[News] Education and resistance: The world after the US aggression against Venezuela

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Education and resistance: The world after the US aggression against
Venezuela
Pedro Monzón Barata
February 16, 2026
------------------------------

Pedro Monzon Barata argues that in the wake of US aggression against
Venezuela, education is the decisive battlefield, where sovereignty,
resistance, and ideological clarity are forged.

   - [image: Faced with the multidimensional war unleashed by imperialism,
   education stands not as a refuge, but as the workshop where the antidote is
   forged: a conscious people. (Al Mayadeen English; Illustrated by Ali
   al-Hadi Shmeiss)]
   <https://alpha-en-media.almayadeen.net/media/image/2026/2/16/b97d923f-12d1-4f41-81af-b9742f379064.png?v=2&width=1000>
   Faced with the multidimensional war unleashed by imperialism, education
   stands not as a refuge, but as the workshop where the antidote is forged: a
   conscious people. (Al Mayadeen English; Illustrated by Ali al-Hadi Shmeiss)

The current geopolitical landscape of Our America is marked by an
aggressive escalation by US imperialism, who have cast aside any pretense
of multilateralism or respect for international law. The vile military
attack on Venezuela, the arbitrary and illegal kidnapping of its
constitutional President Nicolás Maduro, the cowardly murder of more than
100 Venezuelans and Cubans, the explicit military threats against Colombia,
Mexico, and, especially, Cuba, and the intensification of suffocating
economic blockades are not isolated incidents. These events are links in
the same chain of domination, designed to reverse any project of national
sovereignty or independent regional integration. Faced with this
multidimensional offensive, which combines economic war, psychological
operations, cybernetic actions, and the use or threat of the direct use of
force, the response of the people cannot be limited to the diplomatic
sphere or to occasional defensive reactions.
*Education to forge conscious and practical rejection*

The education of the people for a conscious and practical rejection becomes
imperative, as a condition of survival itself. Conscious, because it must
be rooted in a profound understanding of the historical, economic, and
cultural mechanisms of imperialism. Practical, because it must translate
into organized mobilization, defense of legitimate institutions, active
internationalist solidarity, and the daily construction of alternatives.
Education, in its broadest and most transformative sense, is the
fundamental tool for forging this capacity for response. Far from being a
cultural appendage, it is the primary battlefield where the battle of ideas
is won or lost, a battle that precedes and conditions every other form of
confrontation.

*From alphabetization to critical literacy*

Education is not neutral; the literacy of the people is the primordial
foundation. No one who experienced the 1961 Literacy Campaign in Cuba, in
which I had the opportunity to participate as a child, can harbor any
illusions about the neutrality of education. That episode, where more than
100,000 of us young people marched to the fields and mountains to teach
reading and writing, was an act of profound subversion of the neocolonial
order. We literacy teachers did not carry only primers and manuals; we
carried a revolutionary idea: that knowledge is a universal right and an
instrument of liberation. The murders of young literacy teachers Conrado
Benítez and Manuel Ascunce Domenech at the hands of counter-revolutionary
bands armed and financed by the CIA demonstrated with brutality that the
oligarchy and imperialism understood perfectly the danger posed by an
enlightened people.

Today, illiteracy in the world has mutated. Alongside residual illiteracy,
a functional, political, and digital illiteracy persists, carefully
cultivated by a transnational media ecosystem in the service of capital. It
consists of the inability to decode the interests behind a news story, to
contextualize a geopolitical conflict, to recognize what the doctrines of
"hybrid warfare" or "soft coups" represent. People, bombarded by narratives
that present victims as perpetrators and aggressors as saviors, can be
driven to act (even electorally) against their own class and national
interests. Disinformation about Venezuela or about Cuba, where the grave
consequences of an economic war and a sustained genocidal economic,
commercial, and financial blockade are presented as the "failure of
socialism," is the weapon of choice for these protagonists in such a cruel
phenomenon.

Therefore, contemporary education must have as its backbone the general
education of the people and critical media and historical literacy. It must
teach how to dismantle propaganda, identify primary sources, trace the
ownership of media outlets, and understand the history of cruel colonial
exploitation, of Yankee interventions in the region, from Mexico in 1847 to
Panama in 1989, and now the aggression against Venezuela in 2026. Only a
people capable of "reading between the lines" or interpreting the hegemonic
discourse (which is increasingly crude) can generate the conscious
rejection necessary in the face of intoxication campaigns that seek to
demoralize, divide, and paralyze resistance.

