Phil Little, Ladysmith, BC

My interest in Latin America causes me to focus on this “American” region of the world, understanding the term “American” as all that from Ellesmere Island to Cape Horn in the Tierra del Fuego of Chile. While the designation is connected to the Spanish invasion and colonial presence, the name from the Italian explorer “Amerigo Vespucci” was adapted and technically all of us in this 13,000 km stretch are American, rather than “Vespuccians”.

I was infected with a Latino virus with my years in Peru in the 1970s working as a missionary, and then my continued involvement in Honduras about which I have written in the ICN. I confess that I like Victor Jara as much as Gordon Lightfoot, the Buena Vista Social Club as much as the Cowboy Junkies, and Andean flute music as much as Loreena McKennitt. “De gustibus” perhaps!

I travelled in a few of the Andean nations, but I never had the reason or opportunity to visit Venezuela. It was at one time a land of opportunity and a place where Latin Americans could immigrate and find work and make a more decent living than in their home nations. Typical among Latin American countries was the divide between the small elite who controlled the wealth and the vast majority who subsisted on the crumbs that fell from the tables of the rich.

Venezuela is a country of enormous wealth with the world’s largest proven oil reserves, plus other wealth in extraction found in iron ore, bauxite, gold, diamonds and natural gas. The potential for agricultural self-reliance would almost be guaranteed by the biodiversity of the country. Of course the upper classes controlled much of the wealth, in alliance with foreign partners, principally from the USA.

Then came the change, in the person of Hugo Chavez, and a fundamental shift which included nationalization’s of key sectors of the economy principally in the oil industry. Of course this upset the balance in the pocketbooks to the north, but to the masses of poor people there were immediate benefits in social programs in education, health and infrastructure. Elections which were disputed by the USA were in Latin American standards clean and fair, but of course the weakness in democracy is in giving everyone a vote and when the poor have an option they look to who is going to really help. For the USA the lesson learned was that the poor needed to change their priorities without realizing that they were voting against themselves.

The Chavez government basically was a petro-state, not dissimilar to Canada in many ways. It overspent on social projects such as price controls, increasing popular support, but when the oil market dropped the government was in crisis. Venezuela found itself in an “economic war” with dropping oil prices, international sanctions, and continued opposition from the business elite allied with USA political interests.

Venezuela was a key figure in the formation of ALBA-TCP, the “Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America”, the formation of an opposition bloc to US hegemony in the region which included Cuba, Bolivia, Nicaragua and some Caribbean countries with a lean towards the left. Peru and Chile were never members of ALBA but danced with closer relations when opportune.

Canada was a member of the discredited “LIMA group”, including the USA, Brazil and Argentina that sought to capitalize on the instability and economic crisis in Venezuela and supported dissent and the political opposition to the government. Canada was a principal operative in the failed effort to install a puppet regime with Juan Guaidó in 2019 as interim president.

Maduro who succeeded Chavez has mismanaged the economy, as bad as it is, and the country is in a tailspin, which is what the LIMA group wanted. Inflation went through the roof, social programs and subsidies could not be continued. Without the oil revenue, due to US sanctions on ships carrying Venezuelan crude, the country resorted to more authoritarian measures. Without a doubt human rights took a dive, and millions of Venezuelans have fled to neighbouring countries as economic refugees, bringing hardship to these nations already dealing with their own instability and poverty.

“Southern Spear”

In November 2025 US War secretary Pete Hegseth announced the military operation code named “Southern Spear”, officially to take offensive action against the imaginary Venezuelan fentanyl smuggling cartel. There is no doubt that fentanyl is a huge threat to internal American stability but it is not coming from Venezuela, and contrary to the US president’s dreams it does not come from British Columbia either.

Venezuela could be a conduit for cocaine, but Trump’s recent pardon of Juan O. Hernandez, convicted by a US jury and sentenced to 45 years in prison for importing “hundreds of tons of cocaine” to the US when he was president of Honduras, shows that cocaine is not the threat.

The US navy has blown almost 100 Venezuelan sailors out of the Caribbean waters without any proof of their activities, but accusing them of smuggling fentanyl. These “war crimes” hide the intentions of Trump cabinet members, Marco Rubio to get at Cuba through Venezuela and Steve Miller who wants to deport American citizens of Venezuelan origin. Trump, Rubio, Miller and others all have their bone to pick with Venezuela, but it boils down for a desire for “regime change” which fits with the agenda of the LIMA group including Canada.

Perhaps by publication time of the ICN, the government of Maduro may have collapsed, or it might be further entrenched in its failed economy and a population with 70 per cent or more living in extreme poverty, in a country of such huge economic potential. The Trump political strategy requires distraction and blowing the occasional fishing vessel out of Venezuelan territorial waters gets front page in the Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star. Gaza and the Sudan slip off the news pages, for genocide and tribal wars hardly fit the Christmas season. The 1988 movie “Die Hard” remains a most popular Christmas movie – go figure!

Honduras is a country in chaos after recent national elections marked with heavy USA interference and Trump promised to pardon the drug cartel leader Hernandez if his political party won the election. All the talk about fentanyl and cocaine is pure smoke that clouds what is really threatening to all the Americas.

