It Could Happen Here - Panama 1989 to Venezuela 2026: What History Can Teach Us Pt. 2

Episode Date: February 4, 2026

Andrew and James continue their discussion of what happened in Panama in 1989 and why people are comparing these events to what is happening in Venezuela. Sources: https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/history/omar-torrijos-ousts-arias-panama Emperors In the Jungle: The Hidden History of the U.S. in Panama by John Lindsay-PolandSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. 1969, Malcolm and Martin are gone. America is in crisis. At a Morehouse college, the students make their move. These students, including a young Samuel L. Jackson, locked up the members of the Board of Trustees, including Martin Luther King Sr.

It's the true story of protests and rebellion in black American history that you'll never forget. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Manilic Lamouba. Listen to the A building on the I-Hearton. Cart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Ryder Strong, and I have a new podcast called The Red Weather. In 1995, my neighbor and a trainer disappeared from a commune.

It was nature and trees and praying and drugs. So no, I am not your guru. Back then, I lied to everybody. They have had this case for 30 years. I'm going back to my hometown to uncover the truth. Listen to the Red Weather on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You know Roll Doll. He thought up Willie Wonka and the BFG.

But did you know he was a spy? In the new podcast, The Secret World of Roll Doll, I'll tell you that story, and much, much more. What? You probably won't believe it either. Was this before he wrote his stories? It must have been. Okay, I don't think that's true. I'm telling you.

I was a spy. Listen to the secret world of Roll Dahl on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 14 years in prison for killing a young woman. A 15-year sentence for a crash that caused three deaths. 12 and a half years for killing a child and critically injuring her mother. All true stories. All caused by marijuana impaired drivers. No matter what you tell yourself, if you feel different, you drive different. So, if you're high, just don't drive. Brought to you by NHTSA and the Ad Council. The year was 1968 and a military coup had just rocked the Isthmian country of Panama.

Welcome to I'm Andrew Sage, joined again by... James, it's me again. I'm excited to talk about Panama. Nearly Mr. Q. Yeah, I did. I was. I was forgotten. who I was for a second. Yeah, and this is the follow-up to last episode on the history of U.S. involvement in Panama. So you can go back and give that one listen if you haven't already. But in these times of Trump Row doctrine, I want to take us back to this particular moment

in our hemisphere's history to highlight the parallels with today. In short, what we talked about last time was how Panama became a testing ground for U.S. Empire, long before, during, and after the construction. of the Panama Canal. The US had repeated military interventions justified as protecting transit or American interests, and Washington ultimately backed Panama's break from Columbia in 1903, secure canal rights on Washington's terms. This independence came with, you know, a cost, a caveat, a lopsided treaty that turned Panama into a U.S. protectorate and granted the U.S. permanent control over the canal zone and the rest of the country, effectively.

The canal's construction itself was an engineering feat built on racial hierarchy, and throughout the rest of the 20th century, the US continued to demonstrate its control over Panama's politics, the attempts of its people to exercise their autonomy, to exercise their rights, and the US, of course, engaged in the testing of chemical weapons, in the seizing of land, and the use of the country as a regional military launch pad. And yet, Palminians can continue to resist, continue to challenge US control, and continue to demand treaty reform. And so following the 1964 riots, there was an opportunity to negotiate a new treaty. But after the first attempt was rejected by Panama, 1967, a military coup would rock the country in 1968.

I feast together's timeline thanks to my main resource for these episodes, Emperors in the Jungle, the hidden history of the US in Panama, by John Lindsay Poland. But he doesn't go into too much depth on the military coup specifically. For that, I had to look to an EPSCO Knowledge Advantage article by Carl Henry Marco, titled Omar Torrijos Aousts in Panama. What I learned from that was there was a coalition of National Guard officers that ousted President Arnulfo Arias, who was himself trying to consolidate control over the military,

so they would support his future elections by removing those officers, as he thought he could control. So there were apparently racial tensions mixed into the school as officers in the National Guard had increasingly come from mestizo backgrounds as opposed to white backgrounds, which had traditionally supported the civilian predominantly white oligarchy.

