The Plot to Overthrow Venezuela
The Plot to Overthrow Venezuela

Author: Dan Kovalik

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2019-06-25

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 1510750738

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An in-depth look at the US threat to "save" Venezuela Since 1999 when Hugo Chavez became the elected president of Venezuela, the US has been conniving to overthrow his government and to roll back the Bolivarian Revolution which he ushered in to Venezuela. With the untimely death of Hugo Chavez in 2013, and the election of Nicolas Maduro that followed, the US redoubled its efforts to overturn this revolution. The US is now threatening to intervene militarily to bring about the regime change it has wanted for twenty years. While we have been told that the US’s efforts to overthrow Chavez and Maduro are motivated by altruistic goals of advancing the interests of democracy and human rights in Venezuela, is this true? The Plot to Overthrow Venezuela answers this question with a resounding “no,” demonstrating that: The US’s interests in Venezuela have always centered upon one and only one thing: Venezuela’s vast oil reserves; The US has happily supported one repressive regime after another in Venezuela to protect its oil interests; Chavez and Maduro are not the “tyrants” we have been led to believe they are, but in fact have done much to advance the interests of democracy and economic equality in Venezuela; What the US and the Venezuelan opposition resent most is the fact that Chavez and Maduro have governed in the interest of Venezuela’s vast numbers of poor and oppressed racial groups; While the US claims that it is has the humanitarian interests of the Venezuelan people at heart, the fact is that the US has been waging a one-sided economic war against Venezuela which has greatly undermined the health and living conditions of Venezuelans; The opposition forces the US is attempting to put into power represent Venezuela’s oligarchy who want to place Venezuela’s oil revenues back in the hands of Venezuela’s economic elite as well as US oil companies. The battle for Venezuela which is now being waged will determine the fate of all of Latin America for many years to come. The Plot to Overthrow Venezuela lets readers know what is at stake in this struggle and urges readers to reconsider which side they are on.

Crude Nation
Crude Nation

Author: Raúl Gallegos

Publisher: Potomac Books

Published: 2019-09-01

Total Pages: 262

ISBN-13: 1640122133

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Beneath Venezuelan soil lies an ocean of crude—the world’s largest reserves—an oil patch that shaped the nature of the global energy business. Unfortunately, a dysfunctional anti-American, leftist government controls this vast resource and has used its wealth to foster voter support, ultimately wreaking economic havoc. Crude Nation reveals the ways in which this mismanagement has led to Venezuela’s economic ruin and turned the country into a cautionary tale for the world. Raúl Gallegos, a former Caracas-based oil correspondent, paints a picture both vivid and analytical of the country’s economic decline, the government’s foolhardy economic policies, and the wrecked lives of Venezuelans. Without transparency, the Venezuelan government uses oil money to subsidize life for its citizens in myriad unsustainable ways, while regulating nearly every aspect of day-to-day existence in Venezuela. This has created a paradox in which citizens can fill up the tanks of their SUVs for less than one American dollar while simultaneously enduring nationwide shortages of staples such as milk, sugar, and toilet paper. Gallegos’s insightful analysis shows how mismanagement has ruined Venezuela again and again over the past century and lays out how Venezuelans can begin to fix their country, a nation that can play an important role in the global energy industry. This paperback edition features a new introduction by the author.

The Enduring Legacy
The Enduring Legacy

Author: Miguel Tinker Salas

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2009-05-11

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13: 0822392232

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Oil has played a major role in Venezuela’s economy since the first gusher was discovered along Lake Maracaibo in 1922. As Miguel Tinker Salas demonstrates, oil has also transformed the country’s social, cultural, and political landscapes. In The Enduring Legacy, Tinker Salas traces the history of the oil industry’s rise in Venezuela from the beginning of the twentieth century, paying particular attention to the experiences and perceptions of industry employees, both foreign and Venezuelan. He reveals how class ambitions and corporate interests combined to reshape many Venezuelans’ ideas of citizenship. Middle-class Venezuelans embraced the oil industry from the start, anticipating that it would transform the country by introducing modern technology, sparking economic development, and breaking the landed elites’ stranglehold. Eventually Venezuelan employees of the industry found that their benefits, including relatively high salaries, fueled loyalty to the oil companies. That loyalty sometimes trumped allegiance to the nation-state. North American and British petroleum companies, seeking to maintain their stakes in Venezuela, promoted the idea that their interests were synonymous with national development. They set up oil camps—residential communities to house their workers—that brought Venezuelan employees together with workers from the United States and Britain, and eventually with Chinese, West Indian, and Mexican migrants as well. Through the camps, the companies offered not just housing but also schooling, leisure activities, and acculturation into a structured, corporate way of life. Tinker Salas contends that these practices shaped the heart and soul of generations of Venezuelans whom the industry provided with access to a middle-class lifestyle. His interest in how oil suffused the consciousness of Venezuela is personal: Tinker Salas was born and raised in one of its oil camps.

