The following talk by Jesús Rodríguez-Espinoza was given at the “No War on Venezuela” forum held in Baltimore on Nov. 22. Rodríguez-Espinoza is a former Consul General of Venezuela in Chicago and a seasoned analyst of international relations and Venezuelan politics. He was a founding editor of Aporrea.org and is the founder of the renowned anti-imperialist news outlet, Orinoco Tribune.
The forum was sponsored by the Peoples Power Assembly, Struggle for Socialism Party, CPUSA Baltimore Club, Friends of Latin America, Casa Baltimore Limay, ILPS Baltimore / DM, Baltimore Peace Action, Baltimore Vets for Peace, and Black Alliance for Peace, Baltimore. The forum can be viewed on Struggle – La Lucha’s YouTube channel.
Thank you for the invitation, comrades. And thank you for organizing these events, especially under the current circumstances, under the current unprecedented U.S. military deployment in the region. So first, I want to try to explain the way I see the geopolitical context around this situation.
So basically, it reminds me of the first things that President Trump said when he initiated his new term. And I remember that when I heard that he was talking about having control of Greenland, or annexing Canada, or changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, or retaking the Panama Canal, I initially thought that those were crazy statements, usual for the way Donald Trump behaves.
But right now I see it differently, especially after reading and listening to analysts and experts and thinkers talking about how the U.S. has been realizing that there’s a change in the correlations of forces worldwide. And the U.S. is just trying to secure the place – the area that it considers its domain, its backyard, its neighborhood, whatever name you want to put on it.
But that’s basically what has been happening.
And this military deployment in the Caribbean and this stress of military invasion or attacks against Venezuela are just an expression of that approach, that new foreign policy approach coming from the U.S. And it’s not because President Trump is extremely brilliant or whatever. Those plans have been designed for years by the oligarchy in the U.S., by those who control the U.S., which are the corporations. So, they basically want to secure access to natural resources and to markets in this part of the world. Because Russia and China – and other countries, like India or Turkey or South Africa – have been disputing the preeminence and the supremacy that the U.S. has exercised for several decades, especially after the fall of the Soviet Union in the ‘90s.
That’s the general context of this situation that is affecting us. And bringing it down to reality takes us to what I just mentioned, which is the natural resources. Within this global scenario, the U.S. needs to secure natural resources from the region, and Venezuela is one of those countries in the region that has happened to have the biggest oil reserve in the world. So, it’s strategic for a country like the U.S.
That’s basically the context of what is happening, and I add to that context the element of the “bad example” – quote, unquote – of Venezuela. Because Venezuela represents a country that does not submit to U.S. dictates, does not obey what Washington says we should do or not do. And for that reason, it’s also important for the U.S. to get rid of countries like Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua.
The aggression against Venezuela should be understood within that context. And getting rid of Venezuela – for those in the U.S. who are dreaming of doing that – will signify an escalation against Cuba and Nicaragua, and maybe other countries. We are actually seeing that even Colombia, which has this president who is not like a socialist, Marxist, or whatever, has been threatened by the U.S. in recent weeks. The president of Mexico has also been threatened.
That gives you an idea on how things are happening, and the risk, and the causes of what is happening. So, I wanted to talk about those things before going into the details about Venezuela. Another thing that I believe is important, and that I say is that whatever you hear about Venezuela being a dictatorship, or authoritarian, and that Maduro is an authoritarian tropical dictator, and human rights are terrible here in Venezuela – those things are humongous lies. I mean, I’m not saying that Venezuela is perfect. No country is perfect. But we are far from how the U.S. mainstream media describes us.
It’s extremely important that people do not fall into those narratives about us being a rogue nation, a narco-state. That’s the big lie that they have been trying to sell recently. I mean, the U.S. has been trying to oust Chavismo – the Bolivarian revolution – since Hugo Chávez took office in 1999. We are talking about 25 years of U.S. attempts to promote regime change in Venezuela, and they have not succeeded.
They have not succeeded because the Bolivarian revolution and Chavismo are not only rooted in the leadership. It’s something that goes beyond President Chávez or President Maduro or the current leadership of the Venezuelan government. So, for that reason, the U.S. has not been able to create a regime change here in the country.
But anyway, I need to explain to you what is happening in terms of the threat and the recent U.S. deployment, and what is happening in the region. In August of this year, President Trump, the Department of Justice of the U.S., raised the bounty on President Maduro from $25 million to $50 million. So this is a bounty on President Maduro, dead or alive. It’s a price on his head. The mainstream media tries to present these bounties with beautiful words, but that is basically what it is. The U.S. is giving money to whoever decides to get rid of President Maduro to capture or kill him to receive this bounty.
