Was it Ever Really About ‘Democracy’ in Venezuela?

Regardless of where you stand on Venezuela, what the Trump White House is doing to the country, even in the wake of recent earthquakes, is nothing short of plundering

Photo by Leonardo Guillen on Unsplash

Since the January attack on Venezuela that resulted in the kidnapping of its president, Nicolas Maduro, the United States continues to act in authoritarian terms in Venezuela. The U.S. has not called for elections or for the installation of the alleged winner of Venezuela’s 2024 elections, Edmundo Gonzalez, thus undermining any efforts by media darling Maria Corina Machado, Venezuela’s most popular leader opposed to the country’s socialist policies, to overthrow the Venezuelan government and abolish its Constitution for a new one.

Many questions are arising from this duplicity, and the players who are undermining Venezuelan society are in control of U.S. foreign policy.

The United States often claims that it’s sanctioning countries and causing millions to suffer for freedom and democracy. It’s the standard line, used for decades to rationalize oppressive economic measures against another country and isolate it from world markets and banking systems. The dishonesty of creating mass suffering events in the name of “liberation,” often followed by bombings, as we recently saw in Iran and in many previous wars throughout history, is often noted as hypocritical and undemocratic.

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As with most deceptive practices, ulterior motives are the true drivers. The pretext for the oppression is more evident now than at any other time in modern history, thanks in large part to an incompetent White House that’s bullying its way through President Donald Trump’s second term. Whether it’s the “repressive government” excuse or the new popular and wholly invented “narcoterrorism” phrase, more and more, it seems voters in the U.S. are seeing that the motivations for imperialist practices are U.S. corporate interests, not humanity or freedom.

That is evident in Venezuela today more than anywhere else in the world, just as it was in Iraq in the mid 2000s, simply because people in the U.S. are aware of what’s happening between the two countries – and so-called “democracy” isn’t part of that discussion. Many will argue, as I have with great success, that Venezuela is democratic and has been for decades. For example, despite claims of Hugo Chavez being a dictator, he was elected with broad support multiple times, even after a failed coup in 2002, which Machado was allegedly involved in.

However, rather than discussing democracy at all, the White House is instead handing out licenses to do business with Venezuela to entities with histories of corruption and newly formed corporations. Many of those entities have direct ties to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and unappointed private-sector corporate envoy to Venezuela Mauricio Claver-Carone, the former director for Western Hemisphere Affairs on the National Security Council during Trump’s first term, and his partner, Jessica Bedoya, a former CIA officer. All three are intricately connected and have a great deal of influence over the deals being made in Venezuela and in the region.

Claver-Carone and Bedoya are managing partners at the LARA Fund, a private equity firm in Miami, Florida. The LARA Fund has investments in El Salvador, Colombia, Costa Rica, Peru, Argentina, and the Dominican Republic. The firm is now poised to enter Venezuela after Rubio has positioned Claver-Carone to lead all investments in the country. Aside from investments in green energy, the LARA fund’s focus in Latin America is on data centers, according to Bedoya. In contrast, Claver-Carone is focused entirely on oil in the region.

“Data centers are extremely important for the region; the rest of the world is looking to Latin America as the next region for these sites, and [Latin America] is trying to catch up in technology and energy stability to house them,” Bedoya said in a 2024 interview.

Acting as a fixer for corruption, Rubio didn’t stop at helping Scott Bissent facilitate the creation of a $500 million Venezuelan oil slush fund in Qatar; he has also issued specific and targeted licenses so his closest allies can bypass sanctions to conduct business with Venezuela. The two most prominent beneficiaries of these moves are Claver-Carone and Bedoya, who lobbied the White House, and acting Venezuelan President Delcy Rodríguez, to hire Centerview, a relatively new firm, to manage Venezuela’s debt in a no-bid process.

Interestingly, the man behind Centerview, Matthieu Pigasse, a high-profile French investment banker known for his socialist political leanings, was officially hired by Rodríguez. However, it was not without heavy influence from Claver-Carone and Bedoya, who jumped on a private jet to Caracas with their billionaire friends upon hearing news about Pigasse leading Venezuela’s debt restructuring efforts.

