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Reopening the Veins of Latin America

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Latin America is the region of open veins. Everything, from the discovery
until our times, has always been transmuted into European— or later United
States— capital, and as such has accumulated in distant centers of power.
Everything: the soil, its fruits and its mineral-rich depths, the people and their
capacity to work and to consume, natural resources and human resources.
Production methods and class structure have been successively determined
from outside for each area by meshing it into the universal gearbox of
capitalism…

For those who see history as a competition, Latin America’s backwardness
and poverty are merely the result of its failure. We lost; others won. But the
winners happen to have won thanks to our losing: the history of Latin
America’s underdevelopment is, as someone has said, an integral part of the
history of world capitalism’s development. Our defeat was always implicit in
the victory of others; our wealth has always generated our poverty by
nourishing the prosperity of others — the empires and their native overseers.

Eduardo Galeano, The Open Veins of Latin America

These two paragraphs, taken from page two of Galeano’s 1971 classic tome, pretty much sum up the basic argument of The Open Veins of Latin America: what should have been a source of strength for the region — its vast wealth of natural, mineral and energy resources — became its greatest curse, attracting the unending attentions of foreign powers.

Since Columbus’ first voyage over 500 years ago, Latin America has always served the economic interests of an imperial metropole — first Madrid and Lisbon, then Paris and London, and finally Washington. By contrast, the 13 colonies to the north had been blessed with “no gold or silver, no Indian civilizations with dense concentrations of people already organized for work, no fabulously fertile tropical soil on the coastal fringe. It was an area where both nature and history had been miserly: both metals and the slave labor to wrest it from the ground were missing.  These colonists were lucky.” (p.133).

It is a compelling argument, though one that, as Galeano himself would later admit*, overlooked other fundamental factors such as weak institutions, government corruption and the unwillingness of the local comprador elite to share in the spoils of entreprise. Nonetheless, the book would go on to become the Bible of the Latin American left, so much so that it was banned in many of Latin America’s military dictatorships, including Galeano’s native Uruguay.

In April 2009, during the Fifth Summit of the Americas held in Port of Spain, Venezuela’s former President Hugo Chávez famously gave President Barrack Obama a copy of the book. Obama had only been president for about 100 days and Chávez may have hoped that Nobel Peace Prize winner Obama had actually sincerely meant what he had said about hope and change, and ending US wars.

Presumably, Obama didn’t even bother to read the book. If he had, he may not have issued a presidential order in 2015 declaring the situation in Venezuela an “unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States”. That declaration opened the way for endless rounds of crippling sanctions against Venezuela’s economy and people.

However, in the past two and a half decades, something else has happened: China went global, becoming a near-peer economic rival to the US. At the turn of the century, as Washington was shifting its attention and resources away from its immediate neighbourhood to the Middle East, where it squandered trillions spreading mayhem and death, China began snapping up Latin American resources.

In the first decade governments across Latin America, from Brazil to Venezuela, to Ecuador and Argentina, took a leftward turn and began working together across various fora. They also began working with China. Unlike the US, Beijing generally does not try to dictate how its trading partners should behave and what sorts of rules, norms, principles and ideology they should adhere to. It also doesn’t tend to carry out coups and regime-change operations.

Even governments in thrall to the US, such as Milei’s in Argentina, have embraced China’s way of doing business. Chinese trade with Latin America grew over 40-fold between 2000 and 2024, from $12 billion to $515 billion. Also during this period, with the US distracted by war in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, Latin America suffered somewhat fewer interventions from the US.

Now, however, as the US retrenches from some of its commitments further afield (or at least tries/pretends to), the Trump administration is looking for peoples, resources and markets closer to home to exploit, plunder and crowbar open. Sadly, it seems that a new chapter in Latin America’s long history of open veins is about to be written, and unfortunately Galeano is no longer around to do so having passed away a few years ago.

Dark Shades of the Past

In the wee hours of January 3, the US carried out its first direct military intervention in Latin America since its 1989 invasion of Panama to depose the then-military ruler, Manuel Noriega. That attack resulted in the deaths of at least 3,000 people, mostly civilians. Current reports suggest that around 100 people, including 32 Cuban soldiers that were protecting President Nicolás Maduro, died in the US attacks against Venezuela in the early hours of January 3.