That is not new. The first bounty on President Maduro was announced by the U.S. in 2019, and it was for $15 million. Then it was raised in January this year to $25 million, and then in August, as I said, that was raised to $50 million.
This is important because far-right opposition politicians in Venezuela, together with far-right people in the U.S., like Marco Rubio and the crazy Cuban congresspeople (the crazy Cubans, as they call them) have been pushing for several months already to raise the bounty on President Maduro to $100 million, because that’s the money that mercenaries like Eric Prince have said publicly that they will need in order to launch a mercenary operation to try to kill President Maduro. So that’s why the issue of the bounty is relevant.
Actually, a few months ago, Mario Díaz-Balart, who belongs to the crazy Cuban group and is a representative from Florida, introduced a proposal or resolution in the U.S. Congress calling for the bounty to be raised to $100 million. A few days after the bounty on Maduro was raised to $50 million, the New York Times “leaked” – quote, unquote – this information about President Trump signing these secret memoranda about the deployment that we have seen in the Caribbean in recent weeks.
And what does this deployment mean? Right now in front of Venezuela, I believe that there are about 11 or 12 warships from the U.S. Navy, the biggest and newest U.S. aircraft carrier, the Gerald Ford aircraft carrier, one nuclear submarine and one regular submarine have been reported by the mainstream media in recent days.
We are talking about 15,000 U.S. troops near the coast of Venezuela. This is a military move not seen in this part of the world since the ‘80s. For at least 40 years, something like this was not seen in this part of the world. And a movement of this size is not easy to disband without “presenting results,” between quotations. So for that reason, many people around the world, and of course in Venezuela, have been denouncing this as basically a U.S. regime change operation against President Maduro, against Chavismo in Venezuela. And some people are saying that this threat might become a military invasion. But at least for now, the number of troops that we are seeing is not enough to launch a military invasion against Venezuela.
Because, for example, the military invasion against Panama in the ‘80s required around 30,000 U.S. troops. Right now, the U.S. only has half that amount of troops near Venezuela. So, it’s gonna be hard for the U.S. to do a military invasion with the forces that we currently see. That doesn’t mean that the U.S. cannot quickly amass more troops near Venezuela. We cannot discard the possibility of a military invasion. But as the situation is right now, people say that it’s very probable that airstrikes can happen – decapitation strikes, which means that the U.S. will try to kill the leadership of Chavismo. That’s a real possibility, and that’s what many of us here in Venezuela have been worried about in recent weeks.
That’s the context of the military deployment. The argument from the U.S. is that they are in a new war on drugs to try to protect the U.S. people. We all know that’s a big lie. Because if the U.S. really wants to protect the U.S. people from drugs, it would first get rid of the cartels that operate in the U.S.
I’m talking about white people cartels, not Mexican or Colombian cartels – the people that move the drugs in the US. And secondly, they should do real and comprehensive programs to try to help the U.S. people caught in drug addictions and try to do a massive program to really try to get U.S. people out of drugs.
That’s the reality. And the drugs go to the U.S. because the biggest market for drugs is there. That’s why drugs go to the U.S. You are never going to end the drug crime business by going to the source of the cocaine or other crops that are used to fabricate drugs.
But that’s been the argument of the U.S. And with that argument, they have already killed 83 people – civilians – in small boats in the Caribbean, raising a lot of alarms all over the world and even in the U.S. about the legality of this. You know, you cannot kill someone just because you were tipped by an informant that the boat carries drugs, because there are often mistakes in the intelligence. Experts say that with seizures of drugs in the Caribbean using the regular procedures, there is a mistake rate of 25%. [This comes from the U.S. Coast Guard’s fiscal year 2024 performance report.]
So what I’m trying to tell you is that maybe out of those 83 souls that have been killed in the Caribbean, if we take for granted that they were really tipped to be small boats carrying drugs, at least 20 of those people might have been innocent. The operation is a big mistake. It has been criticized. And I’m pretty sure that eventually it will be stopped. And a lot of people are going to be indicted because it’s illegal under all the laws that you want to consider.
And the people are not only from Venezuela, but also from Colombia, Trinidad and Tobago, and even from Ecuador. A survivor from Ecuador has been targeted by these strikes. So that’s the panorama of the current situation that we’ve seen in the Caribbean. And there’s rhetoric coming from Washington about striking allegedly drug production facilities in Venezuela and drug lords, allegedly, and they have accused President Maduro of being the head of a cartel that is nonexistent, which is the Cartel of the Suns.
