Beneath the daring attempt at regime change in Venezuela lies a deeper motive of the United States: salvaging its self-esteem. A serious blow was dealt to American national pride by Venezuela in the early years of the new millennium—an episode in the recent history of continental America that those in New York or Washington, who run or own the United States, seldom discuss. It has remained under the carpet, eluding the glare of the mass upsurge called Make America Great Again (MAGA), yet it was never forgotten and has continued to rankle policymakers in the US. Just as the hostage-taking at the US embassy in the nascent Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979 continues to rankle Washington, so does the memory of Venezuela’s challenge. If President Donald Trump successfully brings the sixth-largest country in South America under American influence, he will have avenged this national humiliation at Venezuela’s hands.
The episode began in 2005. Unbeknown to most economists and bankers at the time, the United States was hurtling towards the economic meltdown that would occur three years later. Some symptoms were clear in hindsight—rising poverty levels and a sharp increase in the number of Americans reliant on food stamps, which provide food and basic necessities—but the underlying illness was not diagnosed.
José Enrique Serrano, a congressman representing one of the poorest districts in New York’s Bronx, took an unconventional step to prevent his constituents from freezing during the approaching winter. Many elderly and ill residents could not afford heating oil. Hugo Chávez, Venezuela’s socialist president, was in New York for the United Nations General Assembly, and Serrano took him to the Bronx to show him the hardship. I was part of the media entourage that went to the Bronx with Chávez, who was astonished that Americans could be so poor. He immediately ordered Citgo—the US subsidiary of Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A.—to provide free heating oil to 75,000 poor New Yorkers.
Shortly after a CIA-supported coup briefly ousted Chávez in 2002 (for 47 hours), he appointed Bernardo Álvarez Herrera as Venezuela’s ambassador to Washington. Herrera, an academic with strong American connections, recognised the political impact of Citgo’s generosity. After watching the soaring support among poor Americans for the free heating oil programme, he tapped the Kennedy family for a similar initiative in their home state of Massachusetts. Former congressman Joseph Patrick Kennedy II, eldest son of Robert F. Kennedy, agreed to head the programme in Massachusetts through his NGO, Citizens Energy Corporation.
By the winter of 2008, free heating oil supplied by Venezuela reached residents in 23 US states and members of 65 Native American tribes—almost half the United States—which was deeply embarrassing to the American establishment. It was a huge embarrassment, especially for wealthy Americans who were used to telling their children that the US was the “greatest country on earth”.
The popular perception was that Chávez was an enemy of the US. At the height of the programme’s popularity, I once went to see him at a church in the largely Black neighbourhood of Harlem in New York, the same church that the late Cuban leader Fidel Castro used to visit whenever he went to the UN. Chávez was cheered and feted by the local people like a rock star.
Establishment efforts to end the programme failed after Herrera legally distanced the Venezuelan government from it, arguing that Citgo, an American company, was administering the initiative and that Venezuelan heating oil was no different from the millions of litres of Venezuelan petrol sold at American pumps, the only difference being that the oil was given away free. The programme was suspended in 2009 after global oil prices crashed from $147 per barrel to around $48, making it unaffordable for Venezuela.
The second significant setback for the United States at Venezuela’s hands has a personal dimension for Trump. Despite his wealth, the Trump family has never belonged to the same cultural elite as the Rockefellers, Carnegies, Vanderbilts or Guggenheims—America’s great patrons of art and culture. Trump has long coveted such recognition. In December, he secured it through the back door using raw presidential power: the Kennedy Center became the Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts. Trump got his name emblazoned on the imposing façade of Washington’s biggest centre of culture with worldwide name recognition.
Venezuela, however, entered the American cultural sphere long before Trump. In 2010, Chávez launched a major cultural initiative in the United States to counter negative perceptions of his country. The vehicle for this effort was the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra, an institution founded in 1978 by the Venezuelan music legend José Abreu, which has few parallels anywhere in the world.
Composed largely of children from impoverished backgrounds who had been trained in music, the orchestra became a symbol of social transformation. It drew packed audiences at the Kennedy Center and elsewhere in the United States, earning widespread critical praise. Yet it also stirred discomfort among some American conservatives, who felt that Venezuela’s soft power challenged traditional cultural hierarchies. Its conductor, Venezuelan maestro Gustavo Dudamel—later appointed music and artistic director of the New York Philharmonic—eventually turned against the regime of Nicolás Maduro after orchestra members were killed during protests.
Maduro’s capture by the United States is a serious challenge to India’s foreign-policy principle of multi-alignment. India’s statement on January 4 expressed measured concern, consistent with decades of diplomatic caution, as evidenced by past responses to the Soviet invasions of Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Yet India’s role as host of the forthcoming BRICS summit complicates matters, as Venezuela’s situation will inevitably feature in discussions. A delayed Quad summit in New Delhi may also see US demands for support for Trump’s actions, placing India’s diplomats in a dilemma. Multilateralists at the ministry of external Affairs must be relieved that India is not an elected member of the UN Security Council this year, thus avoiding an immediate vote. Nevertheless, Trump’s aggressive intervention will test India’s diplomatic balance.
India and Venezuela also compete in an arena seldom examined by foreign-policy analysts: the Miss World competition. Since its inception in 1951, the two countries have contested the title closely, with both holding six crowns each.
The author was a foreign correspondent in Washington.