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MICHAEL DUNNE: I'm Michael Dunne. A year ago, few people would have assumed that Venezuela would occupy such a huge role in American foreign policy. But when the US president removes a foreign leader, as the Trump administration did with Nicolas Maduro, suddenly, all eyes are on this South American nation, and while this is headline news right now, the actual history of relations between our two countries is a fascinating blend of cooperation and coercion today on the show, you'll hear from a University of Oregon professor and expert on Venezuelan history to provide us with a keen perspective on the actions and actors that have led up to the current volatile situation between the US and Venezuela from the 19th century to last week, it's a story of tremendous conflict over resources and ideology. Ruben Zahler, an associate professor in history at the University of Oregon. Ruben, thank you so much for coming on and talking with us.
REUBEN ZAHLER: Oh, it's a pleasure to be here.
MICHAEL DUNNE: You know so much about Venezuela and its history, which is something that isn't shared by most Americans. And so, I kind of wanted you to start us off with an overview of the history of Venezuela, specifically how it relates to its relationship with the US.
REUBEN ZAHLER: Okay, well, you know, we, if we go back to Venezuela's independence in the early 19th century, it had, you know, since that time, Venezuela has had mostly quite good relations with the United States. There's been a strong trade, you know, strong commercial ties between Venezuela and the United States. You know, dating back to the 19th century, and relations between the two countries were quite good through the 20th century, including, and this is notable during the Cold War. During the Cold War years, Venezuela was one of the only countries in Latin America that remained a democracy during the Cold War. Years, a lot of countries that had been moving towards democracy wind up becoming authoritarian dictatorships. Venezuela was able to maintain its democratic institutions and to maintain good relations with the United States, which was something that most countries had trouble doing both and the Cold War ended, and Venezuela continued to have good, strong connections with the US, and the Main lubricant of their relations was, of course, petroleum. Venezuela supplies petroleum to the United States and elsewhere, and then those relations started to sour. In at the turn of the 21st Century, Venezuela got a new president, a guy named Hugo Chavez, who was a very charismatic and animated leader, who claimed, you know, who promised to bring socialism to Venezuela. You know, Venezuela at that time had enormous oil reserves, but lots of poverty, lots of income inequality and the population really at the time, most people despaired. Thought that their democratic institutions really were not serving most of the people, but were rather only serving the wealthy. And Hugo Chavez promised to bring in this new kind of socialism that would change all of that and part of his brand was being very anti American. You know, he would talk about the United States as “el Imperio”, okay, you know, So he, you know, and relations. So that's starting around 1999-2000 relations with the United States have started to go down. And you know, they were the petroleum continued to flow between, you know, to the United States, even with bad relations during the Chavez years. But starting in about the 2010s things, relations got much, much worse. And then, as we've seen in the past six months, or, you know, five months, relations have really kind of fallen off of a cliff.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Okay, I want to stay with Chavez for a second, because if there is something that that Americans certainly remember is Hugo Chavez. He was a larger-than-life character. And I'm wondering, you know, even though the Maduro regime, has some of his personality, his people, his imprint on the country, is that still there in in Venezuela's higher echelon of leadership?
REUBEN ZAHLER: Yes, I would say yes. Well yes and no. So many of the people who are running, who run the Venezuelan Government, served under Chavez. You know? That includes Delcy, the current president, Cabello, you know, so many of the people who you know, who are currently, you know, dominant in the parliament, who are dominant in the in the president's office, etc., are actually the very same people who were powerful during the Chavez years. Also, the Maduro government has you know from the beginning when, when Maduro became president. So, Chavez, Hugo Chavez died in 2013 he sorts of handpicked Maduro to be his successor. Maduro is legitimacy and attraction as a leader has always been that he was the handpicked successor by Chavez. So, the imprint of Chavez is essential for the Maduro regime, and the Maduro regime has continued to, you know, make the same claims, the same promises that Chavez did, that we're going to bring wealth to the Venezuelan people, and that we will confront and stop US imperialism, that we will confront the Empire. So you know what's different? There's a lot that's different. For one that you know, you'd be pretty hard pressed to find much of anything that Maduro has actually accomplished that really has helped the Venezuelan people, whereas Chavez actually did do things, it helped a lot of people. Chavez really did help huge numbers of poor people in Venezuela. Maduro really not so much. And also, another huge difference is that Chavez eventually did establish an authoritarian system. It was not his government. Was not really one, I would say, that was constrained by the Constitution or constrained by law. However, he always won elections. Chavez consistently won elections, you know, won free and fair elections, and so he always had the legitimacy of the fact that that whether or not he's authoritarian, the majority of Venezuelans voted for Chavez. Maduro does not have that. Maduro clearly lost the last election, and the previous election to that, I would, you know, I personally would say Maduro lost, though that's more controversial. So, Maduro does not have anything like the legitimacy in the eyes of most Venezuelans. He does not have anything like the legitimacy that Chavez enjoyed.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Contextualized for us, sort of historically and even up to the current day. What role does Venezuela play in its larger reason region in Latin America and South America? I mean, is it a? Is it a power broker? You've talked about incredible amounts of poverty, but it also has this enormous oil reserves. Is it a, you know, a real fulcrum for that region? Or is it not so much?