They created this play cartel just to try to associate President Maduro to that cartel and justify attacks against Venezuela. But they also accused him of being linked to the Tren de Aragua, which is a criminal gang that actually did not have anything to do, at least in big terms, with drugs. And when they raised the bounty on President Maduro in August, they also accused him of having links with the Mexican Sinaloa cartel. So they accused President Maduro of being worse than Pablo Escobar in Colombia in the ‘80s. So that’s to give you an idea of the whole manipulation. But this is a narrative used to support attacks and a regime change operation, and these military strikes against Venezuela.
So that’s basically the context of what is happening right now. And that has already created a lot of tensions in the region. President Petro of Colombia has been denouncing these attacks, because Colombians were already targeted by these attacks. President Petro has been saying that he is not going to allow the use of Colombian soil for any military attacks against Venezuela. And the president of Brazil has been questioning and criticizing the U.S. deployment. There’s a growing rejection of this U.S. military operation in the Caribbean and the threats against Venezuela.
A few weeks ago, CELAC [the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States] had a summit, and in its final declaration, the majority of countries of CELAC agreed that the zone of peace in Latin America, declared by CELAC in 2014, needs to be respected, that Latin America and the Caribbean should be considered a zone of peace. And there shouldn’t be military strikes and military tensions in the region. Meanwhile, in Venezuela, we have not been sitting here waiting for the gringos to invade us. We are preparing ourselves for whatever the gringos want to do.
When this thing began, President Maduro asked the Venezuelans to voluntarily enlist in the Bolivarian militia. And the Bolivarian militia in Venezuela is not like the militias that you have there in Indiana or Minnesota, of white people that hate the federal government, shooting and doing crazy stuff. The Bolivarian Militia in Venezuela is part of the army. It’s one additional branch of the army. And it’s important to highlight this because mainstream media and social media have been spreading that President Maduro is giving away guns and weapons to everyone. And that’s not true. Before that call, the Bolivarian militia already had a big amount of enlisted troops, close to 4.5 million people.
When President Maduro made the call for voluntary enlistment, that number rose, according to government figures, to 3 million additional militia people. So, according to government figures, Venezuela should have about 8 million militia people. Maybe the government is exaggerating. If you ask me, I believe that the real number might be around 6 or 6.5 million people, but that is an incredible number anyway. And that number has always scared the U.S. military because not too many countries have a militia of that size.
And with the enlistment of new militia people, the government and the military announced these exercises – military drills all over the country in training of these new militia people for fighting, training in the use of arms, in health care, in emergency situations, all the training that is needed for situations like this.
And that has been done by the government and the institutions of Venezuela in a very responsible way, without creating alarm or without having tanks and things in the street all over. The whole process has been performed in a very responsible way to avoid creating panic among the population. Actually, they have been asking us not to get into panic and fake news, to keep doing our regular stuff without affecting our work or the productive activities that we do.
And when the Gerald Ford aircraft carrier arrived a few days ago in the Caribbean, Venezuela announced the continuation of the relaunching of these military drills with 200,000 troops deployed all over the territory. And that military drill continues. Because the threat is imminent, it’s real.
Actually, a few days ago, for the last two or three weeks, there was GPS jamming all over Venezuela because no one knows if that was created by the U.S. government or if it was a defensive mechanism used by the military of Venezuela to try to mess with the U.S. operations close to our borders. But anyway, those things affect us and create some tension among Venezuelans because when those things happen, you begin to think that something bigger might happen eventually, very soon.
Alarm exists here, but we are not in panic.
We are worried, but we are ready to defend the country. And Chavismo is going to remain here even if the U.S. dares to launch these so-called “decapitation” strikes against Chavista leadership. President Maduro and Diosdado Cabello, and all the leaders of the Bolivarian Revolution are very important, but the Bolivarian Revolution and Chavismo are bigger than them. And killing Maduro and the leadership of Chavismo won’t end the Bolivarian Revolution. And that’s what people in the U.S. should know. I mean, Chavismo will remain here. And if the U.S. is there to attack us, we will do whatever we can to defend ourselves.
It’s going to be hard because the U.S. military is the biggest and most powerful military out there. But that doesn’t mean that it’s not defeatable. Actually, it has been defeated in several locations in recent times. You just have to talk about Afghanistan. But you can also go to Vietnam. There are several moments in history where the organization of the people shows that the U.S. military can be defeated, and the way the military in Venezuela operates it uses the concept that the Vietnamese people use, which is the war of all people. This is a concept that was initially coined by Mao in China. So if something bad happens, if the worst scenario happens, we will do whatever we can to expel the gringos out of Venezuela.
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