So a coalition of officers tried to change this. At first they were led by a guy named Major Boris Martinez who seized power and ousted areas. Before anyone thought for a moment that things were finally going to radically change in the country. Within months, student protests were crushed by the National Guard, with arrests and beatings making it clear that military rule and not democracy was there to stay. But not long after Martinez took control,

he was himself ousted by a lieutenant colonel and the junta's chief of staff in 1969. That man was Omar Torrijos Herrera, a mestizo officer with middle-class roots who sought a challenge, the oligarchy somewhat. Fun fact, though, Lindsay Poland mentions that Toriho served as a spy for the U.S. military intelligence from 1955 to 1969, informing the Americans about everything from labor unrest and student activities to political issues and Soviet Chinese penetration. Therdyhos was one of the soldiers who helped suppress the unrest in 1964, in fact.

Oh, wow. But in power, publicly, he styled his military rule as reformist. He pushed through land reforms that opened up estates long monopolized by elites and promised change for rural Panama. But although these reforms were popular, very few poor Panamanians actually benefited. Meanwhile, he overhauled banking laws in the country, such that Panama quickly became a hub for offshore banking and money laundering. Yeah. But it can be said that he didn't do anything positive for the country, because he was the one who managed to establish a new treaty with the West. The US was facing international pressure this point for their continued ownership of the canal,

especially thanks to a 1973 United Nations Security Council session hosted by Torihoos in Panama City. In 1977, Torihoz negotiated with Jimmy Carter and secured the treaties that promised that canals return to Panamanian control. The Toriho's Carter Treaties, which agreed to transfer the canal from the United States to Panama on December 31, 1999, with the surrounding territory of the Canaanian Control. Rizhener's own returned first in 1979 and the U.S. military being allowed to remain in the country until 1999. But despite this major win, Torrijos knew his rule was under pressure, so he announced a controlled return to civilian government. He created a political party

dominated by the National Guard. He stepped back from the presidency. He installed a civilian figurehead named Aristeiroo, and he promised elections by 1984. But then his private plane crashed in 1981. It's just, you know, it's funny how frequently

that happened back in those days, you know, yeah, small aircraft. Just randomly, these political leaders are constantly

dying in plane crashes. Yeah. He's sad. And so the democratic reforms didn't happen. Instead, Pryos's

intelligence chief emerged as the new military dictator of Panama. His name was Manuel Noriega. Now,

as Lindsay Poland talks about in the book, Noriega was another informant for the U.S. in the mid-1950s. But his career in the military wasn't going anywhere because he had a history of alcoholism and beaten women, until Torijo's handpicked him as his intelligence chief. Manuel Noriega came up inside a Panamanian National Guard that had been shaped, trained, and closely supervised by the U.S. during the Cold War.

He was educated at Peru's National Military Academy, trained in the United States, trained in at the School of the Americas, took courses in intelligence and counterintelligence in 1967, and trained in psychological warfare at Fort Benning. By the late 1960s, he had also become a regular informant for U.S. intelligence. You know, he took more than just a few courses. He was very much embedded with the Americans. And so with Trudeyhost dead, Noriega seized the opportunity to take power. Initially, the U.S. was pretty much okay with this.

Noriega had previously been a CIA asset providing intelligence and governments and militaries across the region including Cuba. He had helped suppress leftist movements, facilitated U.S. regional operations and maintained stability around the canal. And for that he was well compensated, more than $1 million from the CIA.

Wow. Plus at least another $162,000 from the U.S. Army and the Defense Intelligence Agency. By the early 1970s, U.S. agencies already knew that Noriega was deeply involved in drug trafficking. In 1972, the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs even considered assassinating him, but he was just too useful for him to go so soon. Yeah. So throughout the Carter years, evidence of his criminal activity was building up and was also suppressed

because Washington needed Panamian cooperation to secure ratification of the Canal Treaties. but under Reagan, the evidence became impossible to ignore. As intelligence reports from 1983 and 1985, documented meetings between Noriega and cartel figures, permissions to manufacture cocaine in Panama, and offers to mediate disputes between the traffickers. I love them mediation, but the best. Yeah, yeah, he was like, hey guys, this isn't you. Let's not resort to violence. Come on, let's have us sit down and talk about this.

He was committed to like a non-castral solution, you know. It's great to see. Yeah. And they continued to protect him even with that smoking gun. They were like, yeah, Noriega is still our guy. They had hoped that he would cooperate with contra operations against Nicaragua's Sandinista government, though. But in what was, I suppose, his first strike, he refused to cooperate with that on that

He also maintained relations with both Nicaragua and Cuba. And meanwhile, under his leadership, the Panamanian defense forces expanded their role in both arms and drug smuggling networks, much of it feed indirectly into the U.S. drug market. So Noriega and the U.S. had to break up in the mid to late 80s. And this was also thanks to U.S. domestic politics. You see, in 1986, the Iran-Contra scandal saw key figures who had Sheila, Noriega previously, be removed from their positions. At the same time, the crack cocaine panic took over U.S. politics.

