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The Trump Administration’s regime change operations in Venezuela are escalating rapidly, making it a challenge to keep up with the facts, lies, hypocrisies, kidnappings, and killings. That’s why we’re speaking with Professors Gabriel Hetland and Alex Aviña, two experts on the historical implications of US destabilization attempts in Latin America, who deep dive into why Trump is attacking Venezuela, the role oil and natural resources play in this, and the broader conflict it will bring with China and BRICS.
Useful Idiots: Despite the invasion, Alex, you’ve argued that this can be read as a sign of weakness of the United States. Can you elaborate on that?
Alex Aviña: The fact that they didn’t opt for a larger military operation could be read as a recognition of the difficulty of such an operation. The military assets that the US had moved in the Caribbean are not nearly enough for an Iraq-style invasion or even what they did to Panama in December of 1989.
If we think about the broader context, and thinking about the national security strategy that the Trump administration published late last year, they more or less have conceded that they can’t frontally challenge China and Asia. So one way that they are going to proceed in the future is to indirectly challenge China.
China is the largest trading partner for South America, right? Historically every time that the US “comes home” and starts taking it out on Latin America, it’s usually after a moment of defeat or an admission that the global designs of the United States have met obstacles. So they have to retrench their power within Latin America.
Useful Idiots: Gabriel, you have a recent article at The Intercept: “The U.S. Desperately Wants Back in the Business of Empire With Venezuela. America carried out a coup in Venezuela to plunder the country’s resources. But Latin Americans will have the last word.” So what do you mean by that, Latin Americans will have the last word?
Gabriel Hetland: Trump’s attempt to dominate Latin America doesn’t always work out the way the US wants it to. Specifically, when the US attempts to push Latin Americans around, it sometimes has an immediate or more long-term backlash. And we’ve seen this repeatedly in Latin American history just this year.
Trump went after Lula, the president of Brazil, because he was prosecuting Jair Bolsonaro for attempting a coup. He talked about slapping 50% tariffs on Lula, and that helped Lula’s popularity. We saw something similar in 2002 with Evo Morales in Bolivia. The U.S. ambassador called him a narco terrorist and he immediately went to number two in the polls.
There’s also going to be a backlash against U.S. imperialism in other countries. In Colombia, Gustavo Petro has had huge rallies all week. Santos, the conservative former president of Colombia, who’s not an ally of Petro, actually said it was good that Petro and Trump were having a conversation. So when the president of the United States goes after leaders in Latin America, it can put conservatives in Latin America on the back foot and force them to actually defend leftists. It can also provide an electoral boost for nationalists and leftists and anti-imperialism overall. I think that it’s very, very likely that we’ll see more of that.
Subscribe to watch full interview with Alex Aviño and Gabriel Hetland on the nearly-satyrical levels of racism in the Venezuelan opposition that MAGA is propping up, as well as a controversial question from Aaron.
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