Behind US foreign policy toward Venezuela are century-old racist tropes

[ad_1]

For over 20 years, the relationship between the United States and Venezuela has been tense. US officials cast former Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, who led the country from 1999 until his death in 2013, as an authoritarian ruler bent on turning Venezuela into a dictatorship. Following Chávez’s death in 2013, Maduro, Chávez’s former minister of foreign affairs, officially took over the Venezuelan government.

Then, Donald Trump’s administration cut off Venezuelan oil supplies from entering the country, and leaders encouraged the Venezuelan military to overthrow the government. The United States and several other governments even recognized opposition leader Juan Guaidó as the Venezuelan president after a controversial 2018 election characterized by unfair conditions and accusations of fraud. Though the Biden administration has dropped Trump’s bellicose rhetoric, many of the same policies remain.

Story continues below advertisement

This tense relationship between the United States and Venezuela has been shaped by assumptions and ideas about US dominance of the Western Hemisphere that date back centuries. Indeed, it is worth understanding the mentalities of the US foreign policymakers as they sought to engage Venezuelan officials and citizens. Despite different personnel and stated goals, there has been remarkable continuity across the Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden administrations. Their efforts remain rooted in a history of US foreign policymaking that has embraced racist and neocolonial visions of American leadership in the hemisphere.

Racism indelibly shaped the origins of the United States as a settler colony. Early settlers and US government leaders, including Benjamin Franklin and Alexander Hamilton, believed that they were among God’s chosen people and rightfully deserved to remove indigenous peoples from what they termed North America. They were driven by the philosophical tenets of classical liberalism and its champions, namely John Locke, as well as pseudoscientific thought concerning the alleged superiority of White, Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs).

After the establishment of the United States, and as White settlers expanded westward, leaders and proponents embedded these racist ideas under the banner of “Manifest Destiny,” a belief in the providence and moral rightfulness of their expansionary efforts. In doing so, US leaders engaged in genocidal acts against indigenous people and violently removed them from their ancestral lands to claim ownership of the continent. All the while, the enslavement of African Americans became premised upon this process of settler colonialism.

Story continues below advertisement

At the international level, US officials deemed themselves the protectors of the hemisphere under the paternalistic Monroe Doctrine of 1823. In doing so, Americans — not European empires, or the leaders of independent nations south of the US border — positioned themselves as the dominant hemispheric power. By the turn of the century, the US empire gained more formal territory, including Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines, and further consolidated its claims to territory on the American mainland, including warring with and annexing parts of what was formerly Mexico.

By the mid-century, though, as the United States became a global superpower, formal colonialism became outmoded. Yet, the United States continued to extend its influence by persistently intervening in other country’s politics and economies to serve its own interests.

In justifying this neocolonial exercise of power, US policymakers have depended on many of the same racist ideas as their 19th-century forebears. Analysis of thousands of pages of US government documents and interviews with former ambassadors, high-ranking members of the Department of State and embassy and other State Department staff reveals that the derogatory language used to depict Chávez depended on long-standing White racial mentalities that portray Latin Americans as emotional, irrational and uncivilized.

Story continues below advertisement

In diplomatic cables, US diplomats often described Chávez with terms such as “bizarre,” “hysterical” and “hot-headed.” Instead of attempting to understand Chávez’s policies and his rationales, they often dismissed them as innately unworthy of serious attention. In interviews, the same language continued, with individuals describing him, for instance, as “a clown,” motivated by “machismo” and only concerned with wielding power.

They also dismissed Chávez’s appeals to his own country. While Chávez often decried racial and ethnic inequality in the country, some depicted him as manipulating such ideas simply to win support. One high-ranking diplomat, for instance, rhetorically opined, “Is [Chávez] an MLK or Benito Juarez? Or is this a guy that says this would be a great vehicle to ride? This is a guy like others that wanted power.” US officials could only see his politics as power hungry and self-serving.

Even when some were sympathetic to Chávez and the challenges he faced, they often indicated that he was a product of an apparently deficient Venezuelan culture more broadly. One diplomat claimed, “He almost couldn’t be blamed for not understanding democracy, because he grew up in this undemocratic society.” In doing so, such diplomats evidenced a plain form of cultural racism.

Story continues below advertisement

US officials similarly imagined Venezuelan citizens as subject to the manipulation of Chávez and thus unable to understand their true interests. This idea echoed the justifications for empire in the late 19th century when the United States and European empires framed non-White people around the world as children in need of a White “civilizing” influence.

One high-ranking diplomat, for instance, cabled back to Washington that to “outsiders Chávez’ long and rambling speeches are semi-coherent and at times laughable.” But, the diplomat continued, “To the average Venezuelan, however, Chávez’ words have meaning, offering hope or fear, depending on the message.” In other words, US diplomats were the only ones sophisticated enough to understand the realities of Chávez, unlike average Venezuelan citizens.

Condescension shaped how many US officials thought about the country, and such logic helped justify US intervention. The challenge that Chávez posed to geopolitical and economic power greatly irritated US officials, and they deployed such racist and neocolonial thinking in their attempts to make sense of him and the support he drew from Venezuelan citizens.

Story continues below advertisement

Those interventions took the form of programs designed to change Venezuelans’ minds to foster support for the United States and its interests. The US government funded rock bands to write anti-government songs in 2011, and created college courses for poor Venezuelans to show them the alleged ills of socialism and the moral righteousness of a free-market economy, beginning in 2006.

At times, the US government developed community groups in poor neighborhoods using the language of “participatory democracy” to convert supporters of Chávez into opposition members.

The US government even supported student groups leading protests against Chávez in 2009 with guidance and instruction. It was from these protests that Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó initially emerged. In the end, the programs ultimately failed to bring Chávez down as citizens continued to believe in his socialist policies.

Story continues below advertisement

Under the Biden administration, the United States has continued its support for Guaidó. What is more, while the administration has indicated it might loosen widespread sanctions imposed on the government by former president Trump, such efforts have yet to materialize. As a result, the new administration has continued with the same policies ramped up under the previous administration, seemingly in an effort to satisfy Venezuelan and Cuban voters in Florida.

Over the last several years, the United States has been gripped by a national debate about the history of white supremacy and racism in our country. Racism also clearly continues to hold sway in the culture of foreign policy. The racist and derogatory language used by foreign policymakers to describe Venezuelan leaders and citizens has in no way remained subtle. Such language harks back to the formations of the United States as a settler colony and remains a testament to how many US leaders continue to view their own country as a chosen nation that must civilize the world.

[ad_2]