REUBEN ZAHLER: Well, that's a good question. And the answer, of course, is, is ever changing? Chavez? Hugo Chavez brought Venezuela to, I would say, really, its peak of influence in Latin America. You know, Latin America. I mean, Venezuela has always been, you know, a participating member of the, you know, the concert of Latin American countries, and an active member and the Organization of American States. But I would not say it was a huge it was, it was not a pivotal player. You know, countries like Mexico, Brazil, Argentina have been more dominant than Venezuela throughout the region, but Hugo Chavez brought Venezuela to really new heights of importance. And he did this by, you know, he came to power in the very early 2000s and at that time, neoliberalism was kind of accepted virtually everywhere. Or throughout the Americas, and Hugo Chavez was the first big national leader to say neoliberalism is bad and it's making people and it's making people poor, and it's, you know, making governments slaves to corporations. And what then followed was there were a number of elections in Latin America in the coming years that brought in left wing politicians who were also anti neoliberal right, you know, Evo Morales in Ecuador is, you know, an excellent example, sure, and so rhetorically, in terms of sort of political ideals, Chavez was at the Avant Garde, of a movement throughout Latin America that became anti neoliberal and left wing and very critical of the United States. Beyond rhetoric, Chavez also did some things that economically were very significant in that he tried to set up a system by which Latin American countries would free themselves from their dependence on the US dollar. So rather than exchanging goods for dollars, they would, they would essentially barter. And Chavez, you know, was trying to, you know, he sorts of spearheaded this, using Venezuelan oil as a barter with other countries. And, you know, this, of course, was alarming to the United States, but there are some of these other countries that are actually quite welcoming and what, and what Chavez also then did is, he, is he? He became very close with Cuba. He was a, you know, a big fan of Fidel Castro, a big fan of of Cuba's socialism, and he and he provided oil to Cuba in exchange for Cuban medical doctors, Cuban athletes, Cuban sugar, etc. All of that has really diminished enormously under Maduro. Venezuela's economy has kind of collapsed. Venezuelans’ political system looks to be, you know, it's largely a failed state, and so nobody really wants to associate with the Venezuelan system, except for Cuba. Cuba remains dependent on Venezuelan oil. But I'd say that Venezuela is, these days, not in, you know, is not very influential at all in in Latin America, in part because it's its brand of socialist revolution. You know, is by any measure, a total failure.
MICHAEL DUNNE: There's another player out there that many people have heard of, and she won a Nobel Prize, Maria Karina Machado, the opposition leader, which, you know, I think when, when this action happened, when the United States arrested Maduro, many people probably in this country thought, Oh, well, maybe she's going to be the new the new leader. It seems like the Trump administration has sidelined her, but can you talk about her, and specifically the opposition, and where that sort of exists right now, and perhaps where it came from?
