Antiimperialist students stage militant protest in solidarity with the Venezuelan people and reject police repression
On 28 January, antiimperialist activists held a powerful demonstration in the city of Recife, Pernambuco, taking an active part in the important call by the Antiimperialist League (AIL) to condemn the Yankee aggression against Venezuela. High school and university students and militant organisations such as MEPR, Mangue Vermelho (MV) and Ventania, peasants from the League of Poor Peasants (LCP), activists from the Popular Women’s Movement (MFP) and other democratic organisations protested against the imperialist aggressor with a militant demonstration, waving their flags and chanting songs and slogans, when an incendiary device was thrown at a McDonald’s restaurant, one of the most rotten symbols of Yankee imperialism around the world.
Continuing the history of struggle of the democratic-revolutionary current in the student movement, the combative youth united under the flags of Palestine and Venezuela to protest against the hateful imperialist aggression against Latin American territory, demonstrating in practice, and not just in words, their solidarity with the Venezuelan people and nation.
Haunted, but with their reactionary fury, police officers from the PM-PE riot squad – murderers of poor and black people from the suburbs and favelas at the behest of the US embassy – repressed the demonstration with lethal bullets and pepper spray, with the aim of dispersing the participants and arresting several of them. However, they failed in the face of the combativeness and resistance of the youth, who did not allow the arrest of several demonstrators, pulling them out of the hands of the police while waving Palestinian flags. This firm defence by the youth bravely contained the police repression, preventing further arrests and aggression, but five young people were injured by lethal ammunition, including a student from the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE) and a correspondent for the newspaper A Nova Democracia in Recife, who was covering the demonstration.
As the well-known protest song ‘O risco’ (‘The Risk’) teaches us, in which the cat ‘swipes and hides its claws,’ the anti-imperialist protesters dispersed in an organised manner after the confrontation, completely frustrating the repressive and cowardly action of the police against the right and freedom of demonstration, as they were unable to arrest anyone during the combative act. Enraged by their failure, the PM-PE arbitrarily detained two young people more than 1 km from the protest site, simply because they had been present there: 23-year-old university student Mateus and a 16-year-old secondary school student. The secondary school student was released after being questioned, but the university student was kept in custody and remanded in preventive detention, in a completely arbitrary and illegal manner, under the unfounded and absurd accusation of ‘attempted murder’! Come on, gentlemen, who was carrying high-calibre weapons and shooting at protesters in the middle of the street? It was not the students, but the police who attempted murder at this protest! They are the terrorists at the behest of Yankee imperialism, just like ICE in the US. However, from the popular resistance in Minnesota to the struggles of the Brazilian and Latin American people and throughout the world, the masses will resist more and more until this oppressive beast that is imperialism, especially Yankee imperialism, this ‘giant with feet of clay,’ is buried forever.
In the face of anti-imperialist student and popular protests, the lapdogs of the extreme right, such as the reactionary deputy Colonel Meira, fill their filthy mouths with insults, calling the protesters ‘terrorists’ and calling for the application of the ‘anti-terrorism law’ against them. While trying to criminalise popular protest, opportunistic electoral currents pretend that nothing happened in Recife, trying to hide so they don’t have to comment on the facts, in a cowardly attitude that colludes with the reaction. It is urgent to vehemently condemn the arbitrary and illegal arrest and absurd accusation of ‘attempted murder’ of student Mateus, a political prisoner of Raquel Lyra at the behest of the Yankees in Brazil!
Combative antiimperialist actions such as those of the Pernambuco students, which took place in almost all capitals on the 3rd, play an essential role at this moment: they drive the just antiimperialist rebellion and demonstrate that Yankee aggression against Latin American nations and peoples will be forcefully rejected by the youth. The arbitrary actions of the servants of Yankee imperialism against combative students and other popular masses will only serve to further intensify the antiimperialist struggle, in a firm and prolonged struggle, because ‘the greater the oppression, the greater the resistance.’
As the AIL states in its Declaration: ‘Their defiant “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine and the growing aggression [against Venezuela] have mainly served to awaken what they fear most: the revolutionary hatred and resistance of the peoples.’ They tremble in the face of the popular and revolutionary uprising, certain that they will not go unpunished at the hands of the people. As the AIL continues: ‘From the Rio Grande to Patagonia, and from Venezuela to the steadfast resistance in Gaza, the antiimperialist movement around the world is preparing to rise again.’
In the great flame of class struggle, we boldly exclaim that with every bombing of an oppressed nation, with every activist shot, with every antiimperialist imprisoned by the reactionaries, the imperialists and all reactionaries put a noose around their own necks and hand the ends of this rope to the great masses, and the day will come when these hands will pull the rope with all their might until they hang the monster and destroy all its lackeys, fierce enemies of the people. Imperialism and all reactionaries are paper tigers, and sooner rather than later they will be swept from the face of the Earth!
Long live the fighting youth!
Freedom now for student Mateus!
Antiimperialists of the world, unite!
Yankee out of Venezuela, Palestine and the whole world!
Yankees, go home!
Rebellion is just!
Source of information: https://meprbrasil.com.br/2026/02/17/pe-estudantes-anti-imperialistas-levantam-combativo-protesto-em-solidariedade-ao-povo-venezuelano-e-rechacam-repressao-policial/
