The Assembly Media is an independent and anti-imperialist English-Spanish outlet founded by Venezuelan journalists and launched on September 6, 2026. It was born in the aftermath of the January 3 US illegal military attack against Venezuela and the kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro and Congresswoman Cilia Flores. Our purpose is simple: to uphold popular power and the core principles of the Bolivarian Revolution amid the ongoing US-led project of hemispheric recolonization.

As a new era of Monroeism spreads its reach, we believe that anti-imperialist journalism must become more radical and honest, more people-centered, imbued with optimism, and perpetually on the offensive. All of this from a point of view that is unmistakably that of the organizers, popular leaders, communicators, writers and journalists who live, endure, struggle, and carry on revolutionary work inside Venezuela and the Global South.

Bolivarianism as the baseline

In 1829, Venezuelan independence hero Simón Bolívar named the single greatest threat to Latin America’s fledgling independence with remarkable clarity: “The United States appears destined by Providence to plague America with misery in the name of liberty.” Two centuries later, Bolívar’s premonition of US imperialist devastation for the continent materialized. 

The Assembly Media is firmly committed to upholding Bolívar’s anti-imperialist principles, focusing on defending national sovereignty, promoting Latin American and Caribbean integration, and combatting US cultural colonialism and an expanding Monroe Doctrine based on resource imperialism and subjugation of the region’s sovereignty.

These principles, although always present in the Venezuelan grassroots, were revived and expanded when Hugo Chávez’s Bolivarian Revolution reached power in 1998, inaugurating the country’s ongoing path towards “Socialism of the 21st Century.” A bold project rooted in anti-imperialism, participatory and popular democracy, social justice and inclusion, and the assembly-driven communal movement as natural additions to the Bolivarian ideals.

How does Bolivarianism appear in our journalism? Our content is entirely committed to the Venezuelan people’s on-the-ground debates, efforts, organizations and projects centered on these principles. We also feature teachings, readings and historical studies that help shed light on what makes Bolivarianism the front line against Washington’s Monroism.

International anti-imperialism 

The Bolivarian Revolution has always been both a Venezuela-centered project of radical transformation and a geopolitical stronghold in defiance of US hegemony. People around the world have found refuge, lessons and hope in Venezuela’s winding path to create something new. It is a path that has moved ideas, organized struggles and expressions of solidarity worldwide as people imagine into reality a world that upholds human dignity, social justice, sovereignty, multipolarism and community above all.

The Assembly Media understands that Venezuela’s struggle is intrinsically tied to Palestinian liberation from Zionist occupation, Cuba’s freedom from the US blockade, and Africa’s total emancipation from European exploitation. Our content not only centralizes mutual solidarity but also gives space for their voices to be heard as well.

The Assembly Media positions Venezuela’s Bolivarian Project as a central player in the international anti-imperialist struggle—both advancing it and recognizing the setbacks, limitations, and contradictions that shape any revolutionary project caught in the crosshairs of US imperialism. We do so while keeping our focus on respecting Venezuelan sovereignty and centering Venezuelan voices, experiences, and opinions.

Chavismo: a living ongoing project

Built around the ideals of Bolivarianism—and drawing on a legacy of 300 years of indigenous and African rebellion against colonialism—Chavismo emerged as a political movement during the Chávez presidency (1998–2013), aiming to collectively reshape Venezuela into a socialist grassroots democracy.

Chavismo’s roots lie in the union of diverse social movements, historical left-wing parties, and popular and armed struggle organizations that together weakened the neoliberal Fourth Republic (1958-1998)—with Chávez’s 1992 insurrection, though a failure, exposing the regime’s fragility and galvanizing the public discontent that ultimately brought it down.

During the Chávez years, Chavismo became a transformative political force unlike anything seen before in a region long hostage to US dominance. It forged the civic-military union to dismantle the country’s repressive past, while cutting poverty in half and driving extreme poverty down by more than 70 percent. The oil industry was brought under Venezuelan sovereign rule for wealth redistribution while land reform, regional solidarity and anti-imperialism took front and center.

Chavismo and its larger framework of the Bolivarian Revolution sought to make the country a socialist economy and to end the political and economic dependence, and the cultural influence, that kept Venezuela under the US boot. But it had its limitations: the oil industry was inevitably tied to an international capitalist oil network and US-dollar-dominated financial system, and the domestic private sector still controlled at least two-thirds of the national economy. These weak spots were exploited by Washington to undermine the socialist aspirations and the country’s growing popular empowerment. 

When Chávez passed away in 2013, Nicolás Maduro was elected as the first Chavista president. His administration was, however, confronted with political destabilization and terrorism by far-right factions, food shortages engineered by oligopolies, and psychological warfare. Then came US sanctions—internationally recognized as illegal unilateral coercive measures and crimes against humanity—that decimated Venezuela’s economy, set back the oil sector and public infrastructure by decades, and forced millions to migrate.

US sanctions were destructive precisely because Venezuela’s socialist efforts were still very much an island amidst a capitalist ocean. Every lifeline was connected to the US entity that was suffocating the people. This asphyxiation achieved the objective of turning the country into a war-torn economy, political desaffiliation, and the enactment of liberal economic policies that put the Chavismo base at odds with the government.

But amidst US economic terrorism and the contradictions from atop, Chavismo was never defeated and never wavered in its Bolivarianism. The people of Venezuela took Chavismo as their own, transforming and adapting it. Against all odds, Chavismo found a way to live on. The communes—Chávez’s final legacy for sowing socialist ideals and practices into Venezuela’s social fabric—continued meeting in people’s assemblies and governing their own territories, with aspirations (and achievements) to own the means of production that would emancipate them permanently.

Not just communes carried Chavismo forward. The women and men who lead, organize, and teach in their barrios and communities; the social movements who carry on solidarity with Palestine, Cuba, Iran, African nations, and beyond; and those who fight the battle of ideas across the entanglement of AI-dominated social media and lie-peddling Western outlets aligned with Monroism.

Chavismo has lived through the good, the unprecedented, and the unpredictable. It lived while the country was starved, blockaded, bombed and its president kidnapped. It will always live as long as there’s people who believe in it, as long as there are communes standing and Venezuelans defending sovereignty and rejecting US hegemony.

On January 3, 2026, Venezuela’s history was broken in half after being the target of an unprecedented US terrorist attack and its oil wealth stolen leaving the country in a hostage situation. While bloodshed was avoided through diplomacy, the price paid in sovereignty has made the grassroots struggle for anti-imperialism more urgent than ever.

Recognizing that Chavismo is not an ecstatic political movement, and that it has been forced to adapt under the strenuous pressure, violence, and coercion by Washington; recognizing that it has contradictions and internal fissures; recognizing that Chavismo was built upon decades of popular struggle that cannot be erased—our media outlet will always uphold Chavismo as a living, breathing project, as stated by those who embody it.

Updated on Aug 19, 2026 The Assembly Media team