(SeaPRwire) –
By: Julian Holbrooke
The June 24 twin earthquakes in Venezuela didn’t just level thousands of buildings. They tore down the last shred of credibility behind the Trump administration’s Venezuela intervention. Seismologists warned for decades a major quake would hit the country’s northern coast. No one predicted the far larger man-made disaster that would trap thousands under rubble. The zombie state running Venezuela failed its people long before the first tremor struck. At least 5,000 people are confirmed dead, most in the dense slums of La Guaira state. No official count of missing people exists, with independent estimates ranging from 10,000 to 30,000.
The official line from Washington reads like a well-polished press release. Secretary of State Marco Rubio says the January 3 special forces raid removed dictator Nicolas Maduro to stabilize the country. The administration claims it is shepherding Venezuela toward free elections and economic recovery. It says Delcy Rodriguez, the interim president, is a legitimate placeholder overseeing transparent oil revenue management. U.S. Southern Command claims its troops are on the ground solely to support disaster relief efforts. Post-intervention polling even frames Trump as a popular figure among Venezuelans, second only to opposition leader Maria Corina Machado.
The reality on the ground tells a completely different story. The entire architecture of the Chavista dictatorship remains fully intact. Rodriguez and nearly her entire cabinet are still under active U.S. sanctions. Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello hosts U.S. military officers in Caracas, even with a $25 million U.S. bounty on his head for human rights abuses. The promised oil revenue transparency website has been inactive since March, leaving Venezuelans with no way to track how oil funds are spent. The White House has blocked popular opposition leader and Nobel laureate Maria Corina Machado from returning to the country. Half of Venezuelans still live in extreme poverty, with inflation, blackouts and police abuse unchanged from Maduro’s rule. The government refuses to release an official quake death toll, mirroring its long history of hiding crime and inflation data from the public.
The geopolitical pendulum in Latin America will shift hard against U.S. influence after this fiasco. Any future Washington promises of democratic liberation will be dismissed immediately as a cover for resource extraction.
Author bio: Julian Holbrooke, an international relations analyst who regularly contributes to major European dailies, with a focus on Latin American sovereignty and U.S. foreign policy.