The statements made and opinions expressed in this publication are solely the responsibility of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Security in Context network, its partner organizations, or its funders.
By José I. Bramonte
Abstract: The article analyzes the narratives surrounding the current escalation of US military presence in Latin America and assesses the complex political context that explains the lack of a unified rejection of US intervention in Venezuela. Thus, it situates the current juncture within long-standing US-supported and failed efforts to produce regime change in the country, and the long history of polarized thinking, which associates anti-interventionism with pro-Madurismo, and conflates “democracy” with the goals of the right-wing political opposition which has mobilized US attention to and intervention in the country. Acknowledging this long history of polarized thinking and the gravity of the current situation, the article proposes the need for an exercise in political imagination that rejects the current escalation of aggressions and a possible war between the US and Venezuela, traces an alternative path to resolve the ongoing political and economic crisis in Venezuela, and builds international solidarity amongst and toward Venezuelans.
Since September of this year the US military has carried out a series of strikes against alleged “narco-terrorists” smuggling drugs into the US through Caribbean and Eastern Pacific waters. The attacks have been accompanied by an unprecedented military build-up in the region; to date the death toll is calculated at around 105. Questions loom large, however, over the legality of these attacks and the “real” motivations behind them. Venezuela has been at the center of this conflict and the idea that the US is seeking access to the country’s vast oil reserves and other mineral resources through regime change has emerged as a credible explanation for some of these actions. To assess the complexity of the situation and its significance for Venezuela, we need to look at: 1) the narratives currently deployed to justify these military tactics; 2) long-standing US-supported and failed efforts to produce regime change in the country, and; 3) the long history of polarized thinking, which associates anti-interventionism with pro-Madurismo, and conflates “democracy” with the goals of the right-wing political opposition which has mobilized US attention to and intervention in the country. Stopping the escalation of a conflict between Venezuela and the US, and a potential war, should be one of the clearest calls to action we have right now, and one that should mobilize international solidarity around Venezuela and amongst Venezuelans. However, this complex political landscape has prevented Venezuelans and the international community from unifying around a public outcry against the military aggressions and their foreseeable catastrophic consequences for the country and the region. Whatever happens in the next few days will likely set the stage for US-Latin America relations for years to come and test the limits of our political imagination and our agency in the current juncture.
What explains the US’s recent focus on South America?
While the boat strikes have been going on for three and a half months, they are only recently drawing sustained critique in the US. Scrutiny has centered around a “second strike” against survivors of the first attack carried out on September 2, which would unambiguously qualify as a war crime. Despite condemnations of the attacks by several US Congress members and attempts to thwart these actions through different mechanisms, Trump administration officials maintain that the targets of these killings are proven narco-terrorists: recently re-categorized as “enemy combatants.” Rather than extra-judicial killings, as some have named these actions, Trump administration officials such as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, argue that these strikes constitute legitimate actions to stop the flow of drugs killing millions of people in the US. Therefore, the Trump administration is framing the killings as part of a strategy to defend US national interests.
These official explanations resurrect and conflate rhetoric from the Cold War, the War on Drugs, and the War on Terror, and resemble the strategy deployed to flood Colombia with a US military presence in the 1990s. But there is an important difference between Colombia and Venezuela. While programs such as Plan Colombia consolidated US hegemony in the region with the help of the Colombian government and its army, in the Venezuelan case the Maduro government is being construed as the enemy. The Trump administration claims that Venezuela is a hub of drug trafficking and therefore terrorist activity, and that the leader of these operations is Nicolas Maduro himself. Accordingly, the US has given Maduro the title of head of the “Cartel de los Soles” (Cartel of the Suns) and has raised the bounty for any information that could lead to his imprisonment from 25 to 50 million dollars. This cartel, which some claim does not really exist, supposedly encompasses all members of Venezuela’s armed forces: a designation intended to ramp up pressures on the government and its allies.
More worrisome, however, is the imperial narrative about the US’s “right” to reclaim Venezuelan oil and land to justify the more recent tactic of seizing oil tankers carrying Venezuelan oil allegedly subject to US sanctions. These actions, besides Trump’s announcements of military incursions on Venezuelan soil, indicate a ramping up of aggressions and a diversification of tactics. Despite Trump’s initial warnings to the press to “not read too much into it” (referring to the boat strikes, a possible phone call between Trump and Maduro, the “closing” of Venezuelan airspace, etc.) suspicions of Trump’s interest in seizing Venezuela’s large oil reserves through gunboat diplomacy have been corroborated. Thus, despite vocal opposition to these actions, the conflict is testing the ability of democratic institutions in the US to restrain the president’s imperial ambitions.
Why aren’t Venezuelans rallying against these aggressions?
