CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Alex Saab and the Fragility of the Solidarity Movement

Alex Saab, image Wikipedia.

The recent deportation of Alex Saab from Caracas to the U.S. on May 18, 2026, has generated shock, confusion, anger, and intense debate across sectors of the international solidarity movement and many Venezuelans themselves.

Alex Saab, a Colombian businessman who became closely associated with the Venezuelan government during the years of heavy U.S. sanctions, is seen by many Venezuelans as someone who helped the country bypass sanctions, obtain fuel and food, open financial channels, and resist economic collapse under blockade conditions.

The U.S. accuses Saab of corruption and money laundering connected to Venezuelan state contracts, but for many people in Venezuela and across the international left, Saab came to represent something larger than an individual businessman: the broader struggle over sanctions, sovereignty, and Venezuela’s ability to survive under extraordinary economic and geopolitical pressure.

The Venezuelan revolution did not survive the last decade of US economic warfare without contradictions. It survived through improvisation, exhaustion, loyalty, fear, sanctions, migration, stubbornness, and an almost unbearable national fatigue that few outside the country truly understand.

The United States did not merely sanction Venezuela. It attempted to break it. It froze national assets, it openly pursued regime change, backed parallel governments, economically strangled the country, and ultimately launched a military operation to kidnap........

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