*Cognitive war: The disinformation campaign against Venezuela*

A paradigmatic example of this phenomenon is the intense disinformation
campaign deployed following the military aggression against Venezuela on
January 3rd and the illegal kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro, with a
clear political objective: to erode the legitimacy and unity of the
Bolivarian government. This operation seeks to present Chavismo as a
defeated movement betrayed from within, falsely claiming that key figures
like Delcy Rodríguez or Diosdado Cabello made a pact with Washington to
overthrow Maduro. These narratives, amplified by hegemonic media aligned
with the interests of the White House, are based mainly on fabricated
sources and have been categorically denied by the Venezuelan government.
Their purpose is to sow confusion and demoralization, attempting to
fracture popular support and weaken resistance in the face of what is, in
essence, an act of war and a flagrant violation of international law.

The architecture of this manipulation is multifaceted. On one hand,
strategic falsehoods are disseminated about a supposed economic and
political surrender of Venezuela promoted by President Donald Trump
himself, seeking to fabricate a narrative of submission and benefit. On the
other, false audiovisual content designed to provoke an immediate emotional
impact is viralized: videos of popular celebrations in Caracas that were
actually filmed in Santiago de Chile, images generated by artificial
intelligence of Maduro in prison, or movie scenes presented as evidence of
real torture of opponents. Even a video of the bombing of the Bolivarian
Militia Command was manipulated to pass it off as an attack on the
mausoleum of Hugo Chávez, a cynical attempt to wound the foundational
symbol of Chavismo. These fake news items are not casual errors, but
components of a cognitive war that seeks to rewrite the perception of
reality, making resistance seem useless and collaboration a *fait accompli.*

The ultimate goal of this campaign is threefold: first, to deny the
imperialist nature of the military operation, presenting it as a "clean"
intervention or even one desired internally. Second, to project an image of
absolute control by Washington, under which any action by the interim
Venezuelan government is interpreted as subordination to Trump, ignoring
firm statements of condemnation and constitutional continuity. And third,
to isolate Venezuela internationally, making its government appear
illegitimate and divided, despite the widespread rejection of the
aggression expressed by countries like Mexico, Colombia, and Cuba, which
have called it a dangerous precedent against sovereignty and the UN
Charter. These narratives constitute yet another assault on the country's
sovereignty, waged on the battlefield of information, where the
annihilation of truth is the fundamental objective.

*From Gramsci's hegemony to decolonizing thought*

The construction of a proper and decolonizing thought in Our America and
the Third World provides the theoretical arsenal to confront such
distortions. Marxism, by denouncing that the ideas of the ruling class are
the ruling ideas in every epoch, laid the foundations for understanding
schools and the media as ideological apparatuses. The thought of Antonio
Gramsci enriched this analysis with his concept of hegemony, explaining how
the ruling class maintains itself not only through state coercion but
through cultural consensus, achieving that its worldview is accepted as
"common sense" by the broad masses. The battle for this hegemony is a "war
of position" waged precisely in the trenches of civil society: in schools,
in the media, in culture.

It was precisely thinkers from the periphery who deepened the cultural and
colonial dimension of domination. José Martí, the Apostle of Cuban
Independence, with his vision that "to be cultured is the only way to be
free" established the indissoluble link between national independence and
sovereignty of thought. For Martí, education should form people "for life,"
not to serve foreign interests. Paulo Freire, from the pedagogy of the
oppressed, transformed education into an act of dialogue and
conscientization, where "reading the word" is inseparable from "reading the
world" to transform it. His method rejects "banking education," which
deposits passive information, and promotes a problem-posing education that
makes every student a critical subject.

>From Algeria, Frantz Fanon exposed how colonialism occupies not only
territories but also minds, imposing cultural inferiorization and a rupture
with one's own history. Decolonization, to be real, must include a
"decolonization of the mind," a rescue of one's own culture and history as
sources of identity and resistance. The Syrian Constantine Zurayk argued,
after the Palestinian Nakba, that true independence is impossible without
an "education of national dignity" that combats the mentality of defeat and
dependence.

