Latin America Correspondent

Crisis & Christmas in Venezuela

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Latin America Correspondent Jon Bonfiglio speaks to Henry Bonsu for Times Radio. 

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Henry Bonsu:

From West Africa, we go to Latin America now, because the White House has ordered the US military to focus on enforcing what it calls a quarantine of Venezuelan oil for the next two months. The move indicates that the Trump administration is currently more interested in using economic rather than military means to increase pressure on President Nicolas Maduro. Let's speak to Jon Bonfiglio, Times Latin America correspondent. Hello, Jon. Your response to this statement that the US military has been ordered to focus on enforcing a quarantine of Venezuelan oil as opposed to maybe blowing boat blow blowing up boats of suspected drug dealers or drug exporters to the states. How much of a shift does this represent from what we've seen thus far?

Jon Bonfiglio:

Well, it's interesting, isn't it? Because it's actually we we said on your show, Henry, when this whole conflict started what the what the issue was. And people were sort of assumed that we were we were naive. But yeah, you're absolutely right. The language and the public-facing rationale has certainly changed actually multiple times over the last few months. Initially the overt focus was, again, as you say, boat strikes, the logic, very much in inverted commas, being that the US was at war with a non-state actor which was using narcotics to strategically destabilize the USA, at war, of course, but not enough at war to require congressional approval. This then shifted to accusations that Venezuela's President Maduro was the head of our cartel and he became a target for ostensibly regime change. Then Venezuelan oil openly, as of about a month ago, began to be spoken of as an aspiration and objective alongside other resources that Venezuela has, with a thinly veiled understanding that should the Venezuelan opposition take over in Caracas, that this would lead to favorable conditions and contracts for US companies. And this is where we are now, in which Donald Trump nakedly, alongside the seizure of uh the two tankers today, said that they're going to keep the oil, they're going to keep the tankers. And although the US military continues to be present uh um in the region, squeezing the Venezuelan economy by pursuing and seizing these oil tankers is the primary, the new overt primary strategy.

Henry Bonsu:

What impact do you think this might have on the Venezuelan economy? At what point do ordinary Venezuelans, who might want to see Maduro go, say, actually, this is too much?

Jon Bonfiglio:

Yeah, I mean, it's very much already the threat of this. I mean, of course, we've spoken again multiple times about the sort of the economic implosion that Venezuela has has suffered over the the course of the last sort of 10, 15 uh year period. And it is very, I mean, it can't be understated the importance of oil to to Venezuela as a country, to Venezuelan economics. Um the economy, of course, it is struggling and it has struggled hugely for for a period of time now. But one of the few things that it has in its in its favor is oil, despite the fact that its production rates are through, are through the floor. But still, yeah, 25% of its um of its GDP comes from oil. I think this is it's been Christmas time, of course, always provides this sort of stark framing, doesn't it, for complexities which are being uh lived, set against a backdrop of big picture context, generating those difficulties. And and it's undoubtedly true that Venezuela during this holiday season is experiencing um this truth be told, actually, it's not new, it's a number of years now, not just because of the staggering economic crisis, but also because of the ridiculousness of the fact that as a tool of distraction, I don't know whether you know this, Henry, but the Maduro regime now mandates that Christmas as a season officially occupies a quarter of the calendar year, starting on the 1st of uh October. And families gathering around the Christmas table in in Caracas or or wherever they are are not just faced with a poverty rate that stands now by some measures at 90%, uh, but also this sort of new social phenomenon of returning deported migrants back home from the USA for the first Christmas in years. And of course, you know, the elephant in the room, the mass military naval deployment just off the shore of the coast of Venezuela.

Henry Bonsu:

Right. And Jon, do you think there's a point at which uh Maduro says, uh, okay, uh, this is becoming too dangerous, uh, I'm out. Um, where might he go? Uh and what would be left behind?

Jon Bonfiglio:

I I I don't see that happening at all. And and what I will point to um in uh as uh as evidence for for that is that this week Maduro gave a speech in which he suggested that Donald Trump focus instead on destabilizing the international order but on domestic politics. Maduro, what this tells us is that Maduro knows he is aware of Trump's internal political weakness and the fact that this is why Trump and the US uh military have not gone into uh into Venezuela before and why they cannot do so now. Uh increasingly, there is a swagger to uh to Nicolas Maduro. He knows that he is certainly about as um as lodged and safe in his position as he has been for the last few months.

Henry Bonsu:

That's despite a couple of reported calls with President Trump, so so we hear. Uh and what of the uh Venezuelan Nobel Peace Prize laureate, uh Maria Corina Machado, um, has she said anything about this quarantine of Venezuelan oil? Um because she has to trade quite carefully, doesn't she?

Jon Bonfiglio:

She is it she issued uh, let's say, an alternative Christmas message in which she said that she would be reunited with Venezuelans uh soon and that they would start to build a new country together. She is uh very much in favor of the uh of the embargo, of the blockade. Um her argument is that um that uh as uh echoing the Trump administration is that actually that the the Maduro regime is a terrorist organization and that it is funded by Venezuelan oil, and that this is a way to strike at the heart of the administration. So they're they're hand in glove in terms of um in terms of the the the purported policy making which would drive Nicolas Maduro out of the country.

Henry Bonsu:

And talking of hand in glove, Jon, I'm just looking at a couple of far-right candidates, or Trump is candidates winning in Chile, Jose Antonio Kast, who got 58% of the vote in the recent election there, and then this week in Honduras, Nasri Asfura got 40%. Um Trump is, well, let's say it remodeling Latin America, certainly Latin American leadership in his own image.

Jon Bonfiglio:

It is uh a significant drift, and this period of time, 2024, 2025 and 2026, ending with a crucial um uh with a seismic Brazil election that is due less than 12 months from now. Um, of course, there is uh there are strong reactions uh either side of uh of Trump's increasing interventions. And what you might say, maybe a little bit less with um uh with Jose Antonio Kast in Chile, because although he is of the extreme right, there wasn't really a sort of an alliance, um an affinity there between him and Trump, but with uh Nasry Tito Asfura in Honduras, absolutely there is. What this undoubtedly is going to do is embolden Trump further as regards his um his economic, his political, and his military interventions uh right across the region.

Henry Bonsu:

Jon, thank you very much indeed for that. Jon Bonfiglio, Latin America correspondent for the Times there.