The progressive Pope Francis style bishop of Trujillo, Jenry Ruiz, in northern Honduras said “The entire anti-drug policy of the United States government is a village circus farce; they kill some and pardon others. So it depends on which drug trafficking group they’re siding with?” As everyone in Honduras knows, the US military is heavily involved in the drug trade, for it is not $millions but $billions that is being moved, and it is never officially on the books.

Venezuela is dealing with simultaneous crises and there is no doubt that there should be an international scrutiny of the human rights situation as more authoritative and repressive measures are used to control the discontent of the people. But that is true of all countries around the world.

So why Canada?

Canada has a dismal track record of meddling in the affairs of other countries, demolishing a mythical notion of ourselves as defenders of democracy and human rights. Our interventions in Africa sometimes disguised as “peace-keeping”, in Somalia, Rwanda, Nigeria and Libya exposed our not so subtle colonial ideology clearly documented in the textbook Canada in the World by professor Tyler Shipley. In the Americas we have forgotten our own “colonial” identity (from France to Britain to USA) as we worked against the national interests of other struggling nations such as Haiti, Peru, El Salvador and Honduras. Canada was the First Nation to recognize the illegitimate government which ousted the Honduran democratically elected government of Zelaya in 2009. Canada was a principle of the LIMA group seeking to impose a puppet regime in Venezuela. Of course it was not at all about democracy but more about supporting sweatshop (Guildan), mining (Goldcorp), and other extractive business ventures (Hudbay) involving Canadian corporations.

As a colony, we of the “Great White North” should pay more attention to the rhetoric of the Trump circus, for as crazy as they may be, they have power. The same false narrative used against Venezuela applies to Canada. Even before beginning his second turn Trump was talking about the “51st state” and the imaginary fentanyl flowing south from Canada.

The tariff war seeks to cripple Canadian industry and make us more dependent on US producers. We already have water treaties that give the US priority access to our fresh waters, before serving Canadian needs. Like Honduras, we allow American military bases disguised with Canadian brands such as the CFMETR military facility in nearby Nanoose capable of shielding US submarines.

There was a time when we proudly defended our independence and refused to join the OAS, a mechanism of US hegemonic control of the Americas. Other American nations marvelled at our ability to resist, but in 1990 Brian Mulroney saw the light and Canada fell into line abandoning 28 years of resistance.

The Trump administration has announced a new “old” policy in the form of National Security Council Report (NSC) 88 which outlines the move away from other global engagements dating back to WWII that gave rise to the United Nations and the NATO alliance, as well as other “Free Trade” treaties. The visionaries of NSC88 long for “our country’s inherent greatness and decency,” which requires “the restoration and reinvigoration of American spiritual and cultural health,” “an America that cherishes its past glories and its heroes, and that looks forward to a new golden age,” and “growing numbers of strong, traditional families that raise healthy children.”

The ideology of NSC88 rejects immigration, “climate change” and “Net Zero” ideologies, and international industries that threaten national sovereignty. It is called “isolationism”. The old “Cold War” preoccupation is dismissed, Russia is now Europe’s problem and not the concern of the USA.

Way back when I was in high school, the same school later attended by Mark Carney but obviously with different history teachers, we learned about the “Monroe Doctrine”, thinking this was something of the past. NSC88 revives the Monroe Doctrine with a Trumpian flavour, calling for a world divided into “spheres of interest” by dominant countries (empires). In developing its own strategy called “commercial diplomacy” the USA claims the Western Hemisphere (Ellesmere Island to Tierra del Fuego) as its sphere of influence.

Tariffs and reciprocal trade agreements are the tools to encourage nations of its sphere to deal exclusively with the USA and not with other nations of the hemisphere. “The United States must be preeminent in the Western Hemisphere as a condition of our security and prosperity,” NSC88 says, “a condition that allows us to assert ourselves confidently where and when we need to in the region”.

The 1823 policy of James Monroe has morphed into the “Trump Corollary”. The strategic goal of NSC88 is to allow American industries to have the most favourable opportunities in the Western sphere. Should countries oppose such U.S. initiatives, NSC88 dictates that “[t]he United States must also resist and reverse measures such as targeted taxation, unfair regulation, and expropriation that disadvantage U.S. businesses.”

The Ugly American is not a single figure with orange hair. It is a movement of millions who lament the end of slavery, who believe in white supremacy, whose misogyny demands control of all women’s reproductive freedoms, who demean African refugees as “garbage”, and celebrates the genocide in Gaza.

He, she, they are called “MAGA” and are willing to walk over the cliff with their piper. If Honduras regrets its history as the original “Banana Republic” and being defined as the “back patio” of the USA, Canada should wonder if we are the northern patio of the empire.

So far NSC88 has not gone to Congress or the Senate of the US government, it has not been posted on “Truth Social”, and it is not found in Melania’s “memoirs”. But it shows where Trump’s people are wanting to go.

Venezuela! Canada! Tweedle Dum! Tweedle Dee! We can see the forces gathering around Venezuela. Can we see the handwriting on the wall as to what is intended for the 51st state. As said in a CBC “22 minutes” sketch which apparently has irked Trump, all they really want is Alberta.

(Attributes: information about NSC88 comes from Heather Cox Richardson, an American political historian. Born in Chicago, but with no connections to Pope Leo XIV, she publishes “Letters from an American”, one of the most popular contributors on Substack.)