Again, a very racialized situation. Yeah. Congress had passed sweeping anti-drug laws with mandatory minimum sentences, and the media was framing this whole drug problem as a foreign, racial, black threat. Yeah. Noriego, being a Panamanian dictator, ended up being a very useful, prop villain of sorts for the burgeoning war on drugs. So in February 1988, US grand juries in Miami and Tampa indicted Noriega for drug trafficking linked to activities from 1982 to

1984. Sanctions followed within weeks supposedly to force him out, but they didn't. The sanctions cause shortages, economic collapse and suffering among ordinary Panamanians. Yet Noriega stayed in power. use the crisis to justify emergency measures and nationalist rhetoric. As is usually the response I realize with U.S. inflicted sanctions, they end up creating almost a support base for the administration and power. Because, you know, you're trying to make the people suffer. And instead, people end up standing with their government, even if they have critiques of that government.

Yeah, right, because they don't want to become another, like, vassal state. and especially in Panama, right? Like, they've already been there once. Or, like, look at what's happening right now in Iran, right? Yeah. Hamani's literally, like, he's literally tweeting that the people protesting are Donald Trump supporters. Yeah, yeah.

The thing is, there's always going to be all types of people in any protests. And I wish when people realize that. Yeah. You know, people tend to take, like, one or two figures or one or two pictures in any particular protest and say, oh, look, they're doing this. That means the entire protest is like this. It's like, no protests tend to, I think, invite a variety of positions, perspectives, actors into the free.

Yeah, by their nature, they're large gatherings of people, right? They're not going to be a monolith. People will always seek to either represent protests in one way or represent themselves controlling a protest when they have not done so, but for the most part, they're very heterogeneous. Yeah, the monolithizing of protests, including in this case with Iran, I think it's a very clear example of how useful that is for every side of a conflict. Yes.

Because, you know, the protests can be treated as a monolith by Comini and by the Iranian government, you know, to serve there and say these are enemies from within, you know, these are these are Zionists backed and this thing. And then, of course, the Israelis could also try and stake a claim on this and say, yeah, this is our people. And, you know, I'm sure they're probably mass agents on the ground. Yeah. As they are in most protest situations, not necessarily massade agents.

chance, but intelligence service agents in general from agencies around the world. Sure, yeah. But, you know, you could always pick and choose and create your own freemen based on which aspects of the truth you want to focus on. But that's why I think our solidarity has to remain with people. Yeah. And not with states. Yes, yeah, it seems to be the fundamental issue affecting much of the internet left in the

United States is that their solidarity appears to only be to states and not to people, You can see that in Iran or Venezuela or Russia or anywhere else, really, that like this sort of, I don't know, internet-tanky leftism likes to talk about. Yeah. Welcome to the A building. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Minilic Lamouba. It's 1969.

Malcolm X or Martin Luther King Jr. have both been assassinated. And Black America was out of breaking point. Writing and protests broke out on an unprecedented scale. In Atlanta, Georgia at Martin's Almermata, Morehouse College. The students had their own protest. It featured two prominent figures in black history,

Martin Luther King's senior, and a young student, Samuel L. Jackson. To be in what we really thought was a revolution. I mean, people would die. In 1968, the murder of Dr. King, which traumatized everyone. The FBI had a role in the murder of a Black Panther leader in Chicago.

This story is about protest. echoes in today's world far more than it should, and it will blow your mind. Listen to the A-building on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Ryder Strong, and I have a new podcast called The Red Weather. It was many and many a year ago in a kingdom by the sea. In 1995, my neighbor and a trainer disappeared from a commune. It was hard to wrap your head around. It was nature and trees and praying. drugs. So no, I am not your guru. And back then, I lied to my parents. I lied to police. I lied to everybody.

There were years right where I could not say your name. I've decided to go back to my hometown in Northern California, interview my friends, family, talk to police, journalists, whomever I can to try to find out what actually happened. Isn't it a little bit weird that they obsess over hippies in the woods and not the obvious boyfriend? They have had this case for 30 years. I'll teach you, tons of the pence you come around here in my white. Boom, boom, this is the red weather. Listen to the red weather on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I actually drop better when I'm high.

