In 2019 in Venezuela, U.S.-backed opposition figure Juan Guaidó declared himself president despite never having run for the position. Briefly, many nations around the world recognized his presidency and disavowed that of President Nicolás Maduro. But global support soon faded after a failure to establish a new regime, and after his exile in 2023, Guaidó settled in Miami, Florida, where he was paid $40,000 for one semester as a visiting professor and senior leadership fellow at Florida International University.

Later that year, industrial engineer and former lawmaker María Corina Machado announced her presidential candidacy, but was barred from running due to administrative and fiscal violations as well as supporting U.S. sanctions on her country and supporting oil industry privatization.

Machado’s rhetoric of freedom contrasts with her actions. She advocates for and actively supports existing sanctions and harsher military intervention against Venezuela, policies that are responsible for devastating the general Venezuelan public. In total, U.S. sanctions alone are responsible for an estimated 100,000 civilian deaths in the nation. Machado claims to love Florida’s Venezuelan community but has not addressed the Trump administration’s revocation of temporary protected status for Venezuelan immigrants. Ultimately, Machado’s goal to “get Maduro out” reveals her real vision: under U.S.-backed “democratic control,” Venezuela’s vast oil reserves would be open to foreign investment. In practice, that would mean U.S. corporate control. Despite — or perhaps because of — all this, Machado received the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize for “[keeping] the flame of democracy burning.”

Trinidad and Tobago’s role in the kidnapping of Maduro

With a renewed vigour, the U.S. began antagonizing Venezuela in September of last year, insistent on controlling their oil and gas in much the same way they have historically controlled and exploited Latin American resources for their own profit. On the night of January 2-3, the U.S. military bombed several sites in the capital of Caracas and elsewhere, desecrated the mausoleum of former President Hugo Chavez, and kidnapped President Maduro and his wife.

In the lead-up beginning with the bombings of boats off the coast of Venezuela in September, the U.S. had been placing military assets in the small neighbouring country of Trinidad and Tobago. With its closest meeting point with Venezuela only 11 kilometers across the ocean, the island has been hosting U.S. warships on its waters. So far, there have been at least 35 U.S. strikes on boats in Venezuelan and Caribbean waters resulting in around 115 deaths, and the U.S. has not provided any evidence to prove their allegations that the boats were carrying drugs. Further, Trump authorized CIA agents to enter Venezuela to continue their attacks on land.

Where other leaders in the Latin American and Caribbean region and the Human Rights Watch denounced the attacks as extrajudicial killings, Trinidadian Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar aligned herself with the U.S., claiming she’d rather see drug traffickers killed than citizens of Trinidad. But Trinidad has a long history of instability and violence that Venezuela is not responsible for: although drug trafficking affects Trinidad, Venezuela is a minor player. Trinidad’s crime problem became permanent after the 1990 Jamaat al Muslimeen coup attempt. To this day, trust in the government and law enforcement is low, especially with police corruption reported endemic in the nation. Little evidence suggests drug trafficking is primarily to blame, and in fact establishing a cause-and-effect relationship is a vain endeavour: it is rather poverty and national instability that fosters conditions for crime. Trinidad’s reliance on U.S. companies to purchase oil, and energy more broadly, creates a dependency without a means for expanding economically beyond energy wealth.

But Trinidad is not responsible alone. Gerald Perreira, a leader at the Organization for the Victory of the People and executive member of the Caribbean Chapter of the Network for the Defence of Humanity and the Caribbean Pan-African Network, says of the situation: “Trinidad and Guyana share a border with Venezuela. If the U.S. wants to attack Venezuela, they are not going to do it from Trinidad alone. They are going to do it with Guyana. They want to put military assets in Grenada. Venezuela is right to be concerned about Guyana and Trinidad being used as launching pads against them.” Although Guyana claims it does not currently host permanent U.S. military bases, the two nations have in recent years been increasing military collaboration, and President Maduro has accused the CIA of building secret bases there.

Subimperialism in action

Guyana and Trinidad’s involvement is reminiscent of subimperialism: a form of imperialism in which the nation exhibits imperial tendencies towards another nation despite suffering imperialism from the global core. “If Guyana and Trinidad are prepared to allow the U.S. military empire to use them,” says Perreira, then “[Venezuela has] a legitimate moral right to defend themselves. And the best means of defence is attack: this is a dialectical matter.”

Of course, there are Caribbean nations against aggression. Perreira highlights: “Mia Mottley [of Barbados], Ralph Gonzalves [of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines], Gaston Browne [of Antigua and Barbuda], they made it clear their countries will not be used for any sort of active aggression.” Since Gonzalves’ defeat by Godwin Friday in elections in mid-December, Friday has aligned himself with CARICOM’s statement on the kidnapping, which vaguely alludes to international law and territorial integrity without taking a position.

