Finding policy in the reactionary monsoon that is the administration of President Trump may be difficult for others, but it is already clear that Trump intends to carry on former president Barack Obama’s harassing and destabilizing of the oil-rich South American country of Venezuela, which 18 years ago set out to defy the economic model of neoliberalism and the “Washington Consensus” with the Bolivarian Revolution.
It’s hard to discern reality and myth in Venezuela considering the gallons of anti-Bolivarian propaganda that have been poured over our heads for years. Venezuela’s real crime in the eyes of Washington is not its human rights violations but rather its policies of social welfare for the poor, its vast oil reserves and its Bolivarian ideal of a united South America.
While many are quick to note the well publicized difficulties in Venezuela’s economy, few mention the campaign of aggression inflicted on it by the United States. It’s like criticizing Cuba without bringing up the decades long U.S. Navy blockade. In 2002, George W. Bush backed a failed coup against the leader of the Bolivarian Revolution, the late Hugo Chávez.
Though we’ve long been told Chávez was a “dictator,” the media forgets that when Chávez was deposed, Venezuela’s poor revolted for days until the government was forced to return him. In response to the failed coup, the U.S. commenced an international vilification campaign of Chávez and the funding of opposition parties in Venezuela.
As Chávez continued to restructure the Venezuelan economy, he made a powerful enemy in 2007, then-Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson, who now runs Trump’s State Department. When Tillerson refused to hand over more profits to the Venezuelan government, Chávez nationalized the company’s holdings in the country.
It is willful ignorance to think that Tillerson won’t work to seize Venezuela’s oil with his newly acquired resources in the State Department. Trump continued to meet with Senator Marco Rubio and Lilian Tintori, the wife of Venezuelan opposition leader and political prisoner Leopoldo Lopez.
Trump apparently forgot to tweet that Lopez’s imprisonment is due to inciting of anti-government protests in 2014 that led to scores of deaths. He is also part of the opposition funded by the U.S. Venezuela responded to this escalating diplomatic battle by shutting down CNN in the country due to a story claiming the Venezuelan government sold passports to Middle East terrorists.
If Trump overthrows the Venezuelan government, the consequences could be similar to those in Honduras, whose government Obama overthrew in 2009. Honduran death squads now slaughter environmental activists while multinationals pillage the country’s resources.
The crushing of Venezuela would prove an existential defeat for the populism that has fought to win Latin America its first independence in 500 years. The situation is now grim, as in eight short years Barack Obama systematically undermined the numerous popular and sovereign Latin American governments that existed in January 2009. As of 2017, only Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Uruguay, Chile and Ecuador had democratically elected left-wing governments. Expect that to change under Trump.
luwrobin@umail.iu.edu