In places like New York City, signs of alarm and dissent have become visible. Small groups of protesters have rallied to emphasize the fact that 70% of Americans reject the idea of entering a war with Venezuela: information that was recently displayed on a billboard in Times Square. Led by predominantly left-leaning organizers influenced by past and present anti-war movements, these efforts add to longstanding calls to keep “Hands off Venezuela.” However, Venezuelans in the US – now a much more visible immigrant group – don’t seem to be joining these protests en masse; instead some are mobilizing to express their support for their persecuted leader and now Nobel Peace Prize winner, Maria Corina Machado. The explanation of this perplexing desire for US military intervention to “solve” the Venezuelan problem, lies in the history of political polarization that defines and limits political action and imagination within Venezuela, and now among a politically significant Venezuelan diaspora.
Following this polarized logic, opposing US interventionism has been associated with replicating the government’s anti-imperialist and Bolivarian discourse. Therefore, if you oppose US intervention in Venezuela and a potential war in the region, it may also mean that you absolve the government of all blame in producing the profound crisis we have found ourselves in for the past 10-15 years. The crisis which intensified after president Hugo Chavez’s death in 2013 was political (as the government turned increasingly authoritarian) but mainly felt through declining economic and living conditions, such as: plummeting oil prices, deep indebtedness, soaring inflation and hyperinflation, food and medicine scarcity, a collapse of utilities infrastructure (communications, water, electricity, etc.), high levels of criminality, virtually disappearing wages, and largescale government corruption. However, it is imperative that we supersede this dichotomic mode of thinking if we are to acknowledge the severity of the current situation.
It is widely acknowledged that US sanctions, intensified during the first Trump administration, contributed to the collapse of the Venezuelan economy and thus to a massive exodus of Venezuelans, first to other Latin American countries, then to the US. Rather than achieving regime change, these unilateral sanctions have arguably solidified Nicolas Maduro’s control of the armed forces. The sanctions have been mobilized to justify the buildup of a repressive state machine to fend off proven foreign threats (which also include covert CIA operations and confirmed conspiracies to topple Maduro with the help of mercenaries). In more recent years Maduro has turned these repressive efforts inward to kill criminals and suppress political dissent. Thus, we already have evidence that US interventionism has not produced any positive outcomes in Venezuela, and has already made conditions worse.
The dangerous trappings of our polarized political imagination
The Venezuelan opposition, represented by US-backed figures such as Juan Guaido and Maria Corina Machado, has long mobilized the idea that, having exhausted all channels after years of protests, insurrections, and botched electoral contests, only with external help and a show of force will Venezuela be able to supersede Madurismo and Chavismo once and for all. The July 2024 presidential elections further confirmed this idea. Maria Corina Machado was not allowed to run because of her calls for insurrection during one such attempt to bring about regime change in 2014 (called La Salida). Maduro’s unproven claim that he won over Edmundo Gonzalez (who served as a stand-in figure in place of Machado), cemented the narrative that an insurrectionist, US-assisted, “exit” to what is now a deep-seated political and economic crisis, is Venezuela’s only hope. To eradicate the “malaise” of Chavismo, now transmogrified into Madurismo, so the narrative goes, we need a clean slate: a “purge” of any remnants of socialism in the country, imprisonment of all those responsible for human rights violations, and punishment – or extermination – of anyone who has been affiliated with this criminal regime. The thinking goes: “if a war is what it will take, so be it, Maduro brought it upon himself and on the Venezuelan people.” The narrative further reasons: “If we need to sell our oil and natural resources to the US to get out of the collective impoverishment produced by a socialist experiment gone wrong, let it happen.”
This visceral hatred of Chavismo and Madurismo is not uncommon among Venezuelans now living abroad. Many blame the Chavez and Maduro administrations for the destruction of the country’s economy, while downplaying the damaging role of US sanctions. Perhaps not all want war, or so one would hope. At best they may imagine that Maduro and his entourage will admit defeat and voluntarily leave the country, that the military will lead an insurrection against the government, or that Maduro will be surgically removed by a US military operation and replaced by Machado, the rightful winner of the 2024 elections. The fantasy includes sparing Venezuelans of more collective suffering by facilitating a painless democratic transition in which Chavismo and Madurismo will cease to exist, and Venezuelans will return en masse to rebuild the country. A certain “Venezuelan exceptionalism” that is part of our history as a “rich” oil nation, may be guiding some of this wishful thinking; but history warns us this is a very unlikely scenario.
The centrality of regime change in Venezuela in what appears to be a broader US strategy to regain imperial influence over Latin America remains unclear. It is possible that the desire for regime change is only a fantasy superimposed onto a broader effort to signal to US voters a revival of the Monroe Doctrine and reclaim lost ground – over powerful players such as China and Russia – in Latin America. What if the promise to topple Maduro (made several times before by a Venezuelan opposition that has routinely underestimated the government’s control of the military and largely lives in exile now) is not really at the center of this strategy? If Maduro remains in power despite the recent show of force and this conflict becomes a protracted naval and “total” blockade that continues to strangle the Venezuelan economy (similarly to Cuba), the limits of a US interventionist stance toward Venezuela, and therefore the strategies promoted by Venezuela’s right-wing opposition, may be stripped naked.
