Why Venezuela’s Coup Plotters Came Up Short
In 2019, a coalition of conservative forces responded to Nicolás Maduro’s authoritarian turn and Venezuela’s ongoing economic crisis by launching a coup. Despite backing from the US and Venezuelan capital, the conspirators failed. A new book explains why.
Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido (R) makes a statement to press members near the Altamira distributor road in Caracas, Venezuela, April 30, 2019. (Rafael Briceno / Anadolu Agency / Getty Images)
The political project of neoliberalism in Latin America is dead. Peddling austerity, privatization, and deregulation is no longer a straightforward task for political elites. In response, politicians like Luis Abinader, the recently reelected president of the Dominican Republic, have successfully employed a strategy centered on culture wars, crime, and anti-immigrant sentiments. Meanwhile, a new wave of young politicians has emerged, touting “post-ideology” narratives that span from anarcho-libertarian fantasies to crypto-bro outsiderism, both sharing an authoritarian core with fascist undertones. These politicians have managed to steal from the Left the sentiment of “anti-elite” populism and channel the discontent of the informal working class toward market-oriented solutions. Nonetheless, neoliberalism has lost its stride, and the nations that defy it continue facing pressure.
Latin America’s Pink Tide populist revolt emerged in response to the Washington Consensus, which had privatized extractive commodities, deindustrialized and fragmented industrial workers, gutted social services, and perpetuated stark economic and social disparities across the hemisphere. The birthplace of the resistance against neoliberalism was in the mass uprisings in Venezuela in 1989 against then president Carlos Andrés Pérez’s paquetazo, a neoliberal economic package that included cuts on government salaries and spending, eliminating subsidies for farmers, removal of price controls and liberalization of the price of petroleum, elimination of tariffs and liberalization of imports, and the easing of foreign capital into and out of the country. The results were disastrous, with poverty increasing by 44 percent and extreme poverty by 20 percent.
The Caracazo, or Sacudón, was a massive urban uprising that shook Venezuela in 1989, driven by the urban poor, informal workers, students, and ex–guerrilla fighters. The brutal government crackdown, which targeted leaders and militants in their homes, left a trail of blood and deepened the polarization between the wealthy oligarchs and the general population. The rebellion and its aftermath also split the armed forces, with some soldiers refusing to continue slaughtering Venezuelans fighting for national sovereignty. This pivotal moment, as argued in the modern classic We Created Chavez: A People’s History of the Venezuelan Revolution by George Ciccariello-Maher, gave rise to grassroots movements and neighborhood assemblies that would play a crucial role in the rise of Hugo Chávez and the cementing of the Bolivarian Revolution.
Hugo Chávez’s 1998 ascension to the Miraflores Palace marked a watershed moment in Venezuela’s struggle for national sovereignty and self-determination. This followed years of resistance against the oppressive government of Rómulo Betancourt, who had reversed Venezuela’s progressive agenda, and the urban struggles of the 1970s and 1980s, which gave birth to the Party of the Venezuelan Revolution (PRV) and its revolutionary brand of Latin American nationalism, known as Bolivarianism. This ideology emphasizes political and economic sovereignty, including control over national resources. The rise of community organizations like 23 de Enero and collectives like La Piedrita, which successfully eradicated drug trafficking in their neighborhoods through collective action and community support, was crucial in defending the Bolivarian Revolution’s gains and advancing its ideals.
In a direct rebuke to US bids for political and economic hegemony over Latin America, the 1999 Bolivarian constitution enshrined fundamental rights, including free public education and health care, environmental protection, and indigenous rights. Additionally, it introduced two new branches of government — the electoral and citizens’ branches — and paved the way for the growth of cooperatives, small businesses, and nationalization of key industries to combat oligopolistic control. The Bolivarian Revolution, and the mass movement that sustains it, has been continuously undermined and attacked ever since, most recently on January 23, 2019, when National Assembly (AN) president Juan Guaidó declared himself president of Venezuela.
In Corporate Coup: Venezuela and the End of US Empire, Anya Parampil details how willing Venezuelan executives were to undermine their country’s sovereignty to appease their Washington handlers.
