The world is at war, a war made up of many wars, but with the same objective: the capitalist recolonization of the planet. Each of these wars is fought on different fronts: political, economic, cultural, military, technological… The bombs being dropped today in different parts of the world were preceded by economic measures, political agreements, and the dissemination of lies. Truth is also a victim of war.
The genocide that is intensifying today against the Palestinian people was preceded by decades of indifference, inaction, and collaboration from the ruling classes and their institutions. The bombs that fell on Venezuela a few weeks ago were also preceded by financial measures, disinformation campaigns, and even a Nobel Peace Prize. Every bullet, every bomb, every drone translates into profits for the large arms corporations. War is in itself a business that opens up other businesses, always at the cost of the death and suffering of millions.
The masters of war and money have set out to recolonize the world: to eliminate peoples and destroy territories. The expansive, genocidal, and ecocidal nature of the system is becoming increasingly clear. Today, these masters of war and money show their true faces. They do not hide their interests. They no longer use the old pretexts for murder: democracy, freedom, human rights, security. They tear down the institutions and legal frameworks they themselves created. They reveal themselves for what they are: criminals involved in sex trafficking networks, racists, xenophobes, anti-scientific. They openly declare that their wars are to build projects like New Gaza, or for Venezuela’s oil. Today, without mincing words, they say they want to suffocate Cuba, just as they suffocated George Floyd, the African American man who exclaimed “I can’t breathe,” in 2020 while the US police murdered him.
The world is at war, a capitalist war of recolonization in which the powerful carve up the planet. Truth is not the only victim; ethics suffers as well: amidst the confusion and uncertainty, geopolitics leads some to choose between executioners. Proletarian internationalism and solidarity among peoples can wait, they say, if such and such a government is the enemy of my enemy. It is easy to lose one’s bearings amidst so much noise, disinformation, and confusion.
The war of recolonization and the division of the world among those at the top is advancing. Fortunately, fewer and fewer are the deluded who believe that after the war will come “democracy,” “security,” or “development.” The system is born dripping with blood, and with blood it stays alive and growing. El Viejo Topo pointed this out in detail long ago: capital is dead labor that, like vampires, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives longer the more labor it sucks.
In the midst of war, the people resist. The people of Palestine resist more than seven decades of genocide. The people of Venezuela resist, having spent over two decades building communal power. The dignified people of Cuba resist, having spent more than half a century committed to health, education, and socialism. Kurdish women resist centuries of domination. The Mapuche people resist external and internal colonialism. The people of Iran also resist the ruling classes and the manipulation of Israel and the United States. The people of the United States resist, taking to the streets every day to defy the order of terror and death imposed by Trump. In Mexico, the Zapatista communities resist and insist on building a new world, even undertaking the construction of an operating theater in the heart of the Lacandon Jungle. As the world shifts further and further to the right, they, the indigenous people of Maya descent, propose the commons and the non-private ownership of property.
There are so many reasons to be concerned about the world today: war, ecocide, and the new right wing, to name a few. But there are also reasons to have hope. It is enough to refocus our gaze, to look at the people and their long experience of struggle. It becomes necessary to acknowledge that in this civilizational transition we have not yet reached rock bottom, but that there are those who are already preparing for what will come after the storm. Because those people who resist today are also painting the brushstrokes of tomorrow’s world. It is time to choose: either you stand with this genocidal and ecocidal system, or you stand with the people and their resistance. As the Zapatistas said: “Say no to death and yes to life. But don’t be fooled. You will have to fight every day, at all times, and in everywhere.”
The world is at war, a war of capitalist recolonization, and, as in the past, the people, those at the bottom, have begun to build another world on the ruins of this one that does not finish crumbling.
Original article by Raúl Romero, La Jornada, February 17th, 2026.
Translated by Schools for Chiapas.