'Grotesque and Stupid and Horrifying in Equal Measure'
| What, asks Alma Guillermoprieto in the Review’s February 12 issue, is the United States doing in Venezuela? “They stole our oil,” Trump told reporters…. Perhaps his most entrenched belief is that everything he wants—Greenland, the Nobel Prize, a woman—belongs to him, even if it is deep underground in a nation some thousand miles away. A gripping moment came when Trump made it clear that the invasion of a nonbellicose country had not much to do with human rights or freedom or anything else with no monetary value. Would he see to it that the Maduro regime’s political prisoners were freed? “We’re going to take back the oil,” he said. “They stole our assets like we were babies.” Oil was always at the forefront. “We’re going to get the oil flowing the way it should be.” “We’ll be selling large amounts of oil to other countries.”
And while the success and feasibility of this venture are still very much in doubt—“Trump’s long-term plan for Venezuela has yet to be formulated,” Guillermoprieto drily observes—the president’s foreign policy has had at least one characteristic result: “An entire world order is in question, but there is nothing to fill the void.” Below, alongside Guillermoprieto’s essay, are five articles from our archives about Venezuela’s modern history. President Trump’s decision to support Delcy Rodríguez as Venezuela’s new leader makes clear that oil, not democracy, is his main concern. What caused Venezuela’s collapse, and who is responsible? A recent memoir tells the story as so many families have lived it. —May 29, 2025 The party of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro maintains a strong hold on state institutions, but it has lost the people’s mandate. Will there be a transfer of power to the opposition candidate, Edmundo González—the true victor of this summer’s election? —September 19, 2024 “Over the last forty years, through a succession of often controversial political regimes, Venezuela has become widely known for a highly developed system of orchestras and socially directed musical education that is now being adapted and much imitated.” —September 24, 2015 All these years later, it’s still hard to know whether Chavez’s Venezuela was a dictablanda (a soft dictatorship) or not. For all his anti-imperialist fulminations, the flow of Venezuelan oil to US ports was not interrupted for a single day. For all his socialist preaching, his country remained firmly capitalist. —March 6, 2013 You are receiving this message because you signed up
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