It heightens my senses, calms me down. If anything, I'm more careful. Honestly, it just helps me focus. That's probably what the driver who killed a four-year-old told himself. And now he's in prison. You see, no matter what you tell yourself, if you feel different, you drive different. So if you're high, just don't drive. Brought to you by NHTSA and the Ad Council.

You know Roll Doll, the writer who thought up Willie Wonka, Matilda, and the BFG. But did you know he was also a spy? Was this before he wrote his stories? It must have been. Our new podcast series, The Secret World of Roll Doll, is a wild journey through the hidden chapters of his extraordinary, controversial life. His job was literally to seduce the wives of powerful Americans. What?

And he was really good at it. You probably won't believe it either. Okay, I don't think that's true. I'm telling you. The guy was a spy. Did you know Dahl got cozy with the Roosevelt's? Played poker with Harry Truman and had a long affair with a congresswoman. And then he took his talents to Hollywood,

where he worked alongside Walt Disney and Alfred Hitchcock, before writing a hit James Bond film. How did this secret agent wind up as the most successful children's author ever? and what darkness from his covert past seeped into the stories we read as kids. The true story is stranger than anything he ever wrote. Listen to the secret world of Roll Dahl on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. So we saw that kind of upswing of nationalistic fervor following those U.S. sanctions and the political situation in Panama was deteriorating rapidly. Noriega annulled the results of the main 1989 elections after his chosen candidates were decisively defeated. Protests followed.

The Panamanian defense forces crushed them and the images of his opposition figures being beaten by his military saturated U.S. televisions to reinforce the racialized image of the savage Panamania. Because many of the soldiers that were doing the beating were black and brown and the opposition figure in question was white. So they were able to clip that and create a whole night. narrative around it. Yeah.

That saved their interests. Now, in October of 1989, a coup attempt by Panamanian officers failed and the officers were executed. In the U.S., meanwhile, a criticism of President George H.W. Bush had intensified with editorials and senators accusing him of weakness for his failure to act decisively against Noriega. And, oh boy, call a man weak. He has to go on and prove his manhood.

Yeah. You know, so further motivation for what came next was Noriega's nomination of Thomas Duque as the first Panaman administrator of the Panama Canal Commission. Bush did not like that pick. And if the U.S. invaded, then they could pick who they preferred. So there was another motivation. The invasion was also motivated by a desire to showcase the Pentagon's post-Cold War mission. You know, the Cold War was waning in that point, particularly with the fall of the Berlin Wall, May months before, and so a new threat, a new boogey man, was needed to justify U.S. military action

in Latin America, this time in the form of the drug war story. And then, on December 16th, a U.S. Marine Intelligence Unit ran a roadblock near Panamanian military headquarters. Panamanian soldiers opened fire, killing Lieutenant Robert Paz. Another U.S. soldier and his wife were detained, and while the soldier was beaten, the wife was threatened with rape. Within 24 hours, Bush ordered a full-scale invasion. On December 20th, 1989, the United States launched its 20th military intervention in Panama

since 1856, and by far the most violent. It was the worst destruction Panama had seen since Colombia's thousand days war. 18,000 people lost their homes. At least 516 Panamanians were killed by official Pentagon counts. Internal army estimates, however, put civilian deaths closer to 1,000. Jeez. And many believed that the true number was even higher. Entire neighborhoods were destroyed.

El Torrio, a poor, mostly black and mestizo community built originally for canal workers, was bombed and burned to the ground. San Miguelito was also hit, and across the country, thousands were detained in prison camps. Damage exceeded $1 billion, on top of the country. of losses from nearly two years of sanctions. The U.S. used overwhelming force, including stealth bombers, airborne assaults, and heavy firepower in densely populated areas against a Panamanian force of only about 3,000 trained soldiers.

Noriega was captured, flown to the United States, tried, and imprisoned. And as Lindsay Poland writes, quote, The names of the 25 U.S. soldiers killed during the invasion and rolled across TV screens around the world. Yet a register of Panamanians killed during the invasion has never been published, even in Latin America. End quote. Jeez.

When Noriega sought refuge in the Vatican embassy for a while, I understand that they played like U-2 music non-stop to force him to capitulate. The pit what? Yeah. Yeah, they used YouTube. Maybe some other stuff too. I'm probably sure of my age here.