The attack has drawn inevitable parallels with the “capture” of Noriega as well as the Honduran army’s kidnapping and removal of President Manuel Zelaya to Costa Rica in 2009. It also bears similarities with the US’ kidnapping of the Mexican drug cartel leader Mayo Zambada in 2024. Like Zambada, Maduro may have been kidnapped by US forces as a result of insider betrayal, but there is as yet no definitive proof of this.

As Ambassador Chas Freeman said in an interview with the Neutrality Studies podcast, Maduro appears to have fallen victim to his own complacency regarding Trump’s intentions:

Nicolás Maduro discounted it too much. He seemed to believe that Trump would not be serious. The first thing to note is that the operation itself was very skilfully managed. The second is that it is entirely illegal, indecent, an atrocity really. And I think it put to an end three centuries of trying to develop a rule of law internationally.

Now, the Trump administration claims to have taken full control of Venezuela despite having no troops on the ground, or the fact that the Chavista government and political system is still very much in tact despite the extraordinary rendition of President Maduro.

The question many are asking is how long it can hold together, especially with Trump threatening to launch a second wave of attacks should it fail to comply with US demands. 

This is a government that has faced just about every possible form of attack from the US over the past two decades, with the exception of a land invasion, and managed to survive. 

In her first communication as new acting president  of Venezuela, Delcy Rodríguez struck a combative stance, accusing Israel of involvement in the attack and declaring that Venezuela will never be the colony of an empire again. She also demanded the release of President Maduro. In her second address, however, she struck a much more conciliatory tone:

“Venezuela reaffirms its commitment to peace and peaceful coexistence. Our country aspires to live without external threats, in an environment of respect and international cooperation. We believe that global peace is built by first guaranteeing peace within each nation,” according to a post Rodríguez wrote in Instagram on Sunday.

“We invite the US government to collaborate with us on an agenda of cooperation oriented towards shared development within the framework of international law to strengthen lasting community coexistence,” read the post.

“President Donald Trump, our peoples and our region deserve peace and dialogue, not war. This has always been President Nicolás Maduro’s message, and it is the message of all of Venezuela right now. This is the Venezuela I believe in and have dedicated my life to. I dream of a Venezuela where all good Venezuelans can come together. Venezuela has the right to peace, development, sovereignty and a future.”

Rumours of Betrayal

Some prominent Chavistas, including Eva Golinger, are clearly not happy about Rodriguez’s acquiescence, with some even using the word “betrayal” to describe her actions.

When it comes to betrayal by presidential successors, Latin America has a rich history, as reader vao noted in yesterday’s comments:

The handover from Rafael Correa to Lenin Moreno in Ecuador constitutes a sobering precedent: from a leftist government that implemented quite a number of reforms favouring the working class, sovereignty in the exploitation of resources, and autonomy from the USA to one doing a 180-turn (Baerbock-360) that privatized everything, abolished social reforms, exited ALBA, accepted the yoke of the IMF, and started a steady cooperation with the USA. The former basis of Correa protested heavily, and was crushed.

Moreno had been vice-president of Correa, and was member of the same party — just like Delcy Rodriguez wrt. Nicolas Maduro.

Rodríguez’s promotion also brings to mind the US-approved appointment of Dina Boluarte, Peru’s then-vice president, as president in 2022, following the removal, arrest and imprisonment of Pedro Castillo, Peru’s first ever indigenous president. Broadly reviled from the get-go, Boluarte would go on to become one of the world’s most unpopular leaders, reaching a disapproval rating of 94% before herself being impeached by Peru’s Congress late last year.

A Loaded Gun to the Head

For the moment, I am unaware of any conclusive evidence that Rodríguez betrayed Maduro. Things are moving extremely fast, good information is scarce, even in the Spanish-speaking press, and the dust has not even settled from the US’ January 3 attack.

Also, in her defence, what else could she have done?

She essentially has a loaded gun at her head. Trump himself, in full New York mobster mode, has said she could “pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro”, if she doesn’t comply with US demands, including giving US corporations “total access” to “the oil and other things”. At the same time, the US’ naval blockade is beginning to asphyxiate the Venezuelan economy.