REUBEN ZAHLER: You ask a really good question about Machado. So, in the in the last elections, you know, Machado emerged, as you know, clearly, the leader of the Venezuela's opposition. She and her co candidate won what appears to be at least 70% of the popular vote, including, you know, they won the vote even amongst people who worked for the government. And they also won the vote amongst the poor. And the poor has long been sort of the base of the Chavista movement. So, it was a big deal that election. And of course, Maduro then ignored the election results remained in power. So, Machado has remained, I think, sort of a, you know, the symbolic leader, well, I'm sorry, the leader of the Venezuelan opposition. And everybody has continued to look at her as the presumptive next, you know, the person who could be president, if that ever, if that opportunity ever opened up, Trump has since, since he took Maduro into custody, Trump has sidelined Machado and made pretty clear he does not want to deal with her, and instead, he's going to, you know, Trump, essentially, you know the kidnapping of Maduro. It's left the Venezuelan government in place. The administration remains virtually unchanged, except that Maduro is no longer in charge. But I don't think there are reason to expect that you know that this government, which is composed of the very same people as you know, as we as last week, is really going to act much differently what I think you know. So, what's going on in Venezuela in popular opinion is hard to measure. We don't have great opinion polls and it's, I mean, there are some opinion polls, but they're hard to conduct, and you know, we don't we, you know they're not. They cannot function at sort of gold standard of surveys. But so I'm here, I'm definitely somewhat speculating, but my impression, you know, what I think is, in general, has happened with Machado, is position is that, is that she remains popular in Venezuela, among you know, many people in that, were there An election tomorrow, a free and fair election, very likely Machado would win. However, she has always been much disliked, but not always. But in recent years, she has been much disliked by the government and by the economic elites of Venezuela. You know, she has run to topple the current government and so obviously the current regime doesn't like her. In addition, over the past several months, as the Trump administration ramped up a campaign against Maduro and called Maduros government a Narco terrorist regime, and that, you know, and claim that people who work in this government are Narco terrorists. Machado sort of hitched her wagon onto Trump, and also started using the same language, hmm, in which she was calling that Maduro and his lieutenants, Narco, terrorists, and so what that means is that Machado has, you know, from the perspective of someone who works in the government, is the Machado is, has been calling them criminals, you know, people who deserve to be in jail. So, it's one thing you know, if, if Machado were to become president, and you work for the government, you can imagine you might be able to continue working under the new regime, or, if not, you might have to retire from the government just go get a job elsewhere. Now, Machado has somewhat by working with Trump in this manner, has made many people in the government really not want her to be in power under any circumstance, because they fear that means they might wind up in prison. Yeah, yeah. Sideline, so I think that what has happened for Machado is that she is now more alienated than ever from the grueling regime, and the Trump administration has indicated it is that it intends to work with the ruling regime. And that means that Machado is really has been side, you know, is sidelined by both the Venezuelan Government and the US government.
MICHAEL DUNNE: I'm thinking too, and I imagine the older members of our audience will probably remember the 1980s and remember there was a lot more intervention by the US in Latin America, deposing Manuel Noriega in Panama, the arming the Contras in El Salvador. Is this, can you see this as sort of, you know, it's often used as a cliché, but probably apt in this regard, a little bit of history repeating itself in the region?
REUBEN ZAHLER: In a superficial sense, yes, okay, but in a slightly deeper way, I would say no. In the early stage, in the early 20th century, the US had some very heavy-handed interventions in the Caribbean Basin, not so much farther down in South America, but sort of you know, around the around the Caribbean Basin, the US used its military muscle and its economic muscle to really dominate this region, and it actually included some full-on military occupations. So many Americans don't know this but the United States militarily occupied Nicaragua for about 20 years. Occupied Haiti for around 20 years. And there are also shorter occupations of Dominican Republic and Cuba. These were, these were moves that had that really were quite much, much more overtly about the US wanting to make sure that Latin American commodities, you know, their trading goods, flowed the way that you know that was. Beneficial to us corporations and to US consumers. What happened in the 80s, that you're what you're referring to, you know, in the 1970s and 80s, is that's very much in a Cold War context. Okay, you know, the United States is in a, you know, a global
contest with the Soviet Union. We've got two ideologies duking it out communism and capitalism. 1920s we, you know, 19 teens and 20s, we have these, this heavy-handed interventions in the Caribbean that ends in the 30s with the depression and with the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the US becomes much more cooperative and kinder of friendly with Latin America. Stops all this intervening. And then the Cold War hits, and the US starts intervening again because of this ideological struggle that's happening. And then when the Cold War ended, that heavy that phase of heavy-handed intervention stopped. So, this is why, you know, you know, Manuel Noriega was the last time, you know, taking Noriega at a Panama 1989 was really the last time the US had like, some big military movement in Latin America. And so, I think it's important to keep in mind that you know that the interventions in the cold and during the Cold War period really were very much about the Cold War. What we're seeing now with this move against Venezuela, there's really no idea. There's not an ideology at competition going on here and there's and there does not seem to be any effort to make sure that Venezuela becomes democratic this So to my mind, what we're seeing now in in 2026 is very much like what we saw in the early 20th century in the 19 teens and 20s, you know, and the reason being that it's it there. There's no, you know, this seems much more about commodities and about and about us control over the Caribbean Basin, and it doesn't seem like it's a part of any larger or more idealistic battle over ideologies.
MICHAEL DUNNE: I see, I see Ruben Zahler, who is an associate professor of history and an expert on Venezuela history, professor, thank you so much for coming on and talking with us.
REUBEN ZAHLER: Absolutely. It's been a pleasure.
MICHAEL DUNNE: That's the show for today. All episodes of Oregon On The Record are available as a podcast at KLCC.org. Tomorrow on the show, you'll hear from representative Val Hoyle, and you'll also learn about a huge survey of Oregon School children asking about their education experience. I'm Michael Dunne, host of Oregon On The Record, thanks for listening.
