarian Revolution “a really lovely idea that emerged on the left that went to shit.” but said that whatever one thinks of Venezuela’s government, the underlying issue is sovereignty.

To put current events in context, Greene cited a summary by historian John Coatsworth of U.S. interventions in Latin America from 1898 to the 1990s. Reading from Coatsworth’s list, Greene rattled off a litany of direct military occupations and covert operations: Cuba (1898–1902, 1906–1909, 1917–1923), the U.S. Marine occupation of Haiti from 1915 to 1934, repeated occupations of Nicaragua, the 1954 CIA-backed coup in Guatemala, the 1965 occupation of the Dominican Republic, the 1983 invasion of Grenada, and more.

He then moved to what Coatsworth called “indirect” interventions, including CIA-supported or U.S.-backed coups in Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Panama.

Greene’s point was that the previous day’s attack on Venezuela is not an aberration but part of “the fucking America that’s so fucking great,” asking rhetorically, “Who’s next? You?”

He framed today’s politics with a dark fantasy metaphor: “We currently live in something like Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings.” He continued, “There’s these weird fucking orc-masters running around … who are nothing but lackeys and goons ready to do absolutely anything this orange-headed [person] tells them to do.”

The task, Greene said, is for “the elves and the dwarves and the humans and the hobbits—who are us in this scenario” to form a working coalition with “enough sustainable power to place enough pressure to make something happen.” He added, “It sure as fuck hasn’t happened yet.”

After Shane Greene spoke came a joint statement from Ethan and Cindy, two representatives of CUBAmistad, which is a sister-city project linking Bloomington, Indiana, and Santa Clara, Cuba.

Ethan, speaking on behalf of CUBAmistad, read from a statement by Miguel Díaz-Canel, President of the Republic of Cuba, which condemned the U.S. action in Venezuela. “The revolutionary government strongly condemns in the strongest possible terms the military aggression carried out by the United States against Venezuela,” the statement said, reaffirming “Cuba’s absolute support and solidarity with the sister Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and its government.”

The statement described the attack as “a criminal act and a violation of international law and the Charter of the United Nations” and as “a dangerous escalation” of a years-long campaign that intensified in 2025 with “aggressive naval deployment in the Caribbean Sea under false pretext and unfounded accusations lacking in any evidence.”

Díaz-Canel’s statement, as read by Ethan, called on “all governments, parliaments, social movements and peoples of the world” to confront what it labeled an “act of state terrorism that threatens international peace and security.”

Picking up from Ethan, Cindy cited her membership in various organizations like the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. She said those organizations jointly condemn “the U.S. imperialist attack on Venezuela, loss of life in that country and the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores,” calling the bombing and abduction “grave violations of international law and the U.S. Constitution.”

“Such deliberate violations of sovereignty and the illegal use of force imperil the peace and stability of Latin America and the world,” she said, demanding that the U.S. “end this illegal aggression, safely return President Maduro and his wife to Venezuela and allow the Venezuelan people to live in peace.”

The final set of remarks came from Bryce Greene, who is a familiar voice at Bloomington protests. “Thank you all for coming out. It’s important that we stand here and fight back when our government is doing illegal, horrible shit, simple as that,” he began.

Bryce Greene linked the day’s rallies against the attack Venezuela to other recent local protests—against U.S. support for Israel’s actions in Palestine and against bombings in Iran—saying that Bloomington residents have repeatedly taken to the streets “as our government supported a genocide.” He said, “You’ve seen the American empire wreak havoc and devastation all over the world, and you’ve seen the leaders who claim to represent a rules-based international order be the very people who are cheering it on.”

Bryce Greene attacked what he called the myth that the U.S. acts on higher ideals: “One of the things that keeps this machine going is this idea that … America acts because it wants to spread democracy around the world, or wants to remove dictatorships around the world. I mean, that’s a load of nonsense.”

Drawing on the concept of “manufacturing consent,” Bryce Greene described how opinion in a formally democratic society can be shaped so that the “consent of the governed” is produced through control of media and ideology. Venezuela, he said, has been demonized in U.S. discourse for years: “We’ve seen this attack on Venezuela being built … every time someone says, ‘Oh, well, you know, Maduro is just such a bad dictator. Doesn’t someone have to do something about that?’”

Bryce Greene said that disagreement about how another country manages its own affairs “does not give us a right to go in there and bomb their country, to abduct their leader… to send drone strikes bombing random fishermen.”

“America has one right,” he said. “And that’s: Get the hell out.” Bryce Greene wrapped up his turn, leading the crowd in the chants, “Yankee, go home!” and “Hands off Venezuela!”

Some of the crowd then took to Kirkwood Avenue and marched down the middle of the street east down Kirkwood to the edge of the Indiana University at Sample Gates. At Sample Gates where there was a pause before making the return march back up Kirkwood to the courthouse. The Sunday afternoon traffic was light—a couple of motorists wound up delayed a bit on their journeys.