A key point of contention in this deal is the 0.1% fee charged by Centerview, after other firms offered to handle the restructuring for a fraction of the cost. Centerview’s fee could balloon to more than $240 million based on Venezuela’s total debt estimated at $240 billion and a $750,000 monthly retainer, pushing the amount even higher. But a sweetheart deal like this didn’t happen overnight. A lot of work was being done behind the scenes to make it happen.

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After building inroads into Trump’s inner circle, Pigasse was able to ensure ahead of time that Washington would support the debt overhaul and lift the appropriate sanctions to make it happen, a deal Calver-Carone and Bedoya were intimately involved in facilitating. Once invited to the White House for a private screening of “Melania,” Pigasse and his partners are certain to maintain direct access to Rubio, helping align Venezuela’s financial restructuring plans with U.S. corporate interests.

While Claver-Carone acts as an unofficial backchannel envoy and maintains deep ties to Rubio from their years of working together on Latin American policy, he serves as an intermediary as Trump and Rubio sideline Machado’s coalition as the primary point of contact for Washington’s regional strategy. Instead of a transition focused on placing the opposition in power, as the U.S. has attempted to do for decades, the focus is solely on extracting resources, tailoring economic concessions, and restructuring debt by working through the private sector.

Machado, on the other hand, has demanded that sanctions only be lifted in exchange for what she calls “democratic transitions.” By issuing specific economic licenses for debt negotiations and massive restructuring agreements, Rubio’s network has authorized financial realignment without requiring political concessions, thus undermining any leverage Machado once thought she would have. Not only have they eroded Machado’s standing, but many in the Trump administration have also declared what many of us already know: that Machado “lacked support and respect” domestically, deeply angering elements of her political opposition group.

Machado had previously and very publicly expressed her desire to open Venezuela to U.S. corporations. This gave her some leverage with Venezuelans, as she could have been responsible for improving their lives. Rubio’s coalition destroys all that leverage, leaving Machado out in the cold and seen as an incompetent leader after bowing to Trump and the White House turning its back on her. By Isolating Machado and her party from having any say in how Venezuela’s national debt is resolved and stripping them of financial and political leverage over the country’s future, these policies expose just how little the motivations were ever about democracy and how they were always about control.

Machado built a platform on the preaching of institutional reform, anti-corruption, and absolute transparency. These closed-door Wall Street deals undermine the little clarity she offered about the proposed transition. Instead, it seems this targeted, private-sector financial brokering has insulated the current structures in Caracas and left Machado and her political efforts isolated from the economic deals that could define Venezuela’s future, both good and bad. Meanwhile, the U.S. is patting itself on the back and using the recent earthquakes to build up its military presence in the country, as it keeps Machado out of Venezuela.

As the U.S. forcibly takes over Venezuela’s assets and resources, with the help of some of Venezuela’s top political leaders, it’s clear, even to the uninitiated, that U.S. interest in Venezuela has always been about the country’s vast resources and never about the well-being of the Venezuelan people. If it were, neither president, from Barack Obama to the current iteration of Donald Trump, would have imposed such harsh suffering on them. Nothing the U.S. has done to Venezuela can or should be considered democratic.

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While Claver-Carone has publicly maintained that neither he, Bedoya, nor the LARA Fund has any active investments in Venezuela and that they do not receive secondary management fees or financial kickbacks from Centerview Partners’ advisory contract, time will certainly tell, as the blatant plundering of Venezuela continues right in front of our faces.

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Arturo is an independent freelance journalist. He has written hundreds of articles on policing, immigration, race, and Latin America. His work has been featured in outlets such as Unicorn Riot, The Antagonist Magazine, Latino Rebels, The Wire, and more. Arturo is also on TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, and Threads. To support his work, become a paid subscriber or donate via Venmo, PayPal, or Cash App.