A brief history of US aggression in Venezuela

The January 3 attack was not the first time the US has used force to extract resources from Venezuela

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Thanks to the support of our subscribers, we have been able to commission this essay from Dr. Rodrigo Acuña, an expert on Latin American affairs with a PhD on Venezuelan foreign policy from Macquarie University. It’s a thoughtful, insightful read on the history of US imperialism in Venezuela, providing important context that, sadly, is missing from mainstream coverage.

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Depiction of the blockade of Venezuela in 1902

By Dr. Rodrigo Acuña

Headlines of the kidnapping of Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro described a world in “shock” over the US attack. But given the history of US-Latin American relations, people, in particular Venezuelans, should hardly be shocked at all.

US aggression in Venezuela has been replayed time and again in a relationship entangled in a messy web of imperial domination, endless capitalist demands for resources, and the racial faultlines left by centuries of colonialism and slavery in the Americas. Understanding this history, from the Venezuelan perspective, is crucial to understanding what is happening today.

History repeating

The US strikes on Venezuela on January 3 were not the first time the US has applied force to subdue the South American country in a quest for its resources. In the early 20^th century, it was tar in Venezuela’s Bermúdez Lake that was the prize for wealthy US elites. When then-Venezuelan President Cipriano Castro refused an American claim to Venezuela’s tar, the US funded a war against Castro by financing local Venezuelan banker Manuel Antonio Matos to launch an insurrection against Castro.

Coined, ironically, the ‘Liberating Revolution’ from 1901 to 1903, the governments of Britain, Germany and Italy sent warships to blockade Venezuela’s ports in La Guaira, Puerto Cabello and Maracaibo. With his enemies claiming outstanding debts, Castro stood firm, drawing racist rebukes from then-US President Theodore Roosevelt as an “unspeakable villainous little monkey”.

The foreign powers disbanded Venezuela’s small navy and bombed the country’s coast. Castro, the ever so stubborn president, still refused to play ball. The US navy then moved into the Caribbean Sea and a US envoy reminded Castro he owed money, “and sooner or later you will have to pay”.

The crisis left 15,000 Venezuelans dead, culminating in a US-backed coup in 1908. Castro’s right-hand man, General Juan Vicente Gómez, was installed as president, and, predictably, allowed foreign companies to drill Venezuela’s vast oil reserves.

Independence and Latin American unification

On the surface, to those outside of Latin America, it might seem paradoxical that President Hugo Chávez’s declared ‘Bolivarian’ revolution in 1999 would draw inspiration from the architect of South American independence: Simón Bolívar (1783–1830). Born of Spanish ancestry in the Americas (what in the region is known as a criollo), Bolívar came from the wealthy colonial elite in Caracas.

After Venezuela first declared its independence in 1811, and then suffered military defeats against the Spanish that saw Bolívar flee into exile, the only government willing to help Bolívar was that of Haiti led by President Alexandre Pétion. Having established the first sovereign state in 1804 after a successful slave rebellion, the example of Haiti terrified elites in both the Western Hemisphere and Europe. While Bolívar promised to free African slaves in the territories he liberated (a promise he fulfilled), the aid he received from Haiti was crucial as it allowed him to launch the expedition that restarted the independence war.

Eventually, having successfully overthrown the Spanish, Latin American elites never repaid Haiti, often downplaying its role in achieving independence due to racial and political prejudice.

Understanding that the new republics – Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia – were always going to be too weak to engage with the rest of the world, Bolívar at the Congress of Panama in 1826 called for a league of American republics to establish a mutual defence pact, and a supranational parliamentary assembly.

In the background to these political developments, three years earlier in 1823, US President James Monroe established the Monroe Doctrine which, according to Washington, prohibited further European colonisation of the Americas. But in practice, it sought to assert US hegemony over the Western Hemisphere, denying Latin America an equal platform. In 1829, writing to a British diplomat on the rise of the Monroe Doctrine, Bolívar stated: “The United States seems destined by Providence to plague the Americas with misery in the name of liberty.”

Post-colonial racial faultlines

Although Bolívar had issued earlier decrees to abolish slavery, such as in 1812 and 1816, it was not until 1854 that the abhorrent practice was banned. Nevertheless, the descendants of criollos still dominated the future political and economic class of Venezuela, albeit with some important exceptions where blacks and persons of mixed race gained some access to political power. This differed to Argentina and Brazil, where whites enjoyed far greater access to political and economic power.

