US Flexes Venezuela 'Muscles,' Forgetting Its History
The article, from 2018, notes the US 'flexing military muscles' at Venezuela. Conveniently, it omits the historical gym membership: the US has been working out this routine in Latin America for over a century. From the 1954 coup in Guatemala to funding Contras in Nicaragua, countless 'national interests' have been cited to justify destabilization and regime change. Venezuela’s 1998 election of
Hugo Chávez, and later Nicolás Maduro, was immediately framed as a threat to US hegemony, not a sovereign choice. Newsweek mentions 'rising international concerns' over Maduro's leadership, but forgets to mention the US sanctions that choked Venezuela's economy, leading to humanitarian crises often blamed solely on Maduro. It's a classic playbook: impose strangling sanctions, then point to the
resulting suffering as justification for further 'muscles.' How many times must a nation choose a leader before the 'world' (read: Washington) respects that choice?