In Cuba, Fidel Castro synthesized and put these ideas into massive
practice. His long, didactic speeches were lessons in history, political
economy, and internationalist ethics. His maxim, "Don't believe, read!" is
the core of a revolutionary ethic of knowledge: it is a call to methodical
doubt, to one's own investigation, to not delegate to others the
interpretation of reality. Fidel went further, vehemently defending a
comprehensive general culture, a formation that unites sciences and
humanities, theory and practice, breaking the capitalist division between
manual and intellectual labor. A people fragmented in their knowledge is a
people vulnerable to manipulation. A people with an integral culture can
understand the complexity of the world and, therefore, properly appreciate
what surrounds them and defend themselves better.
*Sovereignty vs. subordination*

The 20th century offered two antagonistic models. On one hand, socialist
experiences and national liberation movements prioritized mass education
and the eradication of illiteracy as pillars of national construction and
sovereignty. In the USSR, China, Vietnam, and Cuba, education was an engine
of social mobility and the creation of endogenous scientific capabilities.
On the other hand, capitalist educational "miracles" in Asia (South Korea,
Singapore…) certainly achieved high technical performance but at an
enormous human cost: systems of fierce competitiveness, student alienation,
and an education functionalized exclusively for the labor market, without
critical spirit and social purposes. However, even within capitalist
frameworks, some leaders attempted to imprint a sovereign character on
education. Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad promoted an education
with strong nationalist and anti-imperialist content, seeking to create a
local industrial bourgeoisie and reduce mental dependence. In Tanzania,
Julius Nyerere pushed for "Education for Self-Reliance," linking school to
community production and African values of ujamaa (extended family),
although it was later strangled by IMF conditionalities.

These contrasting examples reveal a crucial truth: an educational system
that is not in the service of a sovereign national project ends up,
inevitably, serving a project of subordination to global centers of power.
Technically efficient but uncritical education produces excellent employees
for transnational corporations, but passive and submissive citizens in the
face of class exploitation and the plunder of their homeland's resources.
The education we need today must form technicians and patriots, scientists
and internationalists, professionals and defenders of sovereignty.
*Cuba's educational sovereignty under siege*

The case of Cuba is paradigmatic. From being a country with one of the
highest illiteracy rates in Latin America in 1959, it was transformed, in a
few decades, into an educational and scientific power recognized worldwide.
This leap was not the result of a technical recipe, but of a clear
political will that has prioritized the human being as the center of
development. The Literacy Campaign was the foundational act, but the system
expanded universally and completely free of charge, from infant daycare to
postgraduate studies. The divorce between the lettered city and the
countryside, between science and the people, was broken. The formation of
patriotic and solidary Cubans and of tens of thousands of doctors,
engineers, teachers, and scientists became the material basis for achieving
milestones like the biotechnology industry, capable of creating its own
vaccines (like the anti-COVID Abdala and Soberana) amid a tightened
blockade.

The most eloquent fact: during the Special Period, in the midst of the
deepest economic crisis, Cuba did not close a single school. Today, it
allocates around 13% of its GDP to education. This is not a mere statistic;
it is a declaration of principles in a world where knowledge is
commodified. It demonstrates that, even under the fiercest siege, it is
possible and necessary to defend education as a bastion of national
sovereignty. An educated people is a people that can resist, innovate, and
sustain itself when the doors of international commerce tend to close due
to foreign coercion.

The patriotic Cuban people endured the Special Period stoically without
surrendering, despite the relentless US blockade. In the current menacing
juncture, although Cubans love and enjoy peace, we are willing and prepared
to face any circumstance with the objective of defending our independence
and sovereignty. Any attempt of aggression against our country by Yankee
imperialism would cause great hardship, but would carry an immense cost for
the US and would fail due to the active and steadfast resistance of the
overwhelming majority of the people. *Such an aggression would represent an
inescapable trap for the empire.*

Cuban educational internationalism extends the principle that education is
the primary means of shaping individuals capable of understanding reality
and resisting injustice. UNESCO-endorsed, the simple yet profound "Yes, I
Can" literacy method has taught over 10 million people across more than 30
countries to read and write. As ambassador in Australia, I witnessed its
transformative impact in segregated Aboriginal communities, like the case
of Wilcannia. There, adults who learned to read and write not only signed
their name for the first time; they began using computers, understanding
official documents, and communicating with distant relatives. The incidence
of social problems decreased. The recovered word was synonymous with
recovered dignity and strengthened organizational capacity.
*Cognitive capitalism and the trenches of resistance*

Imperialism has modernized its tools of intellectual domination. Today, we
face cognitive capitalism, a phase where the main source of value and
control is the extraction of data, attention, and knowledge itself. Large
digital platforms (Google, Meta, etc.), with their offer of "free
education" and access to information, act as new mechanisms of
colonization, homogenizing thought, imposing English as a lingua franca,
and turning users into products whose data is sold. The financialization of
higher education, with student debts that enslave entire generations (like
the 1.7 trillion dollars in the USA), is an effective mechanism of social
discipline: those who are in debt become cautious, less prone to challenge
the system. The algorithm threatens to replace the teacher, promising
personalization but imposing hidden standards and a fragmented vision of
knowledge.