This is before my time. This was the band that was forced onto all the iPods and stuff, right? Yes, that's right. Yeah, yeah. This was, yeah, and perhaps a parallel operation, maybe again they would. Maybe that was a CIA. Yeah, Bono, the guy who talks a big game and then never pays his taxes in Ireland. Also, part of the invasion of Panama.

He had a critical role in US intervention. Yeah. Wait until I find it. I bet there was some band I like as well, but you two is a one that sticks in my mind. Oh, the humanity. That has to be a war crime, right? War crime.

So in all seriousness, though, Noriega was not a good guy by any stretch of the imagination. And I don't know why people feel this compulsion to try and rehabilitate figures that have been targeted by US imperialist aggression. You know, you can condemn U.S. and produce aggression without carrying water for their image, right? Yeah.

Now, L'O.D.A.O.D.A.A. was not a good guy, but he was not unusual. I think if anything, you can point out the hypocrisy of the United States in this, you know, selective outrage. Yeah. Because at the very same moment, far worse atrocities were being inflicted by leaders across the region, carried out by regimes firmly integrated in Washington's good races. In Guatemala, for example, security forces kidnapped, tortured, and raped Diana Ortiz, an American nun, before she managed to escape.

But there's no evidence that this triggered outrage in Washington nor calls for military intervention. And then in El Salvador, guerrilla forces launched an offensive on San Salvador, and the army responded by murdering six Jesuit priests. The same forces went on to arrest, torture and intimidate international aid workers and church personnel, but none of this was treated as grounds for invasion, regime change or emergency action. The US only removed Noriega because he wasn't convenient to their ends anymore, and the aftermath of that invasion was utter devastation. Panama was left without a function government until the US military stepped in to fill the vacuum. After two or three days, American forces

formally took over the administration of the country under the Pentagon plan called Operation Blind Logic. U.S. officers were assigned to supervise 22 Panaman ministries and state agencies effectively running the country for months. At the same time, the military crippled what remained of Panama's civilian administration by seizing roughly 15,000 boxes of government documents. The invasion permanently reshaped Panama's political reality, dividing it between those absorbed into Noriega's nationalist rhetoric and those who had welcomed foreign intervention. It also sends a clear message to every political actor that Panama's sovereignty was conditional on their cooperation with the US. Meanwhile in the US, there was bailia mumma against their government's claimed right to invade Panama,

remove its government, dismantle its military, and inflict costs on Panama's poor, black and mestizo communities. The US kind of moved on from Panama after the invasion. I mean, they continued to meddle and intervene, but they had basically gotten what they wanted at that point, which was the removal of someone who was not going to cooperate with them anymore. Unless you believe that they disrupted the drug trade with the arrest of Doriega, Panama continued to function as a transit point for cocaine and a center for money laundering at basically the same scale as before.

Welcome to the A building. I'm Hans Charles. Our menalick Lamumba. It's 1969. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. had both been assassinated. And Black America was out of breaking point. Writing and protests broke out on an unprecedented scale.

In Atlanta, Georgia, at Martin's Al-Mermata, Morehouse College, the students had their own protest. It featured two prominent figures in black history, Martin Luther King's senior and a young student, Samuel L. Jackson. To be in what we really thought, was a revolution. I mean, people would die. In 1968, the murder of Dr. King, which traumatized everyone. The FBI had a role in the murder of a Black Panther leader in Chicago.

This story is about protest. It echoes in today's world far more than it should, and it will blow your mind. Listen to the A-building on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Ryder Strong, and I have a new podcast. called the red weather. It was many and many a year ago, in a kingdom by the sea. In 1995, my neighbor and a trainer disappeared from a commune. It was hard to wrap your head around. It was nature and trees and praying and drugs.

So no, I am not your guru. And back then, I lied to my parents. I lied to police. I lied to everybody. There were years right where I could not say your name. I've decided to go back to my hometown in Northern California. Interview my friends, family, talk to police, journalists, whomever I can to try to find out what actually happened. Isn't it a little bit weird that they obsess over hippies in the woods and not the obvious boyfriend?

They have had this case for 30 years. I'll teach you sons of a bitch to come around here in my wife. Boom, boom. This is The Red Weather. Listen to the Red Weather on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I actually drop better when I'm high. It heightens my senses, calms me down. If anything, I'm more careful.

