What's Really Going on In Venezuela? Oil, Empire & the Next Proxy War

0:00Today's podcast, all about Latin America, all about Venezuela, all about Cuba. We're going directly to Argentina to one of Latin America's foremost commentators, Juan Gabriel Tokatlian. And he's going to explain to us what exactly is going on in America's backyard. Will they attack? If they attack, what is that going to do, not just for Venezuela, but for the region in general? And that's all coming up in a minute.

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1:31To understand the economy, you have to understand human nature. This podcast is powered by Acast.

1:44How are you doing there? Ho, ho, ho. It is podcast time. It's around Christmas, but it's also John's birthday today. It is. It is John's birthday. He is one of those many people who was unfortunately born in and around Christmas Day. Yeah. So he can't get two prezzies. Yeah, that's it. I've always suffered from that. The whole thing of, oh, here's a present for your birthday and Christmas. Exactly, exactly. Hard done by. But I don't like to complain, Mac, you know me. What? You are my resident sounding board for complaining about stuff. I'm the complaints department. It is the complaints department.

2:19John comes in here and says, I'm going to take you to my manager. I'm going to report you to my supervisor. The complaint. That's upstairs. That's Sean. Anyway, listen, it's great to have you i hope christmas went all right and uh you got over the christmas we are today talking about we're laughing and joking but we're actually talking about war yeah that's the sort of blokes we are yeah hot take on this particular podcast is will 2026 be the last year of the cuban regime that was installed in 1957 or 58 i think by fidel castro i think that's where we are going. We're going to talk about Venezuela.

3:00We're going to talk about what has happened to Venezuela, what is likely to happen to Venezuela if the Americans intervene. And if they do, will that set off a domino, the next one to fall being the Cuban regime? And more importantly, will that lead to what our guest from Argentina, who we're going to talk to in a few minutes, Juan Tocatlian suggested could be an American Vietnam in Latin America. So it's all ahead of us. But, but, but, 2026 will be Trump's year for the Nobel Peace Prize, no doubt. But he got the FIFA Peace Prize. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm going to get the FIFA for economics prize.

3:43But it's a serious thing we're going to talk about today. it is something that in Ireland and in Europe in particular, I don't think is really quite appreciated. One, how much of a total disaster the last 10 years has been for Venezuela. Yeah. Number one. But number two, how American policy, and this is the crucial thing, has changed under Trump too. It's called the Monroe Doctrine. And the idea is that America will basically withdraw or could withdraw. And it sees behind the two big oceans, the Atlantic and the Pacific. And it sees basically the Americas as its backyard. It's Dominion, in effect.

4:28Yeah. Who's, sorry, who's Monroe? Okay, so we're going back a long time, John. Economic history, 1823. Oh, okay. That long ago, right? James Monroe was the president of the United States. Right. So think about the history of Latin America. The Spaniards arrived in 1492. Between then and the 19th century, most of Latin America was a Spanish colony. Yeah. Then they have this called these Bolivarist movements. Okay. And the Bolivarist movements were independence movements in Latin America. Yeah. So one after another, Chile, Colombia, Venezuela become countries in their own right, number one, cease to be Spanish colonies, number two, and kick off this independence movement all over Latin America.

5:24Now, the Americans sided with the independence movements in Latin America against the European colonists because we forget that America was set up as an anti-colonial force. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the Monroe Doctrine was essentially that the sphere of influence of the Americas should be the Americas, not Europeans. So the idea that European colonialists would fight Latin American independent movements and gain control over them was seen by Washington as an anathema. And the Washington said, look, we will look after Latin America in the future. The Monroe Doctrine was very, very much part of American foreign policy for the last 200 years.

6:09But it hasn't been most significantly exemplified by our friend McKinley, the man that Donald Trump loves, who started a war in Cuba to dislodge the Spaniards. Right, okay. And support the José Martí. And we're going to talk about Cuba quite a bit today in the podcast. So the Monroe Doctrine is that America controls America, or the Americas, and of course that gives the United States the whip hand. And of course, Reagan was a big fan of this doctrine as well. Yeah. Because he was interfering with Honduras and El Salvador and Grenada. Wasn't he responsible for... They invaded Grenada. Yeah. They invaded Grenada.

