Plaza Venezuela y Paseo Colon, Caracas, 1950 Is it oil or development that the US seeks in the Western hemisphere? I remember my mother telling me of her time in Caracas back in the 1950s when she followed my father down to Venezuela. He was a geologist, principally interested in copper. He had spent a great portion of his life in Southern Africa but here he was back in the Americas. I don't recall how long they spent in Venezuela but my mother said she really enjoyed Caracas. It was such a beautiful city. It was run by a conservative government that catered to American interests including the development of oil reserves, but my father had no part in that. There were big plans for Caracas. Venezuela was seen as an emerging giant in the Caribbean that would challenge Brazil and Mexico for hegemony in the region. Its GDP per capita was on par with the United States, which was also enjoying a huge economic boom at the time. This new prosperity was thanks to autocratic leader Marcos ...
Donald Trump ushers in the New Year with a fireworks show in Caracas, Venezuela. It seems this administration has made a resolution to overthrow the "presidential republic" and install a more oil friendly government in its place. They even have a president-in-waiting, Maria Corina Machado, most recent Nobel Laureate and firm supporter of Trump, who is itching to take over the seat the US hopes to soon make vacant. Nicolas Maduro and Hugo Chavez have long been seen as a thorn in the side of American hegemony in the combined Gulf of America (nee Mexico)/Caribbean Sea region. The Trump admin. wants nothing that goes in or out of this combined waterway to escape its watch and has beefed up naval military presence in an effort to more tightly patrol this region, much to the chagrin of the countries that border or are engulfed by these two bodies of water. It seems that the US has taken its cue from Russia, which similarly wants to control the Sea of Azov and Black Sea on th...