Honestly, it just helps me focus. That's probably what the driver who killed a four-year-old told himself. And now he's in prison. You see, no matter what you tell yourself, if you feel different, you drive different. So if you're high, just don't drive. Brought to you by NHTSA and the Ad Council. You know, Roaldol.

the writer who thought up Willie Wonka, Matilda, and the BFG. But did you know he was also a spy? Was this before he wrote his stories? It must have been. Our new podcast series, The Secret World of Roll Doll, is a wild journey through the hidden chapters of his extraordinary, controversial life. His job was literally to seduce the wives of powerful Americans. What?

And he was really good at it. You probably won't believe it either. Okay, I don't think that's true. I'm telling you. I was a spy. Did you know Doll got cozy with him? the Roosevelt's, played poker with Harry Truman, and had a long affair with a congresswoman. And then he took his talents to Hollywood, where he worked alongside Walt Disney and Alfred Hitchcock,

before writing a hit James Bond film. How did this secret agent wind up as the most successful children's author ever? And what darkness from his covert past seeped into the stories we read as kids. The true story is stranger than anything he ever wrote. Listen to The Secret World of Roll Doll on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So finally, what exactly is the connection with Venezuela, if any? James, you want to go first? I mean, there's a very obvious parallel in that they have deposed a leader

that you don't need to go carry water for the guy they deposed. You can say something is bad without the person who happened to does not therefore become a perfect angel. Things cannot be binary. That's okay. But like, it is wild that we look to what happened in Panama and were like, you know what, we can do better than that. We don't even have to declare a war. We don't even have to do an invasion, right?

We can just kidnap a guy. I mean, they did do an invasion. They kind of bombed a bunch of people and stuff too. Yes, they did, yeah. They did an airborne, yeah, they did like an airborne invasion, I guess, would be the way to describe it. Like, in a sense, right? Like, I'm happy that they didn't sort of go through the streets of Caracas with bombs

and artillery and mortars. Yeah, they did end. do scorched earth this time. But at the same time, like, we have now, like, I've literally have spoken to several people in Venezuela in the last 24 hours, right? And they are in that situation now of not knowing, right? Like, who is the relevant authority? The US, in this case, doesn't seem to have replaced the regime.

They've just in, again, a parallel to what we saw in Panama, just installed another person, right? Not even necessarily installed another person because, I mean... Let it trickle down and see how it rides. Rodriguez was already in power. Yeah, like, I guess maybe they looked at Rodriguez and were like, because she's previously worked with, like, I guess the analogy would be the Chamber of Commerce, maybe something like that, like Venezuelan business interests.

Maybe they were just like, yeah, well, maybe we can force her to be compliant with what we want. Like, the only shit getting liberated is the oil in Venezuela, right? And it's actually not very good oil. Yeah. The same happened in Panama, right? The U.S. didn't go to liberate people that went to liberate the canal. It's so disappointing to see people still look at foreign policy in binary terms. And like you said before, I think one of the things that the Venezuelan people I'm speaking to express deep, deep frustration with is that when they take a risk, right, and go online and share their frustrations with both Chavismo and with the United States invading their country, they are told by Western leftists that they must be either CIA agents or British.

tend Venezuelans, like Americans posing as Venezuelans. Yeah, or like Cusanos or whatever. Yeah, like there is this, I mean, in the case of Venezuela, right, if you thought it was great, you could have gone. You had two decades to go. I went when I was in undergraduate, right, to see it, to study it, to understand it. It was formative in the way that my politics are now, which is politics that doesn't see human liberation coming from the state.

It's not to say that there's nothing positive happening in Venezuela in terms of experiments with, you know, communal initiatives and, you know, cooperative economic projects. Despite the U.S. sanctions, despite what they are enduring, Venezuelan people have, you know, managed to innovate and manage to create, you know, these kinds of projects where they can exercise their autonomy, exercise, their voice and their self-determination. Yeah. I think, of course, that there's a level of, I think, co-optation or attempts by the government of Venezuela to use those projects or to integrate those projects into their apparatus or to gain legitimacy through those projects. Yeah.

But as always, the situation on the ground is very complex and people are going to have different perspectives and feelings on the levels of government's involvement in their, communes and whatnot, I think the best outcome for Venezuela's would have been, of course, primarily the lifting of U.S. sanctions. And, you know, secondarily, their own self-directed liberation from the imposition of the government on their projects. But, you know, there are those who have those projects who support the government in Falthland who get received funding and that kind of thing. So It's complex, like you say, right?