6:52Bonkers. But again, as we will talk about Venezuela, Nicaragua then was being used also by the Russians. So you had the Contras versus the Sandinistas. Again, like all things, Latin America has been a little sort of pawn in the game, in a bigger game. And of course, the big thorn in the side for the United States has always been Cuba. You know, a place that you and I have been to many times. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, once for me. You enjoyed it though, didn't you? I loved it. I absolutely loved Cuba. It was kind of a bonkers, crazy place. I went on a bit of a road trip and went diving there, scuba diving, and actually ended up getting the bends.

7:33Really? Yeah. Ready you had? I tell you, we went diving and we went down deep, but then we were swimming along the bottom. And unbeknownst to me, and this is the dive master's, you know, fault, that we were getting shallower and shallower, and I wasn't aware of how shallow we got. Next minute I popped up. And of course, you know, when you're really deep, the nitrogen starts leaving your bloodstream and the bubbles start forming. Oh my God, that was beautiful. Oh my God, it was really painful. I was really lucky. People die from that. You should probably do a podcast, John. Could you imagine? I should imagine anything worse.

8:10I have been to Cuba about eight times. Right. And of course, my son, Cal, went to school in Cuba. Yeah. He did his transition year in Cuba. So because I had an old maid of mine who unfortunately passed away, an Irish guy called Desmond Boylan, a brilliant photographer, a war photographer, and he was brought up in Spain. So his first language is Spanish, even though his parents are Irish. And he emigrated to Cuba. To be a photographer? To marry a Cuban woman and to live the dream. He was a commie. And he was like full in. He was all in for Fidel, right? Right, yeah, yeah. A really great bloke, really interesting guy.

8:45And I was down in Cuba. I was chatting to him I was just staying with him and he was asking about the kids and I said oh Cal's doing this thing called transition year next year where they take a year off and he's not too sure what to do and Desmond said why didn't you come down here to school so Cal went to commie school down there wow yeah yeah it was really good three of them went down Cal and two of the lads yeah yeah and they went to school in Cuba what was school like there sorry I know we're getting off the topic here a little bit but this is fascinating well it was funny because Cal said to me he says see this communist shit dad doesn't work I can tell you that we were trying to turn him into a good little Marxist.

9:17Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he came back like a libertarian. He came back like Javier Millet, right? An anarcho-capitalist. But he lived in Cuba amongst the Cubans. And the nicest thing is I came down to visit them. I was doing some work in Canada. They were living in an area of Havana called Vedado, which is west of the center of Havana. And I turned the corner to see Cal and his mate Tom haggling with the taxi driver in Spanish, right? Wow. In Havana, inflected Spanish. And you were proud, Dad. I was so proud. I said, that's me lad, that's me boy. But he went down there and lived with Desmond and lived like a Cuban for transition year and really, really loved it.

10:03But he did say that the system, he said, it's so corrosive. He said, everybody's turned into a mental capitalist. He said that's what communism does. It turns everyone into a hustler. He said he's never met people who hustle for so much. Yeah, that's right. Because you have to. Because there's shortages everywhere. So he said everywhere. I mean, his great trick was KLM, right? The band? No, the airline. It's the wrong part of my brain is wrapping at the moment. The one thing in Cuba which is unbelievably expensive for Westerners is internet. Right. And it's unbelievably expensive for Cubans too.

10:42So that's one of the way the regime gets money. But Cal had figured out that the air hostesses and the pilots at KLM got paid internet cards, right? They were given internet cards by the airline as a perk of the job so they didn't have to spend a fortune on local Cuban internet. Yeah. And Cal figured out a way of selling those cards to Cubans. So he'd go down to the hotel where, because he spoke English, she'd get into the hotel where the KLM airhouse desks were there and he was only 15 and he'd just sit around there and ask them for their phone cards and they were going back to Holland they don't give to him and he flogged them Fair play to Jesus so but I mean I've always thought that I think I was first there in the 90s and then have visited many times because of Desmond and I would say if what we're about to hear in Venezuela goes in the direction I think it's going to go, that Cuban regime will be over.

