U.S. 'Oversight' of Venezuela: A History No One Remembers
CBS News reports President Gustavo Petro's blunt assessment that Venezuela 'will implode' if the U.S. attempts to run it for years, a direct response to former President Trump's musings. What CBS, and much of U.S. corporate media, consistently fails to contextualize is that 'U.S. oversight' is precisely the policy recipe that has destabilized nearly every Latin American nation it has touched. From
the 1973 Chilean coup overthrowing Salvador Allende to the Contra War in Nicaragua, the U.S. has a long, documented history of installing and propping up compliant regimes, often with disastrous, 'implosive' results for the populace. (Perhaps 'implosion' is the desired outcome for certain U.S. interests.) The media frames such 'oversight' as a benign, if paternalistic, effort. But how many times
must a nation 'implode' under U.S. economic and political pressure before we acknowledge this isn't just a coincidence? It's not 'oversight,' it's often regime change by a thousand cuts, or sometimes, by a few hundred thousand bullets. Petro, unlike many U.S. politicians whose campaign coffers swell with defense industry money, seems uniquely aware of this history, having lived in a Colombia
heavily influenced by U.S. policies for decades.