A Corporate Coup
Prior to Trump administration national security advisor John Bolton’s declaration that Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela represented a “Troika of Tyranny,” foreshadowing a more confrontational approach toward Latin America, the Obama administration had laid the “corporate coup” groundwork by signing unilateral sanctions and by issuing an executive order labeling Venezuela as an “unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security.” This was meant as punishment for the Maduro government’s crackdown on Leopoldo López’s Voluntad Popular (VP)–led protests and to exacerbate the effects of the 2014 oil crash. The results were devasting for Venezuela’s economy, as the private sector no longer had access to international credit lines; it led to an 80 percent drop in imports, which in turn ravaged the most vulnerable in society.
The Bolivarian Revolution had leveraged its oil revenues to subsidize social welfare programs, but with declining revenue, this became an impossible task. In addition, as nationwide shortages of essential goods became more widespread, private business owners, who still controlled a significant portion of the market (62 percent), began hoarding staple products, exacerbating the crisis. This led to a growing black market, further destabilizing the economy, and to an ever-more confident local oligarchy that was willing to bring Venezuela to its knees to assert its agenda.
Donald Trump’s administration would escalate the financial war on Venezuela by denying issuance of new debt to the Maduro administration and to the state-owned oil company Petróleos de Venezuela, SA (PDVSA), further limiting access to foreign credit lines. With Guaidó’s declaration, the war was also being readied to become much dirtier, with the announcement that Elliot Abrams, architect of the El Mozote massacre in El Salvador and of the failed coup against Chávez in 2002, would become Trump’s “special convoy” to Caracas.
Additionally, the Trump administration would five days later sign a complete ban on the sale of Venezuelan crude in US markets: “by 2020, Venezuela was in the midst of the largest economic contraction in modern Latin American history, reporting a 75 percent drop in gross domestic product from its recorded peak just eight years prior,” Parampil writes.
The Bolivarian Revolution soon faced an information war reminiscent of the Cold War era. The February 23 “aid” truck delivery and Richard Branson’s “humanitarian” concert, Venezuela Aid Live, in Cúcuta, Colombia, were exposed as a public relations campaign to build support for a US-led invasion. This was less kumbaya and more like saber rattling. Trump’s declaration that Maduro would “rather see his people starve than give them aid” further escalated tensions. The pressure was also put on Venezuela’s military, with Trump imploring the leadership to break with Maduro or face consequences. However, instead of breaking, the Venezuelan military rallied around Maduro, fortifying the border with Colombia in response to the Trump administration’s aggressive stance and the opposition’s failure to offer a viable alternative to the masses.
Parampil reveals how as the United States escalated its information war against Venezuela, the self-proclaimed interim government led by Guaidó attempted to assert its legitimacy on international diplomacy via the Organization of American States (OAS), the only international agency to recognize Guaidó, and by hostile takeovers of Venezuelan consulates in New York City and the DC embassy, the last of which the author took part in defending. The United States also attempted to use the United Nations to expand its diplomatic war, with Vice President Mike Pence demanding the UN Security Council recognize Guaidó. Speaking to current Venezuelan UN ambassador Samuel Moncada, Pence demanded, “with all due respect, Mr Ambassador, you shouldn’t be here. You should return to Venezuela and tell Nicolás Maduro that his time is up.”
This took place while Guaidó’s appointed representative to the OAS, Gustavo Tarre, who had already established himself as a leading voice in the opposition after having been implicated in a plot to assassinate President Maduro, was sitting with top Trump advisers at a private meeting hosted by pro-war think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) titled “Assessing the Use of Military Force in Venezuela.”
The protagonists of Corporate Coup include Carlos Vecchio, a former ExxonMobil executive turned ambassador to the United States under Guaidó, and Ricardo Haussman, a neoliberal economist who illegally doubled as a Harvard professor and Venezuela’s representative for the Inter-American Development Bank. José Ignacio Hernández, perhaps history’s worst attorney general, served as an expert witness in Canadian mining company Crystallex’s legal pursuit post-expropriation of Citgo, the US-based energy company that is majority owned by PDVSA. José Rendón, a ferocious right-wing, Venezuelan, Florida-based political strategist, dubbed “Latin America’s Karl Rove,” along with private security contractor Silvercorp USA, planned and assisted on a failed amphibious invasion of Venezuela known as Operation Gideon. This move was a throwback to the twentieth-century Latin American coup playbook, and it rightly deserves its nickname of “Bay of Piglets.”