11:45Yeah. In the next 12 months. Of course, Rubio, Marco Rubio is Cuban. Yeah. So he's obviously very anti-Cuban regime. Yeah. And of course, before 1958, Cuba was, you know, the Ibiza. Yeah, it was the Ibiza. Of America, run by a lot of the mafia and stuff. Yeah. That's why if you go to Las Vegas. So that's why it suits Trump. He'd love that back. Of course he would. Of course he would. Of course he would. I mean, but the whole rise of Vegas was to do with the eclipse of Cuba. Yeah, of course. So Las Vegas is a creation. Havana was what Las Vegas turned into. But again, an amazing country, wonderful time, but an absolutely derelict regime in terms of what they've done to the place.

12:29I mean, the way in which they've changed the people's brains so much so that everyone is hustling. Everything's for sale and everything's the lowest common denominator. But the flip side of that, though, is, I mean, I don't know if this is one of these urban myths, but they say the Cuban health system is top notch. And again, I would say that's an urban myth. Right. Only speaking to the kids who lived there, they said the health system was really appalling. Right, okay. They also said that the corruption is just there. It's not as bad as other places, but it is there. and they said that basically they've no money.

13:12That's the problem. So you run out of money, everything collapses. But on the other side as well is that, I mean, we spoke about this a few weeks ago about limitations. When you're limited in whatever resources or whatever, you become more resourceful and you start being creative with your limited resources. Yeah. Hence you have, that's why they've got all these 1950s bangers that aren't bangers. They keep kind of reinventing the engine. No creature in the world is more resourceful than a Cuban mechanic. Yeah. They are. They're unbelievable. But we're going to talk about Venezuela, right? But we're going to maybe talk about Cuba at the end of it.

13:50So what I want to do is go directly to Latin America to get a Latin American view of what's happening in Venezuela. What is the history? What is the prognosis? Where are things likely to go? What are the relationships between the Americans and the Latin Americans? and what implications might an American armed intervention in Venezuela have for the rest of Latin America. And we're going, we're blessed to have them, okay? Juan Gabriel Tocatlian is a professor of international relations in Buenos Aires. He's a good mate of our friend, Martin Lustow. When I asked Martin, who should I get on talking about Latin American economics and politics, sociology, the whole thing, he said, Juan is your man.

14:29Juan Gabriel is your man, so let's go down to BA. Brilliant. And let's talk to Juan Gabriel Tocatlia. Juan Gabriel, how are you? Fine. Nice to be with you today. Great to see you. Great to see you. Can you explain to me and the listeners, a very simple question, but I presume it's not a simple answer. How did Venezuela go from being, in the 1950s, the fourth richest country in the world, to, let's say if we pick it up in the 1990s, How did Venezuela become so poor so quickly, given how rich the country should be? Well, let's go by sort of chronological development of the issue. One has to think that the main revenues for Venezuelans had historically been oil.

15:20You have to take into consideration that from a long time ago, Venezuela has the largest proven oil reserve in the world. This was a country over the 50s that experienced certain major problems, among others, short-term dictatorship. And then it evolved through a political pact between what one may call a social democratic party and a Christian democratic party to arrange the way of turning it to democracy and among themselves just, well, competitive elections. and one was in power, the other was in the opposition, and this worked quite, quite, quite, quite well. You have to think also and put Venezuela in a larger Latin American contest.

16:18During the 70s, only Costa Rica, Colombia, and Venezuela had competitive elections in Latin America. The rest of Latin America was under different types of military dictatorships. So Venezuela became, by that time, a country that, among others, received a lot of immigrants from Latin America. Enormous quantities of Colombians who were seeing this powerhouse, Venezuela, oil, richness, etc., etc., were moving to Venezuela. approximately between 800 ,000 and 1 million Colombians went to live in Venezuela. Political exiles from Argentina, Chile, Brazil ended up living in Venezuela. But within this context, over the 80s, one major problem was the level of ongoing corruption, limited investment in improving the oil capacity of the country, a process by which at the end of the 70s, the whole oil business was nationalized, and so it was in state hands, mostly.

17:45And then you have not only corruption, but power politics among the two major parties that ended up fed up the citizenry. I mean, people were, I mean, they were just always on the brink of having a problem because health questions, education problems, political rivalries, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So this whole set of problems were ongoing. And by the late 90s, we have Hugo Chavez, a military that attempted a coup d 'etat. And he failed. But this was unusual for a country that was known for its democracy. But he said when he failed, I will return. And he returned by ballot. I mean, he was elected in 1998.

