[Steve Ellner] Targeting Venezuela

For sheer brazenness, the January 2026 kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, First Lady Cilia Flores, ranks near the top in the long history of U.S. interventions in Latin America. They were taken to New York and jailed to await trial in June 2027. Trump’s policies aside, U.S. sanctions on Venezuela were imposed under President Obama, who declared that country of 30 million people an “unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.” From Cuba to Chile and from Nicaragua to Brazil, few countries in Latin America have escaped U.S. invasions, bombings, assassinations, coups, kidnappings, rigged elections, boycotts, blockades or sanctions. Oil-rich Venezuela has long been on Washington's hit list. Today, it has ceded its sovereignty to the U.S.