Venezuela and the United States
Venezuela and the United States

Author: Judith Ewell

Publisher: University of Georgia Press

Published: 1996

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 9780820317823

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"Valuable work explores the evolution of US-Venezuelan relations in terms of 'core cultural values' and disparities of power. Argues that the relationship between Venezuela and the US should take into account the vision and values of Venezuela, and that U

Oil and World Politics
Oil and World Politics

Author: John Foster

Publisher: James Lorimer & Company

Published: 2018-09-25

Total Pages: 282

ISBN-13: 145941344X

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Petroleum is the most valuable commodity in the world and an enormous source of wealth for those who sell it, transport it and transform it for its many uses. As the engine of modern economies and industries, governments everywhere want to assure steady supplies. Without it, their economies would grind to a standstill. Since petroleum is not evenly distributed around the world, powerful countries want to be sure they have access to supplies and markets, whatever the cost to the environment or to human life. Coveting the petroleum of another country is against the rules of international law — yet if accomplished surreptitiously, under the cover of some laudable action, it's a bonanza. This is the basis of "the petroleum game," where countries jockey for control of the world's oil and natural gas. It's an ongoing game of rivalry among global and regional countries, each pursuing its own interests and using whatever tools, allies and organizations offer possible advantage. John Foster has spent his working life as an oil economist. He understands the underlying role played by oil and gas in international affairs. He identifies the hidden issues behind many of the conflicts in the world today. He explores military interventions (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria), tensions around international waterways (Persian Gulf, South China Sea), and use of sanctions or political interference related to petroleum trade (Iran, Russia, Venezuela). He illuminates the petroleum-related reasons for government actions usually camouflaged and rarely discussed publicly by Western politicians or media. Petroleum geopolitics are complex. When clashes and conflicts occur, they are multi-dimensional. This book ferrets out pieces of the multi-faceted puzzle in the dark world of petroleum and fits them together.

Petro-Aggression
Petro-Aggression

Author: Jeff Colgan

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2013-01-31

Total Pages: 327

ISBN-13: 1107029678

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Jeff D. Colgan explores why some oil-exporting countries are aggressive, while others are not. Using evidence from key countries such as Iraq, Iran, Libya, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, Petro-Aggression proposes a new theoretical framework to explain the importance of oil to international security.

The Magical State
The Magical State

Author: Fernando Coronil

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 1997-11-10

Total Pages: 480

ISBN-13: 9780226116013

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In 1935, after the death of dictator General Juan Vicente Gómez, Venezuela consolidated its position as the world's major oil exporter and began to establish what today is South America's longest-lasting democratic regime. Endowed with the power of state oil wealth, successive presidents appeared as transcendent figures who could magically transform Venezuela into a modern nation. During the 1974-78 oil boom, dazzling development projects promised finally to effect this transformation. Yet now the state must struggle to appease its foreign creditors, counter a declining economy, and contain a discontented citizenry. In critical dialogue with contemporary social theory, Fernando Coronil examines key transformations in Venezuela's polity, culture, and economy, recasting theories of development and highlighting the relevance of these processes for other postcolonial nations. The result is a timely and compelling historical ethnography of political power at the cutting edge of interdisciplinary reflections on modernity and the state.

Oil and Governance
Oil and Governance

Author: David G. Victor

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2011-12-08

Total Pages: 1035

ISBN-13: 1139502883

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National oil companies (NOCs) play an important role in the world economy. They produce most of the world's oil and bankroll governments across the globe. This book explains the variation in performance and strategy for NOCs and provides fresh insights into the future of the oil industry.

From Windfall to Curse?
From Windfall to Curse?

Author: Jonathan Di John

Publisher: Penn State Press

Published: 2015-12-21

Total Pages: 215

ISBN-13: 0271076909

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Since the discovery of abundant oil resources in the 1920s, Venezuela has had an economically privileged position among the nations of Latin America, which has led to its being treated by economic and political analysts as an exceptional case. In her well-known study of Venezuela’s political economy, The Paradox of Plenty (1997), Stanford political scientist Terry Karl argued that this oil wealth induced extraordinary corruption, rent-seeking, and centralized intervention that resulted in restricting productivity and growth. What this and other studies of Venezuela’s economy fail to explain, however, is how such conditions have accompanied both growth and stagnation at different periods of Venezuela’s history and why countries experiencing similar levels of corruption and rent-seeking produce divergent developmental outcomes. By investigating the record of economic development in Venezuela from 1920 to the present, Jonathan Di John shows that the key to explaining why the economy performed much better between 1920 and 1980 than in the post-1980 period is to understand how political strategies interacted with economic strategies—specifically, how politics determined state capacity at any given time and how the stage of development and development strategies affected the nature of political conflicts. In emphasizing the importance of an approach that looks at the political economy, not just at the economy alone, Di John advances the field methodologically while he contributes to a long-needed history of Venezuela’s economic performance in the twentieth century.

Venezuela's Petro-diplomacy
Venezuela's Petro-diplomacy

Author: Ralph S. Clem

Publisher:

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780813035307

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President Hugo Chavez has used the windfall of high oil prices to remake Venezuela internally along the model of 21st-century socialism and, even more audaciously, to rewrite global relations by directly challenging U.S. hegemony. The dramatic ascendency of the country in hemispheric and global international relations over the past decade is the subject of this title.