Venezuela's remaining regional allies voiced support for the government in a summit on Sunday, condemning the Trump administration’s seizure of an oil tanker last week.
The seizure of the Skipper off Venezuela's coast last Wednesday marked the first US capture of Venezuelan oil cargo since US sanctions were imposed in 2019.
The support for President Nicolas Maduro, at a televised virtual meeting of the far-left, largely ineffectual ALBA bloc of Caribbean and Latin American countries, occurred during the escalation of a US military buildup in the southern Caribbean.
"Latin America and the Caribbean today face threats that don't have precedent in the last decades," Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel said during the summit.
Referring to the US seizure of the tanker, Nicaragua's co-President Daniel Ortega exclaimed, "they are thieves". The effects of the seizure could ripple through the region, with Venezuelan oil exports falling sharply and Cuba, already straining to power its grid, at risk of losing supply.
US President Donald Trump's administration, and most of the developed world, do not recognise Maduro, in power since 2013, as Venezuela's legitimate leader. The region has become increasingly tense as the US has issued deadly strikes against suspected drug trafficking boats off the Venezuelan coast and in the eastern Pacific Ocean. Maduro has said that Trump is seeking to oust him.
At the summit, Maduro called for the ALBA bloc to resist what he described as unlawful interference in the region.
"The coloniser project will not occur," he said. "We will be free."
Latin America's far-left movement lost another crucial battle over the weekend as conservative Chilean presidential candidate Jose Antonio Kast trounced Communist Party candidate Jeannette Jara with around 60 per cent of the vote.
His victory marks the latest win for the resurgent right, as he joins Ecuador's Daniel Noboa, El Salvador's Nayib Bukele, and Argentina's Javier Milei. In October, the election of centrist Rodrigo Paz ended almost two decades of ruinous socialist rule in Bolivia.
(Reporting by Leila Miller and Baird Maritime; Editing by Paul Simao)