Since President Maduro’s kidnapping, Persad-Bissessar has distanced herself from the attacks, claiming that Trinidad “continues to maintain peaceful relations with the people of Venezuela.” Additionally, she stated that, “What happened in Venezuela had nothing to do with Trinidad and Tobago. … Some persons may be desperate to manufacture a crisis where there is none, but to each his own.” The opposition leader, Penelope Beckles of the People’s National Movement, on the other hand, describes both the strikes and kidnapping as “deeply troubling” and says that such action in the Caribbean region is a matter of serious concern. Further still, a coalition of social organizations from the island described the U.S. aggression as “imperialism” and “international crime.”

Persad-Bissessar’s statements are senseless, since she has been helping sow the seeds for the violent attack with legitimizing rhetoric since September in manners reminiscent of Jamaica’s, Barbados’ and the broader Organization of Eastern Caribbean States’ support for U.S. intervention that helped legitimize U.S. attacks in Grenada and Panama in the 1980s.

West Indies Federation: history of a short-lived regional solidarity effort

In 1958, ten territories of the British West Indies formed the West Indies Federation, a short-lived attempt at regional unity encouraged by Britain as it relinquished some of its colonial empire after having been devastated by the Second World War. For many West Indian nationalists and pan-Caribbeanists, including Trinidad’s Eric Williams, the Federation represented a step towards independence and inter-regional solidarity. But the project ultimately collapsed in 1962, mostly due to competing national interests and economic disparities. Jamaica’s and Trinidad’s withdrawals meant the smaller islands would be unable to sustain the Federation alone. Ultimately, the dissolution reveals the continuing struggle among Caribbean nations to balance local autonomy with regional cooperation.

This fragmentation impacts the region today, too. Just as the Federation faltered under uneven power dynamics and economic disparities, contemporary Caribbean politics are similarly ruptured by external powers and, worse, internal divisions. “The strength of the imperialist system as a whole,” writes Eduardo Galeano in his Open Veins of Latin America, “rests on the necessary inequality of its pares, and this inequality assumes ever more dramatic dimensions” . Trinidad’s active alignment with U.S. imperial violence against Venezuela is a reproduction of the subimperialism Galeano discussed. Perreira echoes a similar sentiment: “Our [Caribbean] leaders don’t have this courage and political will. We don’t seem to be able to stand with one voice.”

Canada’s role

Canada’s support for U.S. imperialism is quieter but devastating. The government deems Venezuela “one of the primary sources of geopolitical tension and instability in the Western hemisphere” and claims it is committed to “[exploring] ways to contribute to the restoration of democracy in Venezuela through peaceful and negotiated means.” That said, they continue Operation Caribbe, which some, like Tim Addison, director of naval affairs for the Naval Association of Canada, question in light of the potentially illegality of US strikes.

During the presidential crisis of 2019-2023, the Trudeau government campaigned against President Maduro and tried to recognize Guido as president. Canadian diplomats worked to unite U.S.-backed Venezuelan opposition with a plan to increase tensions in the country.

Just before, Mark Carney, at the time governor of the Bank of England, refused to allow Venezuela to retrieve $1 billion in gold reserves from the Bank, effectively preventing them from accessing their own money during a time of economic struggle.

Now, Foreign Minister Anita Anand reiterated Canada’s rejection of the legitimacy of President Maduro’s leadership and highlighted Canada’s “long-standing commitment to upholding the rule of law and democracy” while refusing to comment directly on the kidnapping. In light of all this, it is clear that their continued involvement with U.S. operations of questionable legality points to support.

There is a sizeable Trinbagonian population in Canada, especially in the metropolitan areas of southern Ontario. The escalating conflicts impact families here because of the history of transnational family networks; many in the diaspora maintain close relations with their home country, meaning sanctions, energy negotiations and regional instability impact the community by means of things like migration pathways and international politics. Diaspora members today respond in various ways. The Caribbean Solidarity Network, for example, is an organization aiming to foster community among the Caribbean diaspora through education and challenging Canada’s state and corporate policies that keep Caribbean nations in a state of dependence.

Conclusion

“We talk about sovereignty and independence, but those are very profound concepts that, if staring our leaders in the face, they will not be able to recognize them,” says Perreira. “We have our own flags, anthems, press. But when it comes to economic independence, it doesn’t exist. Our political independence is being trampled upon.” Concerns of drug smuggling and dictatorship, both themes Persad-Bissessar endorses, are buffers for the U.S.’ ongoing struggle to capture and control Latin America’s natural resources, something socialist-aligned nations make difficult.

The U.S.’s history of supporting regime change often coincides with supporting oppositions willing to offer the U.S. control over resources: the history of banana republics demonstrates this. In a sense, Trinidad and Tobago maintains some of the key characteristics of such an unstable makeup: the economy is heavily reliant on exporting oil and gas, while the government suffers from corruption and the people suffer from poverty and crime.

Persad-Bissessar’s willingness to betray the already-fragile pan-American unity through subimperialism leaves the possibility of her own safety in the inevitable war. “We are given directives that come out of Washington and London,” says Perreira. “After 55, 60 years of independence our social relations, production relations have not changed. It’s just modernized, sanitized forms of the plantation system. That is what we have: neocolonialism with neoliberal capitalism. We have to fight for true independence, and part of that concept is that we must have control over our resources.”