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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Education and resistance: The world after the US aggression against Venezuela</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">Pedro Monzón Barata</div>
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<div class="gmail-reader-estimated-time">February 16, 2026</div>
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<div class="gmail-moz-reader-content gmail-reader-show-element"><div id="gmail-readability-page-1" class="gmail-page"><p>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.</p><div><ul id="gmail-content-slick-0"><div aria-hidden="false"><li>
<a href="https://alpha-en-media.almayadeen.net/media/image/2026/2/16/b97d923f-12d1-4f41-81af-b9742f379064.png?v=2&width=1000" tabindex="0"><img src="https://alpha-en-media.almayadeen.net/media/image/2026/2/16/b97d923f-12d1-4f41-81af-b9742f379064.png?v=2&width=1000&preset=w750" alt="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)" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img"></a>
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)
</li></div></ul>
<p>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.</p>
<h2><strong>Education to forge conscious and practical rejection</strong></h2>
<p>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.</p>
<p><strong>From alphabetization to critical literacy</strong></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><strong>Cognitive war: The disinformation campaign against Venezuela</strong></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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
<em>fait accompli.</em></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><strong>From Gramsci's hegemony to decolonizing thought</strong></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<h2><strong>Sovereignty vs. subordination</strong></h2>
<p>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\u2026) 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<h3><strong>Cuba's educational sovereignty under siege</strong></h3>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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. <strong>Such an aggression would represent an inescapable trap for the empire.</strong></p>
<p>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.</p>
<h3><strong>Cognitive capitalism and the trenches of resistance</strong></h3>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<h3><strong>Ideological immunity and sovereignty</strong></h3>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Fidel's maxim, \u201cDon\u2019t 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><strong>Bibliographic references</strong></p>
<ol><li>Castro, F. (1961). Palabras a los intelectuales [Discurso]. Departamento de Versiones Taquigráficas del Gobierno Revolucionario.</li><li>Chomsky, N., & Herman, E. S. (1988). Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. Pantheon Books.</li><li>Constitución de la República Bolivariana de Venezuela. (1999).</li><li>Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogía del Oprimido. Siglo XXI Editores.</li><li>Golinger, E. (2005). El código Chávez: Descifrando la intervención de EE.UU. en Venezuela. Editorial Sur.</li><li>Gramsci, A. (1971). Selections from the Prison Notebooks (Q. Hoare
& G. N. Smith, Eds. & Trans.). International Publishers.</li><li>Maduro, N. (2026, enero 4). Declaración ante el ataque imperial a la
Patria [Comunicado oficial]. Presidencia de la República Bolivariana de
Venezuela.</li><li>Martí, J. (1891). Nuestra América. En La Revista Ilustrada de Nueva York.</li><li>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.</li><li>Rodríguez, S. (1840). Sociedades Americanas. Imprenta de J. R. Navarro.</li></ol></div></div></div>
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