Delcy and her brother, Jorge, the president of Venezuela’s National Assembly, are arguably the most powerful duo in Venezuela. But they also know from first-hand experience just how high the stakes can go in US-led power struggles: their own father, Jorge Antonio Rodríguez, a student leader and left-wing politician, was tortured to death by Venezuela’s US-controlled security forces in 1976 at the age of 34.

Two things we know for sure: Nobel War Prize winner María Corina Machado has been left out of the picture by both Trump and (a presumably reluctant) Rubio, at least for the foreseeable future. Trump said that while Machado was a “very nice woman,” she “doesn’t have the support within or the respect within the country” to lead Venezuela.

As we have been warning over the past month or so, there is no way the Venezuelan people, including many opposition supporters, would accept a Machado-led government, especially after Trump’s announcement in December that Venezuela’s oil effectively belongs to the US. There are apparently other reasons, however, including Trump’s wounded ego…

In abandoning Machado, Edmundo González and most other members of Venezuela’s rent-an-opposition, the Trump administration has infuriated elements of Spain’s Conservative Right, including José María Aznar’s FAES foundation, which has invested lots of political and financial capital propping them up. And that in turn appears to be causing a split in Spain’s right-wing bloc. And that’s at least one positive to take from all this.

The second thing we know for sure is that Latin America now faces a new wave of US gangsterism and resource plunder — one that has even less regard for things like national sovereignty, international law and human rights. While this new wave may be led and personified by Trump, behind him is the full weight of the US energy and military complexes as well as the Tech bro billionaires, who are looking not only for resources to plunder but also new freedom cities to seed, just like Prospera Inc. in Honduras.

The attack on Venezuela was the first real manifestation of the so-called Trump corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. Said corollary, as outlined in the recently published National Security Strategy document, asserts Washington’s right to “restore American pre-eminence in the Western Hemisphere,” and to deny “non-Hemispheric competitors” — primarily, China — “the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets.”

Those vital assets apparently include Venezuela’s vast oil reserves, which Trump cannot stop talking about. However, as Yves pointed out in her post yesterday, “wringing more production out of Venezuela’s oil fields would require a long period of investment before any real payoff took place.” And that investment is likely to run into the tens of billions of dollars.

Trump has also stated that while his government would open Venezuelan crude only for US companies, he expected to keep selling crude to China, which currently consumes most of Venezuela’s small (but recovering) output.

A Treasure Trove of Strategic Minerals

But oil isn’t the only strategic resource lying under Venezuelan soil. The country is also home to the fourth largest gold reserves on the planet and eighth largest natural gas reserves, as well as a treasure trove of critical minerals (bauxite, iron ore, copper, zinc, nickel and even rare earth materials). However, as Investor News points out, these critical mineral riches remain largely theoretical – geological possibilities rather than proven, bankable reserves:

Yet despite this vast resource wealth, commercial extraction is negligible. Minerals such as coal, lead, zinc, copper, nickel, and gold each account for less than 1% of Venezuela’s output (Ebsco.com), and there are no major foreign mining projects on the ground…

Due to a chronic lack of infrastructure, investor-friendly regulations and up-to-date exploration data, commercial extraction is negligible, notes the Investor News piece. Minerals such as coal, lead, zinc, copper, nickel, and gold each account for less than 1% of Venezuela’s output, and there are no major foreign mining projects on the ground. At least not yet.

However, Wall Street funds are apparently already eying opportunities in the country, reports the Wall Street Journal. The kidnapping of Maduro has apparently sparked renewed interest in unlocking Venezuela’s abundant natural resources:

Some on Wall Street are already considering possible investment opportunities in Venezuela following the capture of Nicolás Maduro, according to Charles Myers, chairman of consulting firm Signum Global Advisors and a former head of investment advisory firm Evercore.

Myers said in an interview he is planning a trip to Venezuela with officials from top hedge funds and asset managers to determine whether there are investment prospects in the country under new leadership. The trip will feature about 20 officials from the finance, energy and defense sectors, among others, Myers said. The tentative plan is for the group to travel to Venezuela in March and meet with the new government including the new president, finance minister, energy minister, economy minister, head of the central bank and the Caracas stock exchange.

