A-Infos (en) Italy, Sicilia Libertaria #463 - Venezuela: From US Sanctions to the Threat of Armed Invasion -- Fri, Oct 3, 2025, 6:40 PM (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

During the second half of the 20th century, Venezuela's relations with 
the United States were relatively peaceful, largely because, after the 
overthrow of military dictator Pérez Jiménez in 1958, a "democratic" 
two-party system of Christian Democrats, allied with the United States, 
took power, which increased oil extraction by US companies. To 
understand the First World's interest in Venezuela, it is important to 
understand that Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world, 
with underground reserves exceeding 300 billion barrels. However, it 
should be noted that this is super-heavy crude oil, which requires 
specialized technology to extract and process. Likewise, there are vast 
natural gas reserves underground, ranging from 195 to 200.3 trillion 
cubic feet (BCP), making Venezuela the eighth largest country in the 
world and first in Latin America in proven gas reserves. The United 
States' interest in maintaining control of Venezuelan oil is thus 
evident, especially considering that until 1999, US oil companies paid 
minimal royalties (1% to 5%) to the Venezuelan state. This situation 
changed radically when Chávez came to power and overturned the oil 
system, imposing royalties of 33% and subsequently changing the 
historical rules on ownership of extracted oil, imposing the creation of 
mixed companies, with at least 51% held by the Venezuelan state.

The autonomy from the United States that the Chavista project sought was 
achieved partly in the political realm but not in the economic one, 
since the United States remained the largest purchaser of Venezuelan oil 
and, moreover, Venezuela's largest heavy oil refinery (CITGO) is located 
on US soil, along with its own distribution network in that country (now 
under seizure). Thus, as Venezuela increasingly tightened its relations 
with Cuba and the Chávez project became more radical, the crisis in 
relations between the two countries due to the increase in oil royalties 
was compounded by an ideological motivation: the United States was 
reactivating its historic fight against "communism" in Latin America. 
From the beginning of Chávez's presidency, the United States increased 
its pressure, including by instigating an unsuccessful coup in 2002 and 
imposing sanctions on officials and the military in 2008; But it was 
with his death in 2013 and Maduro's rise to the presidency that the 
United States changed its strategy, imposing economic sanctions and 
progressively blocking Venezuela from selling oil and other exports, 
such as gold (a large portion of Venezuela's gold reserves, held in the 
British central bank, have been seized). In 2014, with Obama as 
president, a long series of general and individualized sanctions against 
Venezuela began, including the seizure of US bank accounts of Chavista 
officials and military personnel, both Democratic and Republican, until 
Trump's second presidency, when the sanctions strategy, which 
practically pushed Venezuela into the open arms of Russia and China, was 
supplemented by the mass expulsion of Venezuelan emigrants to the United 
States and, finally, military pressure (it should also be remembered 
that since 2018, the European Union has also joined the North American 
sanctions policies).

The expulsion of several thousand Venezuelans from the United States, 
even those with residency and work permits, to prisons in El Salvador or 
their country of origin, on Venezuelan government planes, was legally 
validated by the Trump administration, citing a 1798 law that gives the 
US president the authority to expel foreigners from nations at war with 
the United States. To demonstrate this nonexistent war, Trump has 
developed a bizarre theory: the Venezuelan government has emptied its 
prisons of criminals and sent them, along with "madmen" from mental 
institutions, to the United States to destabilize it. Specifically, this 
would involve sending criminals associated with the "Aragua Train" gang, 
a Venezuelan-origin, mafia-style group that is expanding in Latin 
America. To identify members of this gang, they developed ethnic 
criteria and, more importantly, specific tattoos that would identify 
them. As a result, anyone with a strange tattoo and Latino physical 
characteristics could be arrested and deported. And although some judges 
partially blocked the use of that old law, Tramp public opinion in the 
US was happy to have a new foreign enemy against whom they were 
implicitly declaring war.

And since the domestic explanation would not have been of much use on 
the international front to explain the new attack, this time a military 
one, on Venezuela, on August 19, 2025, Trump declared that a plan would 
be activated to combat drug trafficking that was being sent from 
Venezuela to the United States by a supposed "Cartel de los soles," so 
called because it was supposedly run by Venezuelan army generals, headed 
by Maduro (whose reward was increased by Trump to 50 million dollars for 
anyone who helps capture him). And even though many Latin American 
countries don't believe this hoax, as is the case with the president of 
Colombia, and even though they certainly don't support it politically, 
Trump went ahead with his plan: in the days following the announcement, 
six warships, including the "Amphibious Rapid Attack Force Iwo Jima," 
with 8,500 marines and sailors, plus about twenty attack helicopters, a 
nuclear submarine, and an unspecified number of P-8 Poseidon maritime 
patrol planes, arrived in the Caribbean. And it was these ships that, 
patrolling the borders of Venezuelan territorial waters, sank four 
speedboats, probably Venezuelan or Colombian fishermen, between late 
August and early September, bombing them from afar. The attackers 
explained that they were drug traffickers from the "Aragua Train" coming 
from Venezuela and carrying crates of drugs to the United States. 
However, they failed to show either the bodies of the twenty victims or 
the crates of drugs. As the New York Times wrote, quoting a US military 
official, "Sending this type of contingent to fight the cartels and stop 
the speedboats is like showing up with a cannon at a knife fight." And 
even among Latin American presidents and within the UN itself, fearing 
an escalation of violence, some have explicitly stated that this was a 
veritable assassination, outside of any international law. We'll see 
what happens in October and we'll report on it.

Francisco López

https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/
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