Faced with this panorama, educational resistance tends to reorganize into
new trenches: Indigenous universities in Latin America challenge academic
Eurocentrism, validating their own epistemologies; the Landless Rural
Workers Movement (MST) in Brazil creates schools where agroecology and
class consciousness are taught; in Europe and the USA, collectively managed
schools grow, and young people in Africa and Asia develop educational
platforms in local languages. These diverse but convergent experiences
prove that another education is possible: one that arises from the concrete
needs and interests of the people, that strengthens identities, that is
managed democratically, and that has as its end emancipation, not
adaptation to the market.
*Ideological immunity and sovereignty*

The education we need for these times of aggression cannot be just another
curriculum. It must be an explicit political-pedagogical project for the
integral defense of sovereignty. It must substantively integrate
indigenous, Afro-descendant, and popular knowledges; explain what
imperialism is and analyze concrete cases like Venezuela; foster strategic
thinking and unity, and show that aggression against a brother country is
an attack on the entire Great Homeland; train in sciences with awareness of
national development, and teach how to create community media and one's own
communication networks.

Fidel's maxim, “Don’t believe, read!" and Martí's, "To be cultured is the
only way to be free," are not decorative slogans: they are essences for
survival in the unconventional war we are living. A critically educated
people is a people with ideological immunity. It is a people that does not
swallow whole the narrative of the "regime" fabricated in Washington. It is
a people that can organize practical rejection. Cuba, with its achievements
and its limitations, is not a model to be copied mechanically, but a
hopeful testimony: even under the most adverse conditions, the commitment
to the formation and quality education for all builds a wall of dignity
that not even the most powerful empire has been able to tear down. Today's
task is to universalize that principle, so that every child, every young
person, every worker in Our America not only learns to read and write, but
to read the world with their own eyes, to write their history with their
own hands, and to defend their future with an unbreakable consciousness. In
that education lays the seed of the definitive defeat of the imperial
project.

Faced with the multidimensional war unleashed by imperialism, which finds
its most brutal and criminal expression in the aggression against
Venezuela, education stands not as a refuge, but as the workshop where the
antidote is forged: a conscious people. A people that, by learning to read
the world with their own eyes, disarms the lies that justify plunder; that,
by writing their history with their own hands, raises the barricades of
national dignity. The future of Our America, its capacity to resist,
re-exist, and overcome, is decided in this battle for consciousness. And it
is in the unwavering defense of Venezuelan sovereignty that today, with
total clarity, the decisive combat for that future is being waged.

*Bibliographic references*

   1. Castro, F. (1961). Palabras a los intelectuales [Discurso].
   Departamento de Versiones Taquigráficas del Gobierno Revolucionario.
   2. Chomsky, N., & Herman, E. S. (1988). Manufacturing Consent: The
   Political Economy of the Mass Media. Pantheon Books.
   3. Constitución de la República Bolivariana de Venezuela. (1999).
   4. Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogía del Oprimido. Siglo XXI Editores.
   5. Golinger, E. (2005). El código Chávez: Descifrando la intervención de
   EE.UU. en Venezuela. Editorial Sur.
   6. Gramsci, A. (1971). Selections from the Prison Notebooks (Q. Hoare &
   G. N. Smith, Eds. & Trans.). International Publishers.
   7. Maduro, N. (2026, enero 4). Declaración ante el ataque imperial a la
   Patria [Comunicado oficial]. Presidencia de la República Bolivariana de
   Venezuela.
   8. Martí, J. (1891). Nuestra América. En La Revista Ilustrada de Nueva
   York.
   9. Ministerio del Poder Popular para la Comunicación y la Información de
   Venezuela. (2026, enero). Dossier: Pruebas de la operación militar ilegal y
   la campaña de desinformación.
   10. Rodríguez, S. (1840). Sociedades Americanas. Imprenta de J. R.
   Navarro.
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