This week, Colombia recalled its ambassador to the United States while accusing the Trump administration of “murdering” the fisherman while labelling another strike that took place in mid-September as a “direct threat to national security.” Donald Trump for his part has called Petro an “illegal drug dealer” while saying that the President of Venezuela Nicolás Maduro “doesn’t want to fuck around” with the U.S. — a reference to a report in The New York Times that alleged Maduro has tried to cut a resource deal with Washington in order to avoid a military conflict. Former Secretary of Defense Mark T. Esper, in his autobiography A Sacred Oath: Memoirs of a Secretary of Defense During Extraordinary Times, revealed that for Trump, regime change in Venezuela “seemed to be a bucket list item” and that the U.S. should “get the oil.” In addition to holding the largest proven oil reserves in the world — approximately 303 billion barrels, or roughly 17 percent of global reserves — Venezuela also holds significant gold, iron ore, bauxite, coltan, and diamond deposits. In 2018, Machado wrote a letter to the ex-president of Argentina Mauricio Macri and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisting they use their “strength and influence to advance the dismantling of the criminal Venezuelan regime,” which, in her view, were connected to “drug trafficking and terrorism.”
Author: Rodrigo Acuña
Published at: 2025-10-21 21:26:49
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