Venezuela and other palenques

By: Beatrice E. Rangel - 05/01/2026

Regarding the invasion of Panama, Octavio Paz wrote that when a people's sovereignty is seized by a violent group, it is the duty of the international community to intervene to restore the right to self-determination. In Panama, as in Venezuela, the people had overwhelmingly elected an opposition leader, General Antonio Noriega, as president. Noriega not only refused to recognize the election results but also unleashed a wave of repression against any individual or organization that opposed him. Several countries, including Venezuela, legitimately concerned about the impact on hemispheric relations of having an individual linked to drug trafficking as president, attempted to mobilize a regional front to exert enough pressure on Noriega to force him to relinquish power. This regional front never materialized, and the rest of the story is well known.

In the case of Venezuela, we again observe the same lack of understanding of the problem that the presence of a regime made up of drug traffickers represents for the entire region. Mexico dusted off the Estrada Doctrine. Brazil hid behind the principle of non-intervention. Argentina was complicit, and the rest of the countries looked the other way.

The same thing happened when an attempt was made to pass an OAS resolution to apply the Democratic Charter to Venezuela, and when the accusation was presented before the International Criminal Court, where Argentina, Colombia, and Chile withdrew from the lawsuit filed in 2018, along with Canada, Paraguay, and Peru, as soon as their governments changed. The consequences could not have been worse: crimes against humanity continue to be perpetrated in Venezuela seven years later, with a toll of 2,000 political prisoners, 800 people subjected to torture, 100 deaths in the custody of the authorities, and 50 people disappeared.

This lack of regional vision and commitment to democracy is what has led the region to lose influence on the international stage. Because while Europe clearly defends democratic principles and the regional coalition, in Latin America each nation is convinced it can control the geopolitical landscape on its own. And along this path, it is reaching the unenviable goal of irrelevance.

Meanwhile, the United States has made it very clear in the Venezuela episode that it is not willing to tolerate the establishment of narco-states in the hemisphere and therefore proceeded to extract Nicolas Maduro from Venezuela to force him to appear before courts of justice that could only be American because those south of the Rio Grande are quite accommodating to power.

Thus begins the Trump corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, which has more elements of Teddy Roosevelt than of James Monroe. And for the good of the hemisphere, the cleanup operation against transnational organized crime, which the nations of Latin America have postponed to the detriment of our democracies, is now underway. And so he proceeded to

From the perspective of the Venezuelan people, the U.S. intervention has been a lifeline. It put an end to a sinister regime that massively violated human rights, plunged the country into misery, and divided families by causing 25% of the population to emigrate. In contrast to that regime, the operation to extract Nicolás Maduro was designed with the protection of the civilian population in mind. Clearly, as Professor Paz rightly pointed out, the U.S. intervention was essential to restoring the sovereignty that had been seized from the Venezuelan people.

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