Why the US cannot and will not save us
Some of the people who support Machado’s views are the same Venezuelans who have endured the racist anti-immigrant policies advanced by the second Trump administration in the flesh. At the very least they may have relatives whose lives have been upended by these policies. The clearest example is the elimination of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Venezuelans in 2025, an important immigration benefit that allowed approximately 600,000 Venezuelans to legally live and settle in the US since 2021. Ironically, the justification for ending TPS was that conditions in the country had significantly improved, which seems to contradict the idea that Venezuela is being run by a drug cartel.
Despite this apparent contradiction, president Trump has remained consistent on one thing: his hatred of Venezuelans and all non-white immigrants. The inhumane and public deportation of 250 young men accused of being part of the Tren de Aragua gang (an unproven accusation used to justify the unjust detention, deportation and torture of these men without any due process), to Salvador’s super prison CECOT in March of 2025, is another example of this process of dehumanization. Trump has said publicly that the Venezuelan government is responsible for exporting criminals and drugs to the US. Sadly, this is a narrative that some Venezuelans living in the US replicate: making distinctions between the 2021 TPS cohort, most of whom supposedly came by plane and with visas, and the TPS 2023 cohort which largely came through the Darien gap. This second cohort are the “marginals” who gave Venezuelans a bad reputation in the US. Regardless of these nuances, which are heavily shaped by race, class and gender hierarchies used by some Venezuelans to claim their own deservedness to be in the US, the Trump administration’s blanket characterization of Venezuelans as criminals has demonized all Venezuelans. Thus, the idea that the same administration will bring peace and democracy to Venezuela is not only perplexing but utterly contradictory.
An exercise in political imagination is required
Largely exhausted by years of navigating and overcoming routinary and multiple crises, and silenced by a bulked up repressive regime in the last years, Venezuelans’ articulation of a sovereign response to this crisis outside of the solutions laid out by the government or the right-wing opposition, is very limited. Developing that capacity will require an exercise in political imagination, a largescale mobilization of forces outside of the already established paths, and a whole lot of collective dialogue and healing. But the question remains if ordinary people in the US, Venezuela, and other Latin American countries have any say on how this all will unfold.
Trapped in the middle of this conflict and trying to survive in various parts of the world amidst increasingly hostile conditions, it seems utopic to consider this gigantic task in the current juncture. But one thing is clear, a truly democratic and sovereign response will require thinking outside the paths presented by political elites whose interests are not aligned with those of the majority of Venezuelans who have borne the brunt of this conflict. Latin American countries, such as Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, and Brazil, that have experienced the negative effects of a massive and unexpected Venezuelan immigration also have a stake in this conflict. However, they have largely adhered to the right-wing strategy to cut ties and, some, diplomatic relations with the Venezuelan government and have contributed to turning Venezuela and its inhabitants into a regional pariah. These strategies, rather than debilitating the Maduro regime, have made life for Venezuelans migrants extremely difficult and have encouraged xenophobic reactions in the receiving countries. Moreover, if the military strategy is really about curtailing drug trafficking, US-bound migration, and reclaiming South America as the US’s sphere of influence, a unified response from the region is also warranted. The European Union also has an important role to play, but it currently seems to be following the US’s lead.
When this alternative path becomes more visible, solidarity can be mobilized between Venezuelans – abroad and at home – and international actors will rally around a common cause that can lead to peace and collective well-being for Venezuela and the region.
However, we must first acknowledge the perplexing desire for US intervention amongst swaths of Venezuelans, the origins of such contradictions, and the multiple explanations of the deep economic and political crisis Venezuelans have been dealing with for years. Saying that sanctions have negatively affected the country does not have to deny the corruption, economic mismanagement, lack of accountability, human rights violations and undemocratic practices of the Maduro government, rather these processes have to be seen in connection to each other. We must also be realistic about Maduro’s continued material and symbolic grip on power. There are structural reasons to explain the low wages of government workers and to understand why government/military fueled patron-client networks and capillary levels of everyday corruption have become basic survival strategies in Venezuela. Thus, we cannot disregard the legitimate fears that a change brought upon by force provokes among committed and even disaffected Chavistas and current government supporters who would not support a “democratic transition” as it is currently proposed. We also must also acknowledge the rampant repression and fear that dominates politics in Venezuela and in the US, and that prevents any form of unified response to the current threats.
Before we lose all political agency in the matter, these are truths that we must consider simultaneously if we are to make sense of and think of real solutions to the problems that afflict ordinary Venezuelans. If this is a moment of reckoning for all Venezuelans, I hope the lesson is that war cannot be an option. A US military intervention will only wreak further havoc in the country and the region. Maduro’s message, in his rather exaggerated and mocked broken English, “no war, yes peace” has now become viral on social media and has profound resonance. Once again, the US military advances and the unjust and unnecessary deaths they have already produced, may only reinforce Maduro’s control of the military and increase his popular support, especially if the desired regime change does not materialize in the coming months.
The author of this piece is a Venezuelan social science researcher and writer currently living in the United States. José I. Bramonte is a pseudonym.