“After emancipation in 1854”, wrote the historian Winthrop R. Wright in his acclaimed book Café con leche: Race, Class and National Image in Venezuela, “blacks continued to live in the shadow of their slave background.” While lighter-skinned Venezuelans long denied the country had an issue with racism, the author observes:

“In their own minds the Venezuelans substituted economic discrimination for racial discrimination. Rather than attribute their antiblack feelings to racial attitudes or racism, Venezuelans argued that they did not like blacks because they lived in poverty.”

Published in 1990, Wright’s study noted that Venezuela’s professed racial harmony was demonstrated by the fact that no census conducted since the 1854 abolition of slavery recorded the population by race.

Racism, class and imperialism: a continuing story

While some sections of the Venezuelan diaspora have come out to celebrate President Donald Trump’s actions, most notably those of light-skin European heritage (blancos), back in Venezuela, the country’s poor, who are predominantly of mixed African, Indigenous and Spanish backgrounds (morenos/mestizos), have been protesting in large numbers against US aggression.

In mid-December, one poll inside Venezuela noted that 90% of Venezuelans rejected any form of US military intervention. Another survey claimed 83% of Venezuelans would be willing to defend their homeland against a foreign invasion.

Although Venezuela’s oil industry was nationalised in 1976, and the country had a limited parliamentary democracy since 1958 when another US-backed dictator was overthrown due to a popular uprising, the country still had poverty rates bordering on 60% of the population.

Like Castro, Chávez and his Bolivarian revolution was far from perfect. While Chávez’s media presence was mocked, or misrepresented in the western press, his supporters adored the way he could ad lib about Venezuelan history, literature, music and politics while often mocking his domestic and international adversaries. Chávez made average Venezuelans feel proud of their indigenous and African roots.

Being the first president of Venezuela to look like 51% of the population (i.e. moreno/mestizo), when Chávez launched a national census in 2011 the opposition – mostly backed by Venezuelans of European ancestry – complained that it was divisive to ask Venezuelans if they considered themselves to be of African descent.

In 2013, the year Chávez died of cancer, the UN reported that poverty in Venezuela “had been significantly reduced, enrolment in education had been increased and illiteracy had been totally eradicated since 2005.” The report also noted that the Chávez administration made great strides to tackle “racial discrimination.”

A revolution in survival mode

Nicolás Maduro – the anointed successor of Chávez – had a difficult job in being the follow-up act to the beloved Chávez. A former bus drive turned trade union leader in Caracas, Maduro was Venezuela’s foreign affairs minister from 2006 to 2012. Making numerous gaffes at first as he struggled to find his own style of communication, Maduro narrowly beat his rival Henrique Capriles in the 2013 presidential election.

Like Chávez, the opposition could not stomach Maduro. Worse, a few years into his presidency, Venezuela had to face the full impact of crushing US sanctions that have left 100,000 people dead and a massive brain drain. In 2015, Barack Obama signed an executive order declaring Venezuela an “unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security of the United States”.

Maduro also faced numerous assassination attempts, a failed 2020 US-led mercenary invasion, several violent episodes, the seizure of Venezuela’s Citgo Petroleum Corporation by the US government (which denied the Venezuelan state billions in revenue and was sold to a vulture fund), the freezing of US$4.8bn of Venezuela’s gold by the Bank of England, and finally (amongst a very long list), his illegal kidnapping to the US on trumped up charges of drug trafficking.

During his tenure, Maduro’s government further entrenched itself in power. According to its critics on the ultra-left, the government also showed less tolerance towards legitimate criticism. With some poor economic decisions made at the start of his presidency, Maduro claimed a presidential victory in 2024 without releasing a full tally breakdown of the results.

Despite these shortcomings, in 2024, Maduro declared his government had built 5m apartments for underprivileged Venezuelans. Last December, according to the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), the Venezuelan economy in 2025 grew by 6.5% – the highest in the region.

In a visit to Caracas in late 2024 (that year the economy grew 8.5%), all of the grocery stores I visited were well stocked with one notable difference: most products were made in Venezuela. Maduro’s administration was shifting Venezuela toward self-sufficiency in the area of food security and, through Chinese, Russian, Turkish and Iranian investments, was beginning to circumvent US sanctions.

In November 2025, the US published its national security strategy, reviving the Monroe Doctrine to “restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere”.

Back in Venezuela, the opposition have yet to stage one demonstration in favour of the US attack. In a recent survey inside Venezuela, “94% of respondents expressed their disapproval of the kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores.” But history acts as a guide to how present stories might unfold.

On 4 December 1924, as Vicente Gómez ruled in the interest of Washington and local elites, Cipriano Castro died in exile in the US colony of Puerto Rico. It is hard to see Maduro evading a similar fate.