18:43And here we have maybe the largest experiment in Latin America with what one may call participatory democracy. The idea was to broaden the space, the fora for larger involvement of the citizens. Civil society was called upon to reinforce the new democracy. major changes in terms of reordering the whole country with two questions. One, getting the military involved into politics. This was new. This was not a tradition in Venezuela. And second, extremely high oil prices. So this made that participatory democracy lab something that was going to work, maybe. For example, in terms of inequality, Venezuela, which used to be a very unequal country, shortened the differences between the upper and the lower parts of the society.

20:07There was some improvements in the daily life in terms of health, for example, of the people. But then this could not be sustained, basically. Venezuela needed a lot of new investment in oil. The regime get highly entrenched in terms of corruption. It was the past. The military has an upper hand, a growing upper hand in this. And I would say that the charisma of Chávez was not enough to sustain this political regime, this political experiment. This ended basically in 2013 when Chávez died. He was replaced by Ballot, again, by Maduro. But what you can see from 2014 up to date is a dramatic collapse of the economy, the social fabric, the politics in Venezuela.

21:12So what we are witnessing today is not just the failure of an attempt to have a very participatory democracy, but the concentration of power of a real authoritarian regime. So Juan, explain to me, right? This is because it's a fascinating and terrifying story that this country that was once very, very rich now has possibly as many as 6 million. Eight, 8 million. People have emigrated. Yes. That's never happened without a war. This is more people than have left Syria, for example. Yes, yes. So what has Maduro been doing inside on the economic side to precipitate this complete collapse of society?

22:02Well, on the one side, you have to consider the fact that Venezuelan oil revenue went down dramatically because of many problems with the oil industry by itself that was becoming an older, there was no new investment, and then the major source of revenues was not there as it used to be. Then you have major problems, at least during 20 years, with Colombia, which at that time was governed by right-wing governments, and there were always tensions that at one time was closer to have a major fight between these two countries. Then, in addition to that, you have hyperinflation, a dramatic rise of inflation.

22:57Putting in all this together, then you have no job opportunities for the people. People started to migrate, either for economic reasons or for political reasons. And what you see is the largest migration of a Latin American country with no war, as you say, in our history. And in that sense, also, it is important to think about the remittances of those people that were outside Venezuela. If something at least helped to deal with this situation was the remittances of the Venezuelans outside Venezuela, approximately between$4 to$5 billion a year, then you have by 2019 a sort of stabilization program that paved the way to an improvement.

24:01A way of handling the situation in the midst of chaos, obviously, and a certain improvement of oil exports, among others, basically to China, for example. Then you have a lower of inflation that was quite significant at one point. And then public jobs that at least contain the migration of more Venezuelans. I will argue that by 2024, when we have this election, this election that was won by the opposition, not by Maduro. Yes, that's very clear that the election was robbed by Maduro, isn't it? Oh, yeah. There's no doubt. There's no doubt. Now, we never knew what were the final results. I mean, it's very strange because even among center-to-left governments in the area, we're calling upon, saying, well, show us the data, I mean, the numbers.

25:10What are the numbers? And they said, well, yes, he won. Okay, he won. From there on, his situation was dramatically diminished among Latin Americans, even from the left, that start calling him either an authoritarian or a dictator. So this is not a wording by the extreme right or the right. Okay? When we hear about Venezuela, it's interesting you talk about left-right. There is, believe it or not, in Ireland, a Bolivarist nucleus in the left. I call it kind of third worldism. And it's very strong. In fact, our new president is an activist. And our old president was an active part of this hiberno-bolivarist Latin American movement.

25:55They have sort of an obsession with Latin American leftism that starts with the idealization of Fidel and Cuba and blah, blah, blah. So what they say here in Ireland is that the reason that Venezuela has been so destroyed is the Yankees. Okay? It's the gringos. It's the Americans. As a Latin American, can you answer me in terms of Venezuela's collapse? Is it internally to blame or are the Yankees also to blame? I would say that from approximately 2010 onwards, this should be blamed on the Venezuelans themselves. I mean, on the government. On the government. Not the Venezuelans as a people. It was more inward related, the diminishing capacity of production, the social problems, etc.