The Corporate Coup was eventually thwarted because Guaidó’s political capital had expired. The team of executives assembled showed no semblance of respect for Venezuela’s sovereignty and ultimately alienated the domestic opposition. In an ironic twist, Guaidó failed to keep the presidency of the AN when fellow opposition leader Luis Parra claimed it for himself. To this day, the presidency of the AN is disputed, and Guaidó lives in Miami, Florida.
Overplaying Their Hand
The war in Ukraine and Russia has also forced the Biden administration to reconsider its stance on Venezuelan sanctions. The agreement reached on October 18, 2023 allows PDVSA to sell oil to whomever it chooses, minus Russia. This represents a significant financial boost to the Maduro administration, which had been bypassing sanctions by selling oil on the black market at a 40 percent discount. It also represents a lifeline for millions of ordinary Venezuelans who were bearing the brunt of the effects of the sanctions.
The 2019 attempted coup mostly depended on a few key players surrounded by Guaidó and was thus averted by political maneuvering between the Biden and Maduro administrations and by the international energy crunch, due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The 2002 coup was much more entrenched. It involved top brass in the military, the National Chamber of Commerce (Fedecámaras), management of PDVSA, the Catholic Church, and the corrupt trade union bureaucracy of the Confederation of Venezuelan Workers (CTV). This “popular rebellion” showed its true ambitions when Pedro Carmona, president of Fedecámaras, was appointed interim president of Venezuela and immediately abolished the legislature, the courts, and the state media. Carmona overturned the 1999 constitution, broke off trade and diplomatic relations with Cuba, and promised to break the country’s agreement with OPEC, less of a rallying cry by the masses and more like the George W. Bush administration’s wish list.
As in 2019, the ruling elite overplayed its hand. In less than forty-eight hours, tens of thousands of ordinary Venezuelans took to the streets to show their support for the democratically elected Chávez and the National Assembly. While private media refused to acknowledge the pro-Chávez protests, in the streets, rumor was spreading that in fact Chávez had not resigned. Eventually the crowd would surround Miraflores Palace and Carmona would surrender the authority he never quite had, while Chávez was heroically reinstated.
The legacy of the 2002 coup was to further cement the Bolivarian Revolution and Chávez as its catalyst. Even after his return to the presidency, top management in PDVSA orchestrated a lockout, meant to destabilize the economy and to force a desperate response from a conciliatory Chávez. PDVSA rank and file, with support from community councils and workers from other industries, managed to take control of the industry under temporary workers’ management and prevent an economic fallout.
The 2002 coup also cemented the legacy of the opposition. The day after Chávez was ousted, El Carmonazo (Carmona Decree), the act that abolished the judiciary and the legislature, was signed by opposition leaders who have been trying to resuscitate their careers since, including López and María Corina Machado, one of Maduro’s most indomitable critics.
While the narrative of Corporate Coup is engaging and informative, the reader should be aware that it is extremely top heavy and a bit self-aggrandizing. I lost track of how many times Parampil declares that it was due to one of her interviews that the trajectory of the “corporate coup” was shifted. The book is littered with interviews with high-level diplomats, members of the press, and coup plotters. This is in stark contrast to the works of Ciccariello-Maher and Richard Gott’s Hugo Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution, which strove to engage the base of the community councils, Bolivarian circles, and social and labor movements that undergirds the Bolivarian Revolution. The chapter-length cameo of Tucker Carlson, whom Parampil considers “an ally in the fight against further intervention,” further illustrates this top-heavy approach. It’s hard not to see such rapprochement as legitimizing the career of a reactionary figure currently attempting to rebrand himself as an economic populist.
More generally, Parampil’s thesis regarding the end of US empire is unconvincing. Her argument is based on the declining value of the US dollar and of the petrodollar system, the rise of alternatives to the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT) payment systems (a Belgium-based cooperative that provides banks with the messaging system needed to conduct global payments), and the “extraordinary birth” of a “multipolar” world triggered by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.