← Back to context

Comment by onetimeusename

4 months ago

That has happened and not a lot came of it. Venezuela nationalized American oil projects under Hugo Chavez. If by hell breaking loose you mean law suits I guess so.

Ah yes, Venezuela famously only has lawsuits that happened to them. Maybe look up Guaido, the 3% polling self and US declared president of Venezuela.

  • Isn't Venezuela a defacto dictatorship now? Not sure the 3% is correct under these conditions.

    • It could have maybe gone a bit differently if the US government had resisted the urge to interfere, like in the bad old days of the cold war. They isolated Chavez and then Maduro, which backfired just enough to justify the slide into full-on dictatorship.

      People voted for Chavez and then (at least once) for Maduro because the massive inequality was unsustainable. If the US had accepted that and worked with them instead of against them, maybe we'd be in a different place right now. But the interests of oil companies always come first, sadly. (obviously this does not absolve the Venezuelans from their responsibilities.)

      1 reply →

    • Defacto dictatorship now, but even when there were elections he wasn't exactly popular. In the 2015 parliamentary elections (2 members per district) he actually placed second behind another member of his own party. He became popular during the 2018 crisis then kept proving to be inept.

    • They left 3% to the opposition? The government won the general elections in Italy with 98.5% 96 years ago.

  • And the huge American military force currently positioned off their coastline, blowing up boats!

    • How many decades after nationalization?

      The motive for recent boat bombings is supposedly stopping illegal drugs. Though IMO it has more to do with distracting from the release of certain human trafficking records. This US administration seems bent entirely to the will and ego of one person.

      (Which isn't to say the US has clean hands. Our list of attempted coups in South America is long.)