A Letter to the United States People, From Latin America

“I’m just asking for the people from the most powerful country in the world to please do something useful.”

By Roberta Rocinante

On Jan. 3^rd the United States of America bombed the capital of Venezuela, Caracas. During this, they captured president Nicolas Maduro and his wife. As of this writing, Maduro is in New York, where he will be tried under US law. 

President Donald Trump then declared that oil companies from the USA will take control of Venezuela’s oil industry. 

All of this was about oil. 

This is all we have so far, but this isn’t about the news.

Once again, the US is attacking another country for oil. Once again, the US is trying to control a country in Latin America.

This isn’t about the news, this is an opinion piece of a trans person that has lived their entire life under the Monroe Doctrine, and this is how I, a Latin American person, feel about once again watching the United States of America messing with a Latin American country. This is me once again watching the United States of America start a war over oil. 

At least this time, you all had the decency of being upfront about it.– It’s about oil, but it’s also about control.

Before I start in earnest, I want to make one thing clear. I am not Venezuelan, I am from Brazil. That means that, for now, I am safe from all of this, but I have solidarity with Latin American people.

I also have solidarity towards people from the USA, but that only goes so far. Why is that? Because all of you are to blame for this situation. 

I don’t care if you didn’t vote for Trump, I don’t care if you protest against him, I don’t care if you did your damn best to stop him from coming to power again. To me as a Latin American person, you are just as much to blame as those Groypers and MAGA die-hards.

At the end of the day, I don’t care if the helicopter pilots that were bombing Caracas were white supremacists or trans folk. I don’t care. They are still from the USA. Your people have done nothing to stop this.

You all are to blame.

I have sympathy towards all of you, I really do, it sucks to be in a country ruled by a nut job, but once again the world is having to suffer because you all can’t get your shit in line.

This however isn’t a Trump problem, or a Left or Right problem. This has been the way the USA has acted for years, since 1823 to be exact, when the Monroe Doctrine was established.

And before you start bitching, yes, many Latin American leaders of the time were in favor of it. They were realists. They knew that the USA held a lot of power, so better have them as an ally than not. 

This has been the way to deal with powerful nations since the dawn of the idea of a country. 

It’s very fun to say that you will be the “GREAT REVOLUTIONARY”, the one that will fight and win against the “GREAT ENEMIES” or something like that, but in practice, it takes a lot of death, pain, tears and blood to manage that. Just look at Vietnam.

We all saw that one picture. You know the one. 

Oh you don’t? Let me show it to you.

This picture is called The Terror of War, it was taken on June 8, 1972, after a South Vietnamese pilot mistook a group of civilians for North Vietnamese troops, and dropped napalm on them. 

If you don’t know how Napalm affects the body then I suggest you read up on it, but the gist of it is that you feel like you are burning from the inside out.

How do I know that? Because years ago I saw an interview with an old lady named Phan Thị Kim Phúc, also known as Napalm girl– the girl at the center of the picture you just saw.

I could go on about her activism but in this case a picture is worth more than words.

This is the price of war and fighting an enemy. The North Vietnamese were fighting an enemy that was being backed by the US and its allies, while they themselves were only being backed by the Soviets. Don’t get me wrong. Both the USA and the Soviets made the world their puppets during the Cold War, but the people that paid the price were people like Phan Thị Kim Phúc and all the other innocents that are killed in war

And now you are probably thinking “What does that have to do with Latin America?”

Everything.

No state wants to go to war with the US. Even if it ends in victory, the cost will be too great. 

And let’s be honest, do you really think China and Russia will give enough of a shit to help? They have their own concerns and their own wars. Even the EU, as useless as they always have been, have made it clear they won’t do anything.

Latin America has been left to defend itself.

But this doesn’t surprise me. It’s always been this way. 

The US has been involved in regime changes and political polarization in Latin America ever since the start of the Cold War, the most well known example being the coup against President Allende in Chile during the 1970s which led to the Pinochet dictatorship. 

Before this attack on Venezuela, the most recent cases have been in Bolivia and also Venezuela, both being in 2019, during Trump’s first term. Don’t get me wrong Joe Biden– walking corpse that he is– also did a fair amount of shit, including funding and arming Israel while it committed a genocide. Both of these men have blood on their hands.

Joe Biden even funded and armed Israel in amounts exceeding that which Congress authorized, violating US law, and Article 1, Section 8 of your constitution, as well as international law. 

The pretense about “this isn’t an authorized war” is flimsy. 

Your people don’t care, and haven’t in the past. Even if they did, a few extra politicians saying “yes” doesn’t make this blatant imperialism okay or justified.

