Months of tension between the United States and Venezuela finally came to a head in 2026. Jan. 3, United States troops were sent into Venezuela to arrest President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, on charges of drug trafficking. While Maduro is currently being tried in New York, President Trump claims the United States will run Venezuela for the time being. Along with this, the President has made it clear he also intends to claim control over Venezuela’s oil;the country holds the largest oil reserves in the world. 

Professor Marc McLeod is an expert on Latin American and Caribbean history, specializing in pre-revolutionary Cuba with a focus on Haitian and British West Indian Immigrants. He teaches courses on the history of Cuba, the history of Mexico, colonial Latin America and revolutionary Latin America. He is also the associate director of the University Honors program at Seattle U. The following transcript is an interview with him, aimed at contextualizing relations between Venezuela and the United States. Initials have been used to indicate the speaker. 

HNA: How can we understand what’s happening right now within the longer history of U.S. intervention in Latin America?

MM: I would begin with saying this is yet another instance in a painful history of U.S. intervention in Latin America that goes back to the 19th century. Every time an intervention such as this occurs, it promotes greater distrust and limits the ability of the U.S. government and U.S. diplomats to forge meaningful working relationships with counterparts in Latin America.

This is relatively unique in that it has not been very common for the United States to kidnap a foreign head of state. Although it’s not entirely unprecedented. In 1989, the U.S. sent troops into Panama to arrest dictator Manuel Noriega. In that case, there were civilian casualties, and we don’t yet know the details of the impact from Maduro’s capture, but civilians were clearly killed. The justification then was drug trafficking, the same rationale the Trump administration is using now.

HNA: How does Noriega’s case, as another dictator who held strong military power, help explain what could happen next with Maduro?

MM: Noriega was brought to the U.S., tried in federal court in Miami, convicted and served something like 17 years in a federal prison before being released. If we want to speculate, at least with Maduro, we may envision a conviction and some sort of prison sentence within the United States. Historians don’t want to speculate, but the past does point to what might happen in the future.

I have not seen significant or clear evidence that Maduro himself has been involved. Most legal experts will point out that this is a violation of international law, and there is a deep contradiction in that Trump recently pardoned another former Latin American head of state convicted of drug trafficking. 

HNA: Does migration factor into the Trump administration’s actions toward Venezuela?

MM: I don’t think the issue of migration has really been covered, which is another weird way that perhaps the motives of the Trump administration dovetail, and I haven’t necessarily seen people linking that. There’s been massive outmigration from Venezuela in the last decade plus, especially since Maduro took office, and the economic crisis has become more pronounced. 

I think about 8 million Venezuelans have left the country this millennia. In the last 25 years, more or less since Chavez had taken over in a population of like 30 plus million, percentage-wise, it’s big. I think this would have to be true—the largest out-migration from any single country in the Americas ever. 8 million in 25 years is massive. They haven’t all come to the United States. Many have gone through different places in Latin America and Europe as well, but significant numbers have come to the United States.

HNA: Could reducing Venezuelan migration to the U.S. be a secondary motive behind Maduro’s arrest?

MM: I did see something where shortly after the arrest of Maduro, [Trump] had said something along the lines of ‘now Venezuelans will be free to return to their home.’ Migration from Latin America to the United States, a significant percentage in the last generation, has been coming from Venezuela. In addition to getting a hold of oil from Venezuela, a secondary motive from the perspective of Trump, MAGA, thinking is that this could reduce pressure in terms of migration to the U.S. He could also continue to use it, as he almost was starting to do, as part of anti-immigrant rhetoric. That’s why we need to recognize there are different implications. This is not just about capturing an alleged drug trafficker. There are deeper U.S. motives from the Trump administration behind this action.

HNA: What are some of the elements that went into whether it was Maduro—or even Noriega in Panama—that sustained these regimes, in terms of motivating U.S. policy?

MM: I’ll begin with Noriega and Panama. And one small difference is that Noriega was not the elected head of state. He was the power behind the throne. There was kind of a puppet president, and he was the leader of the Panamanian Defense Forces. I think the PDF was their official title. So here was the head of the Panamanian military, but he was clearly the power behind the scenes. 

The Bush administration recognized that, I think, and went in and said, ‘all right, we get him out of here, and we could carry out what we call regime change.’ It was shortly after elections had been held in Panama, and the opposition candidates claimed victory, but they were denied victory by Noriega’s political movement.

HNA: How is this wave impacting the rest of Latin America, specifically Cuba? 

MM: Cuba is somewhat unique in that the Cuban government, the Cuban regime, has had a very close alliance with Chavez, and then continuing with Maduro, and actually has even relied on Venezuela for some economic support. Even as the Venezuelan oil economy has tanked, Venezuela has still been providing Cuba with subsidized oil.

At a time when the Cuban economy is also going through a severe crisis, it’s struggling because it’s especially based on tourism. The pandemic and the U.S. embargo have all impacted the tourist sector. The bottom line is that Cuba will be impacted if the Venezuelan government does not continue to support them, not only diplomatically but also economically.

In terms of public comments, they’ve largely broken down along political lines. Governments that are more leftist or more progressive in Latin America have spoken out critically of the raid that captured Maduro, including President Miguel Diaz-Canel in Cuba, President Luiz in Brazil and the Colombian leader. But more right-wing leaders, including Javier Milei in Argentina, a close supporter of Trump, have come out saying this is a victory for freedom in Latin America.

Mexico is also an interesting one, because Trump has already mentioned in the immediate aftermath of the raid on Venezuela that Colombia could be next, Mexico could be next. Mexico sees this as a violation of Venezuelan sovereignty, and that’s going to be one of the longer-term impacts in terms of U.S.–Latin American relations. It only tends to promote an anti-imperialist, anti-U.S. current within Latin American nationalist thinking. I think at least in terms of the longer-term historical vision, it can only serve to harm U.S. Latin American relations moving forward. 

The History Department is holding a teach-in on Venezuela next week, Tuesday, Jan. 20, from 12:30-1:30 p.m. in Bannan 107.