And lest we forget, the Trump corollary is as much about trying to shut out the US’ strategic rivals — namely China, Russia and Iran — from strategic resources on the American continent as it is about the US getting its own dirty, blooded hands on them. And as we reported some time ago, China had begun to invest a lot in Venezuela’s oil sector, including in local refineries.

Put simply, the spice must not be allowed to flow to US rivals. Here we have the US ambassador to the UN saying exactly that yesterday:

This may sound vaguely familiar to long-standing NC readers, since a similar message was conveyed three years ago by the former SOUTHCOM commander, general Laura Richardson, in her address to the Atlantic Council.

In the speech Gen Richardson talked about “our countries in the region” as if they literally belonged to Washington. She also relayed how Washington, together with US Southern Command, is actively negotiating the sale of lithium in the lithium triangle to US companies through its web of embassies, with the goal of “box[ing] out” our adversaries — i.e. China, Russia and Iran.

Which, as we noted at the time, begged the question: what would happen if the US was unable to “box out” Russia and China, especially given the explosion of Chinese trade and investment in the region? Richardson answered as follows (emphasis my own): “in some cases our adversaries have a leg up. It requires us to be pretty innovative, pretty aggressive and responsive to what is happening.”

As we warned at the time, the US was essentially rejigging its Monroe Doctrine for a new age — an age in which it was rapidly losing economic influence, even in its own “backyard” — in order to apply it to China and Russia. At more or less the same time, the Biden administration signed, to minimal fanfare, a “minerals security partnership” (MSP) with some of its strategic partners, including the European Union, Canada, Australia, Japan, the Republic of Korea and the UK.

In a press statement, the US Department of State said:

“The goal of the MSP is to ensure that critical minerals are produced, processed, and recycled in a manner that supports the ability of countries to realise the full economic development benefit of their geological endowments.”

As NC reader Sardonia put it sardonically, this is “surely some of the most polite language ever heard from someone holding a gun to someone else’s head as they demand the contents of their victims’ purse.” The US describes the partnership as a coalition of countries that are committed to “responsible critical mineral supply chains to support economic prosperity and climate objectives.” Reuters offered a more fitting description: a “metallic NATO.”

The Trump administration is merely taking this approach to a whole new level, and doing so in the crassest, most dangerous possible way. After kidnapping Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, just two days ago, the Trump administration will presumably be returning its attentions to the Panama Canal and Greenland. Trump has already made direct threats against the governments of Cuba, which depends heavily on Venezuela’s commandeered oil, Colombia and Mexico.

Senator Lindsay Graham is hardly able to contain his glee as Trump tells reporters that “Cuba is ready to fall”, and that there are “a lot of great Cuban Americans that will be happy about this”.

Here is Rubio, again, explaining that while the US (apparently) doesn’t need Venezuelan oil, China, Russia and Iran certainly shouldn’t be getting their hands on it.

On Sunday, Trump told reporters on Air Force One:

“Colombia is governed by a sick man, who likes to make cocaine and sell it to the United States, but he is not going to continue for much longer, let me tell you.”

When asked by a reporter if Washington is considering “an operation like the one in Venezuela,” Trump did not rule it out: “It sounds good to me.”

Trump has also threatened, once again, to attack Mexico in recent days, prompting a stinging rebuke from President Claudia Sheinbaum:

We categorically reject intervention in the internal affairs of other countries. The history of Latin America is clear and compelling: Intervention has never brought democracy, has never generated well-being or lasting stability.

Five Latin American states (Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Uruguay and Chile) issued a joint statement with Spain’s Pedro Sánchez government rejecting the US’ unilateral military operations in Venezuela, describing them as violations of international law and warning of the risk to regional peace.

This is a tiny fraction of the total number of countries in Latin America and the Caribbean (33). As always, Latin America is sharply divided between pro-US national governments and more independent-minded ones. However, populist right-wing parties are having more success at the ballot box, in part because of Trump’s threats of dire consequences if voters support other parties, as we have already seen in Argentina and Honduras.*

It remains to be seen how the US’ naked aggression in Venezuela will play out among voters in Colombia and Brazil, where elections will be held this year. Meanwhile, as Spain’s El Diario recently reported, while the US has escalated its war of aggression against Venezuela, the White House has been discreetly signing security agreements with other countries that will allow it to deploy soldiers in Latin America and the Caribbean:

In recent weeks, the United States has struck military deals with Trinidad and Tobago, Paraguay, Ecuador, and Peru, as the Trump administration announced blockades of sanctioned oil tankers, ordered the seizure of ships, and launched the airstrikes that have killed more than 100 people in the Caribbean and Pacific. In addition, Washington has opened a new phase in its campaign against Maduro with CIA attacks inside the country.

