Just days after seizing a Venezuelan oil tanker and announcing plans to steal the oil it was transporting, the US sanctioned three nephews of Cillia Flores, who is Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s wife, six shipping companies, and six oil tankers. While Scott Bessent said, “These sanctions undo the Biden Administration’s failed attempt to make a deal with Maduro, enabling his dictatorial and brutal control at the expense of the Venezuelan and American people,” he overlooks many actions Biden took against Venezuela.
The Biden administration also secured the release of several US citizens, many of whom were jailed for allegedly attempting to foment a violent coup. Current President Donald Trump used a similar strategy to secure the release of prisoners who were held in connection with weapons smuggling into Venezuela to allegedly attempt an assassination of Maduro. Allegations and attempts on Maduro’s life have been persistent over the last decade.
“Today, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is targeting Nicolas Maduro’s illegitimate regime in Venezuela, sanctioning three nephews of Maduro’s wife, Cilia Flores; a Maduro-affiliated businessman; and six shipping companies operating in Venezuela’s oil sector,” reads the press release. “Additionally, OFAC is identifying six associated vessels that have engaged in deceptive and unsafe shipping practices and continue to provide financial resources that fuel Maduro’s corrupt narco-terrorist regime.”
In 2024, Biden reinstated sanctions on Venezuela at the behest of Elliot Abrams, thus paving the way for recent actions against the country
Abrams’s backstory is deep. He served as Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs for President Ronald Reagan, deputy assistant and deputy national security advisor under President George W. Bush, where he oversaw U.S. policy in the Middle East, and served as Special Representative for Iran and Venezuela in the previous Trump administration.
Abrams is the architect of various “maximum pressure” campaigns against Cuba and Venezuela, leading to economic collapses in an attempt to starve their populations. Abrams, who remains a highly influential foreign policy advisor and Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, strongly supported Juan Guaidó’s being installed as president of Venezuela in 2019. When that failed, Abrams helped implement tougher sanctions under the guise of pushing for a democratic transition in Venezuela.
Abrams was also convicted of misleading Congress in the Iran-Contra affair, which led to drug smuggling into the US to fund weapons sales to Iran and Nicaraguan Contras, and was later pardoned by President George H.W. Bush in 1992. He has been criticized for supporting interventionist policies in Latin America during the earlier Reagan and Bush administrations.
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The actions taken in the Caribbean by the current Trump administration are the culmination of oppressive maximum pressure policies designed by Abrams and John Bolton, who served as US Ambassador to the United Nations from 2005 to 2006, and US National Security Advisor in the previous Trump administration in 2018 and 2019. The appropriation of the wholly invented “narcoterrorist” became part of US political discourse because of Abrams and Bolton, as did the use of allegations of drug smuggling to justify intervention in another country’s internal affairs.
In 2019, Bolton made US motivations abundantly clear:
“We’re in conversation with major American companies now that are either in Venezuela or, in the case of Citgo, here in the United States,” said Bolton on Fox Business. “It will make a big difference to the United States economically if we could have American oil companies really invest in and produce the oil capabilities in Venezuela.”
After the invasion of Panama and the capture of the first of the so-called narcoterrorists, Manuel Noriega, and the success of using drug smuggling as a pretext for war, it has been used with increasing regularity ever since. In most cases, the charges have held up. However, the pretext being used in current events, such as loosely accusing Colombian President Gustavo Petro of being a “drug kingpin” and that Maduro is the leader of an invented cartel involved in major drug smuggling operations, is dissimilar to previous cases in that US Intelligence disputes them.
The White House is simply making accusations and later attempting to manufacture evidence to back its claims. Much like the case against Kilmar Abrego Garcia and the bombing of boats in international waters, and using the media to frame narratives, the cases the administration is making involving these and many other actions it has taken don’t hold up to basic scrutiny. The White House is simply labeling anything it doesn’t like or disagrees with as terrorist activity, even labeling some US citizens’ speech as prosecutable.
What Trump and his cronies seek is white nationalist dominion over Latin America.
I’m an independent journalist digging deeper into the stories you see on the news. Find my work at Unicorn Riot, The Antagonist Magazine, Latino Rebels, Orinoco Tribune, and more. I’m also on TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, and Threads. To support my work, consider becoming a paid subscriber or making a donation via Venmo, PayPal, or Cash App.