26:56the growing divide among the people, etc. But I will argue also that from 2015 onwards, one can easily see a role of external factors that has played a significant portion of this mixture of internally created plus externally pushed problem for Venezuela. So that's the sanctions, the American sanctions against them. Not only sanctions, you have also the idea 2018, the so-called Lima Group, among others, right-wing governments of Latin America, together with the United States, even though the United States was not part of the Lima Group, Lima is the capital of Peru, joining forces to do something with Venezuela.

27:53To do something by them or for them was to push to the demise of Maduro, to provoke the armed forces to intervene into politics, to create a situation by which a coup d 'etat can be taking place in Venezuela. The fact that maybe killing Maduro became a attack moment. An issue, at least for Trump, if you read the memoirs of his latest Secretary of Defense of his first term, his name is Mark Esper. Trump was absolutely obsessed with Venezuela. He wanted the oil. He wanted to kill Maduro. He wanted to invite. He wanted to do a lot of things in Venezuela. So what was originally a domestically created crisis became part of a global issue, not only of Latin America, not only in terms of this part of the world, of the Americas.

28:59But then you have the role of Russia in terms of defense, the role of China in terms of investment and oil. Then you have Ukraine. And then this sort of game that is going on still today that the Russians want a portion of Ukraine. And Trump says, well, if that is the case, he doesn't say this. This is my imagination. Please do not. No, no, I get you. I get you. Okay. Well, why not? I can take the Venezuelan oil. I have the right. This is my hemisphere. He's channeling his inner Putin. I say this because in the latest national security strategy of the United States, where Europe is quite humiliated, the expression our hemisphere is set in six opportunities.

30:01is like if Latin America and the Caribbean is part of the United States, it's a possession of the United States. So geopolitics, Latin American politics, inter-American politics, etc., etc., now is part of a mixture where Venezuela becomes a test case of many things altogether. So with that line of thinking, Juan, Do you think some American intervention in Venezuela is almost inevitable at this stage? Because, I mean, the interesting thing, Maduro, he stayed in power a long time. He has got a lot of Cuban advisors. They've also stayed in power a long time. You have to hand it to the Cubans. They're still there.

30:49The Cuban Communist Party is still there after all American efforts to get rid of them. Do you think that regime change is what the Americans want? and how do you think they're going to do that? And how will that then, what sort of deck of cards will that precipitate in Latin America in general? Well, there are many questions there and I do not have a crystal ball here to answer you about that. But first of all, I believe that within the Trump administration and regarding Latin America and on the Venezuela, There are two lines of thought. One line of thought, I would say, is closer to J.D. Vance, the vice president.

31:40Okay, let's deport a lot of people to Latin America. Okay, let's impose tariffs to Latin America also. Okay, do that and that. But avoid getting involved in a military situation where that can be a sort of Iraq too. I mean, in Latin America. Now closer to us. And so I imagine that he would prefer using the threat of force to manage a transition in Venezuela. Yeah. Then you have Marco Rubio. Marco Rubio, I think, has a different idea. Let's push definitely for regime change. They have never been so weak as today. Let's give them the last push. Let's use directly force under whatever excuse. Fentanyl.

32:45Well, fentanyl doesn't come from Venezuela. It has nothing to do with Venezuela with the fentanyl. No cocaine, cocaine, cocaine. No, no, nothing. Nothing to do with cocaine in Venezuela. Then if that happens, if a military, just not threat, but use of force very strategically, very well elaborated, and if there is the downfall of the government, why not Cuba then? Maybe Cuba is now, without its main supporter, you have to think that up to date, the major support in terms of energy of Cuba has been Venezuela. Yes. Cuba has a major problem, too many problems by today. But in terms of energy, the main provider of oil has been historically Venezuela.

33:38And so if you cut that line and if your show of force demonstrated that the regime may collapse, why not go for Cuba? I think that these two sides of the administration, one day Trump listens to Rubio, one day he listens to Vance, and the other day he says whatever. Okay? Yes. So this is the first thing that I think is working here now in terms of the military deployment. Second, by now, according to U.S. figures, not my figures, U.S. figures, this whole movement, naval, aerial, military movement, both in the Caribbean and in the Pacific, by now, since September, had a cost of$1 billion. So I do not think that the United States will invest so much money in doing this just then to chicken out.