The agreements range from access to airports, as in the case of Trinidad and Tobago, to the temporary deployment of U.S. troops in joint operations against “narco-terrorists,” as in Paraguay. They are being signed under the banner of the so-called “war on drugs,” the same justification that Washington uses for its offensive against Venezuela, although White House officials and Trump himself have said that toppling dictator Nicolás Maduro and seizing the country’s gigantic energy reserves are also among the objectives.

But even that narrative is now being discarded — at least for Venezuela. Now that Maduro is in a New York prison awaiting trial, the US Justice Department has quietly dropped its claim that Venezuela’s “Cartel de los Soles” is an actual group.

As we warned from the very beginning of the US’ deployment of troops in the Caribbean, the US’ rapidly escalating war on the drug cartels is nothing but a handy pretext for another wave of resource grabs in a region the US has always seen as its own backyard:

This forever war has about as much to do with combatting the narcotics trade as the forever wars in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Afghanistan had to do with combatting Islamist terrorism.

After all, the US is arguably the largest enabler of drug trafficking organisations on the planet while it wages a Global War on Drugs, just as it has been arguably the largest supporter of Islamist terrorist organisations while waging a Global War on Terror. Both types of organisations have proven to be useful allies in the pursuance of US imperial ambitions (e.g. the Colombian and Mexican cartels during Nicaragua’s Contra insurgency in the 1980s, or the Al Qaeda offshoots in Syria) while also serving as handy pretexts for military intervention.

In the following clip, Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater, sums up the (not exactly) new brand of imperialist thinking underpinning the Trump administration’s naked expansionist goals: if the natives can’t manage their own resources, we’ll just have to do it for them. Then, after plundering the mineral resources of the region’s countries, the US can turn around and blame them for being poor.

But just because Washington covets Latin America’s resources does not mean it will actually get them. As Yves documented yesterday, it will take years of investment and (at least) tens of billions of dollars for Venezuelan oil to be even close to ready to be exploited in serious volumes. Few companies are likely to be willing to part with that sort of cash, especially in light of the fact that Washington does not control Venezuelan territory, even at a figurative level.

However, Trump just announced that it will be the US government that will be doing the spending (h/t JD). After all, socialising private sector losses — and now, large scale investments — while privatising profits is now the model of US governance. Exxon Mobil, for example is currently under investigation in the US Senate over allegations that US taxpayers are unknowingly subsidizing the oil giant’s lucrative operations in neighbouring Guyana.

As the Guyana Business Journal reported in September, ExxonMobil is essentially claiming US tax credits for taxes on oil revenues that the Guyana government itself pays on the company’s behalf, rather than taxes the company actually pays itself. Keep in mind that Exxon is (presumably) one of the oil companies that Marco Rubio claims will be helping to rebuild Venezuela’s oil sector for the benefit of the Venezuelan people.

The US will presumably fail in its latest attempt to take over Latin America, due in large to the Trump administration’s abject inability to plan for complex situations — it can’t even run its own government departments let alone others’. However, it is perfectly capable of sowing devastation and bloodshed in the process, just as US governments have been doing in the region for the best part of the past two centuries.

 

* In 2014, Galeano partially disowned “Open Veins…“, saying in a speech in Brasilia that he would never read [the book] again, because if he did, he would faint.” According to Galeano, the book was written in a tedious style (and I have to admit, it’s not easy) and using the doctrinal tone of the traditional left. He added that in those early days of his career, he didn’t know enough about politics and economics to write a book of such scope.

From Revista Factum (machine translated):

He realizes that the dependency paradigm, with its rejection of Western capitalism, which underpinned his book had important shortcomings and overlooked other fundamental problems. Galeano underestimated the impact of weak institutions – anticipated by Bolívar in the early 19th century – and internal political and economic problems, such as government corruption and the unwillingness of the ruling classes to contribute to the development of more democratic and egalitarian societies, as Marx himself would argue when writing about the countries of the South.

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