That these things aren't binaries. It's not like always good, always bad. But as you said, right, like our solidarity should be with the Venezuelan people. They should be the ones who get to decide who rules Venezuela. Yeah. I mean, even if I disagree with that. Yeah. I still think ourselves would be up to them.

We should want a world in which, yet, they can choose, even if they don't choose what we want. Otherwise, it's just another kind of colonial project, right? And I think that colonial impulse. And let's also be honest, there is a racialized component to the way that the American left talks to people in the global south, right? And I think we should not overlook that they think that people aren't capable of either they don't know what's best for them and they need to be told by someone else or that they're not capable of understanding. Like people in Venezuela are extremely aware of the consequences of U.S. intervention. I lived with people who were tortured in Chile when I lived in Venezuela. many people came from fleeing Piennichet right to Venezuela.

It was a place that previously accepted migrants before migrants ended up leaving in large numbers as they have now. People are extremely aware of what U.S. intervention means. They're much better educated than most Americans on affairs in South and Central America. They know the game that is being played here. And I would just like to see people afford them the same humanity that they afford people in this country,

it shouldn't be that difficult, but it genuinely seems to be. Yeah, I think too, there's an element where, you know, them with their knowledge may make calculations, may make decisions that you,

with that same knowledge, wouldn't make. You know, because there's internal disagreement, too. There are people who have the same knowledge and they come to different conclusions about that,

about the best course of action, and about the best trade-offs that they should be making, about how they navigate the conditions they've been placed in. Yeah. And I think there's room for those conversations we had without, you know, erasing that diversity of perspectives and fever of that simple binary that keep coming back to. Yeah, definitely.

Like, there's no need for that condescension. Like, if we can give criticisms from a place of solidarity, one of the things that I learned when I was in Rojava, like, not everything that happened. there is something that I think is perfect or good, right? And there are a lot of people there, including internationalists, right? Like there's an anarchist group, Tecoshin Anasist, who are an anarchist group within the revolution. And like the revolution itself is not purely anarchist, right? But they exist to give criticism from a place of solidarity and both groups wanting the other group to get better, right, to have what they want, to succeed.

which is how our relations with these other, like, I guess, liberation struggles in Venezuela would be a reasonable term to use, right? Like, our relations with them should be that, like, we care about you. We hopefully both care about these things, right, about human liberation, about people being able to live with dignity and respect. And we can disagree, but we're ultimately disagreeing from a place of solidarity and support, not of condescension, which is what I see far too much. I think when I'm on the internet.

Exactly. Exactly. So, you know, Noriega and Maduro are interchangeable. Panama, 1989 is not Venezuela in 2006. The political systems, regional dynamics, and global context are different.

But the stories told to justify US intervention are pretty familiar. In Panama, the invasion was framed as a moral necessity to stop drugs, to restore democracy and defend American lives. And this is in spite of the fact the U.S. collaborated with that very same regime for years before hacked. Interestingly, in Venezuela's case, the justifications were also pretty similar at first. Stopping drugs, restoring democracy, defending American lives.

And just like with Panama, they faced sanctions, diplomatic isolation and economic pressure. But after the invasion of Venezuela, Trump just dropped the pretense entirely. he just came out and said it. Yeah, we want their oil. So what? What is the international community going to do about it? The laws do not apply to us. In fact, we are going to withdraw

from all of those international agreements that, you know, threaten our interests. You could look this up. The U.S. literally put this into, what was it? It's an executive order, right? There's executive order, right? Yeah. that they withdrawing from all of these international agreements that don't align with what they want.

And so in both the case of Panama and the case of Venezuela, American interests supersede all else. American laws somehow apply to the entire world, while the world's laws never apply to America. And the actual people on the ground in both cases don't matter at all. And also another parallel, the domestic American narrative of racialized fare and drug war hysteria can be found in both invasions. And just like Panama left the media consciousness after the invasion, as though the problems were solved,

I wouldn't be surprised if we see a similar situation play out after they get what they want out of Venezuela. Suddenly, all the issues of Venezuela have would no longer be in the picture because America got what they wanted. Of course, it's a development story, so it remains to be seen. That's all I have for today. History does not repeat, but it's good to know because I find it often rhymes. All power to all the people. Peace. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media.

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