34:45It's not. Yeah, it makes no sense. I don't think it's feasible for them, for themselves. I mean, they want to show strength, credibility, determination. And if Maduro stays there, it's a major loss for the administration. Then this takes me to the fact that I believe, I do not have specific information on that, but I think that the negotiations are there yet in Venezuela and the United States. I think that there are conversations. There are ways of dealing with this. I know for sure, by his own words, that Maduro tries to maintain this door open. There were dialogues in Qatar some time ago. Then Brazilian President Lula has a meeting with Trump in Asia and just two days ago said again that he wanted to be a good mediator.

35:55Brazil doesn't want to have U.S. troops in Venezuela. that Brazil, nor Brazil, nor Colombia, nor anyone wants to have a Vietnam in Latin America now. And so I imagine yet that we have a window of opportunity to frame a political solution. This will entail agreements, concessions, a time frame, etc. because if the United States decides to use direct force against Venezuela, this will be not an immediate answer on the part of Latin America, but this will be inadmissible for the whole Latin America and may create a major problem for the United States in the near future. So let's just end there because I kind of what I find fascinating that if the Americans go in, if they think, look, we've spent all this money, we want to get rid of this guy, we want the oil, in effect, a la Iraq.

37:03At the moment, most Latin Americans view, I think, Maduro as the problem, or a problem. But if he is deposed by military might from the United States, this will galvanize Latin Americans against the United States. I have no doubt about that. I mean, Latin Americans, we are not willing to use force nor threat the United States. That's unthinkable. I mean, but I will argue that among a large spectrum of political parties, the sense that the United States is not here in their area to exercise soft power, hegemony, persuasion. It's part of the past. The United States then will show that it only wants Latin America to be disciplined and it only wants domination and a way to avoid the power projection of China in the area.

38:08This is all. This is all. Juan, this has been a fascinating discussion. Fascinating discussion. I thank you so much because you've put it all into this international context. where Venezuela, yes, has its problems, but it's actually now a pawn in a much bigger game. I do no doubt about that. Thank you so much for your time. We will see you in the World Cup. That's our next meeting with Latin Americans, if Ireland qualify. Yes. Great stuff, Juan. Thank you so much. That was wonderful. Thank you.

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40:18jay's it's great getting somebody like juan on the podcast to get that on the ground kind of the latin view the latin american view yeah yeah not the view from washington it's the view from latin america yeah but but latin america i know it's a bit of a cliche but it's always been a basket case and maduro kind of epitomizes the classic kind of latin american leader but what But it was really interesting what Juan was saying there is the fact that if America go into Venezuela and this dancing around that they're doing at the moment, but if they go into Venezuela, you know, all of Latin America will turn against America.

40:58And that would be scary in many ways. There is a long, long and very, very fractious history. Going back to, as talked about at the very top of the podcast, the Monroe Doctrine. Yeah. between Latin Americans and gringos, right? North Americans. And anytime I've been in Latin America, you stick out like a sore thumb. You speak English, you look like a gringo. And there has always been deep antipathy between the elites in Latin America, be the right wing or left wing, but particularly left wing elites and the United States. And there is a perception, and I think it's pretty accurate, that America looks at Latin America as a sort of a problematic younger brother, little brother, that they have to come in every now and then.

41:50And of course, anti-Americanism, I think, probably has its source in the interventions, very clumsy interventions of the United States in Latin America. The most obvious one being the 1973 CIA-inspired killing of Allende in Chile. and the installing of Pinochet in Chile and all the things that he did. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, Juan was very interested in there. He was saying in the 1970s, there was only three countries in Latin America that didn't have a dictator. Venezuela was one of them. Yeah. Which is kind of, we kind of forget that. So they've had this very torturous history with themselves, politically, economically.

42:29They've had all sorts of experiments. And again, what Latin America was, was Latin America was the great promise. You know, Europeans flooded to Latin America for the good life. That's what you forget. You know, it was seen as equal to the United States as a place to go to. But can I ask you a question then? I mean, as Juan was saying that if America would win and Latin America turned against him, was the 40 billion bailout for Millet and Argentina, is that part of the bigger picture where he was buying Argentina's... Well, Millais is his man down there. Yeah. So it has always been the case that right-wing governments, so military juntas, et cetera, have been supported by the CIA because, of course, in the Cold War, Latin America was a theatre of operations for the Soviets and for the Americans.