It wasn’t just these cases. Many countries in Latin America suffered from US backed coups and intervention, including Cuba, Haiti, Argentina, Uruguay, Peru, Panama, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Brazil. And it didn’t stop with the end of the Cold War. 

Yes, the US changed their focus to Iraq and Afghanistan, but the ideas of the Monroe doctrine were still there. They were just on the back burner.

What the US did to the Middle East is exactly what they have done in the past to Latin America, and will continue to do for the foreseeable future.

If the US sees a country that has something they need, or a country that would be easily controlled, it goes after it. The only difference is that by the early 2000’s, the US went from manipulating internal politics to actively pursuing wars. 

I still remember being ten years old, watching good ol’ TV Globinho – I’m not explaining it, and Google is not your friend, but it can help you at times – During the commercial breaks, there were news updates about the War in Iraq.

It wasn’t odd to see that.

I was used to scenes of violence. I grew up seeing the Military Police of Rio de Janeiro going to the favelas and killing people. It was normal. The US was just doing that to another country. As I grew up, I came to realize that this was much more vile than state authorized violence.

It doesn’t matter if it’s the US or the Middle East, it’s all about control– of a country’s politics, of a country’s resources, of a country’s strategic importance. In the Cold War it was all about not letting countries fall to Communism and Socialism, because those ideologies presented a risk to the US. I’m not here to talk about whether these are good ideologies or not, this is just the reality; the US still sees socialism and communism as risks to its legitimacy.

With the Middle East, it was mostly because of resources. Oil is a great way to make money, and money is power. Simple logic.

This whole situation with Venezuela is admittedly about oil, but I feel it’s also about having a foothold in South America. A big enough base to have access to the rest of the continent. That’s what I think at least. I could be wrong.

Still. What does this have to do with what I feel?

Well, it’s what I said before. For any one from any country that’s been attacked or manipulated by the US, it doesn’t matter what each individual citizen did. No matter what you did, Trump got elected, and he decided to attack Caracas and kidnap President Maduro over the flimsiest of pretenses. 

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think Maduro is a good guy. He isn’t. He’s a politician. But this isn’t how things should be solved.

Were Maduro’s fall, removal, or death to happen, it should’ve been orchestrated by the Venezuelan people themselves, not by some guy in the US. 

Even if the country fell into a violent civil war, it should’ve been a decision by those that have to live with the consequences. Venezuela is a sovereign country. It should be the master of its own destiny. 

Its people should be the ones deciding this destiny.-- Not some guy that just wants oil.

Trump took that choice away from them.

But again, this isn’t a Trump issue. Biden supported Israel in it’s genocide against the Palestinian people. Obama destroyed Yemen and Libya. Bush started the War on Terror. 

And so on and so forth. 

Again, the Monroe Doctrine is over two hundred years old. This also isn’t a presidential issue. Impeaching him won’t do anything, because the next guy will be just as bad.

Every time there’s a new US president, I know that it’s just a question of time until something awful happens to the people of some country. This time it’s Venezuela, at least so far.

So far because history teaches us so, and because Trump is already salivating over doing the same in Mexico.

I shouldn’t have to care about US politics. I live in Brazil for crying out loud, but your shit becomes everyone else’s problem. This shouldn’t be the case.

Now you might be thinking “We are trying our best” or “We don’t want this either”. And I get it, really, but it’s not enough.

Voting won’t solve the issue. I don’t care if the mayor of New York is Muslim and that he is left-leaning. What has he done for the world? What could he even do for the world in his current role?

Protesting clearly isn’t doing anything. If it did, then it would have material effects. It doesn’t. Your protests mean nothing to the rest of the world.

Calling your senators is also not the way. Ever since Visa and Mastercard decided to go harder on censoring games, people have been calling them and their senators to stop censorship bills from being approved. What has that accomplished? Please tell me. If there’s been results, I want to know. 

You folks being puritans shouldn’t affect the rest of the world.

Have your boycotts accomplished anything? Microsoft is still around helping Israel in their genocide. What has that done for the world?

I’m not saying for you to stop, but I’m telling you to please do something that works. 

Try something else. Voting, boycotts, protests, calling your senators; these all sound like wonderful ideas, but they have done nothing material to help the people that you are protesting over.

I’m talking about actual change. The end of your wars, the end of your government’s obsession with controlling the world, the end of your cultural hegemony.

I’m just asking for the people from the most powerful country in the world to please do something useful.

Earlier, I talked about the price of fighting against the big enemy, the big picture, The Terror of War. Every time the US, the Soviets, or any other powerful country starts a war for whatever fucking reason, we have hundreds of scenes like The Terror of War happening. Most don’t get photographed.

They just get posted on your social media feed.

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