43:24And the Americans took the view, largely the same view the Russians are taking in Ukraine, which is basically, this is part of our backyard. So when Che Guevara and when Fidel Castro and Khrushchev got together and created Cuba as is, I think it's fair to say that Fidel Castro was probably not a communist at the beginning, but he actually became a communist because the Americans turned on him. I think he was more of a liberationist. Simon Bolivar is the guy who's the great champion of independent Latin America. And I think it's fair to say that Fidel Castro started as more of a Bolivarist kind of guy.

44:06Right, yeah. But went over to Khrushchev because the Americans reacted so appallingly. Now, the key thing in Latin America has always been the mismanagement of the countries. So prior to the socialists coming in, the mismanagement was very rich families, largely Spanish families, who really ran the places like Big Fifetons. Then in the 1940s and 1950s, you get huge expansion of welfare states in Latin America. Because in effect, these are Europeans in a different continent. It's a bit like the big landowners, British landowners here. Completely, yeah. Exactly the same. and there's always been the racial tension between indigenous people and Spanish people and Europeans and all that sort of stuff.

44:49But what Juan was saying there, it's interesting, is that like, he was saying that even amongst the left, they've realized that Maduro is a dictator. He is a autocratic leader. He robbed the last election. And under his watch, the country has collapsed, leading to 8 million people leaving the country. This is phenomenal. Phenomenal. Only 5 million people left Syria. Yeah. Right? So these are refugees because of economic and political mismanagement. And most of them stayed in Latin America, though. They just went to Colombia and Brazil. Argentina. Buenos Aires is full of Venezuelans. Right, okay.

45:29Dublin's full of Venezuelans. There's loads of Venezuelans working in kitchens here, working in restaurants here, all that sort of stuff. But what he's saying is interesting. He's saying, look, we know that Maduro is a bad egg. We know he's destroyed Venezuela. But we'll draw the line at the Yankees deposing him. Yeah. So his idea is to figure out a transition. What the Latin Americans want is to figure out a transition to allow Maduro maybe safe passage somewhere. You know, that's basically, yeah, I think that's what happens in all these cases, you know. But what about the opposition leader, Machado, I think it is?

46:06She won the Nobel Prize. Yeah. Should have got to Donny J. Yes, which he dedicated to him. She dedicated to him, yeah. I think she's an obvious candidate. Yeah. Do you know anything about her? I don't, I mean, again, she is smeared as a CIA stooge by the left in Europe. I don't know much about her, but I mean, of course, what the idea would be was a transition from Maduro. Now, how do you get a guy like that out of power? What they do typically is they offer them safe passage somewhere like in Panama or Mexico or some Latin American country will take him and his cronies. Yeah. And in return, he will take himself, his families, and his mates out of there.

46:45But of course, the problem with all this is the unknown unknowns, as Don Ronfell said. If you invade a country, you kick off a whole host of unpredictable events. Yeah. Like the Venezuelans might fight back. Yeah. So you get bogged down in a Vietnam situation. Yeah. But it's Vietnam that's an hour from Dallas. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's very close to America. Yeah. So I would say, and I highlighted the idea that some of the American administration want intervention, others don't. And it depends really who Donny J talks to last as to whether or not it's happening or not. But I think in the next two months, something is going to happen in Venezuela, no doubt.

47:29And it will be regime change and it will be orchestrated by the Americans from Washington. and it will have the support of many Venezuelans internally, but it will obviously kick off anti-American feeling all around Latin America. However, the next country to go will be Cuba. And the Cuban race, it was really funny. The last time I was in Cuba, I was sitting in Desmond's front room and we were watching telly. We were watching the Pope's visit to Colombia on Venezuelan television. because the Cubans all have Venezuelan TV. Why? Because it's much better, they said. They all have Colombian TV. If you think a dodgy box was invented in Dublin, not at all.

48:15It's invented in Cuba, right? And I was asking him about Venezuela, and Desmond was saying the Venezuelan regime and the Havana regime are almost moving in lockstep. Right. And as Juan said there, this is a much bigger game. This is about the role of China. the role of Russia the role of America and at the end of the day another big proxy war another proxy war and the Latin Americans are only pawns in the game so we will leave it there and we will talk to you on Thursday

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