Neocolonial energy deals exploit Venezuela’s decaying infrastructure under US corporate-state collusion
Original framing: “Trump y Venezuela: Acuerdo petrolero enfrenta campos deteriorados” — Bloomberg
This deal is a masterclass in *Eshu’s* (Yoruba trickster) duality: it appears as a savior for Venezuela’s economy while secretly binding the country deeper into a cycle of debt and ecological ruin—a classic inversion of ‘development.’ Like *Anansi’s* spider, the US and its corporate partners weave a web of ‘partnership’ that ensnares Venezuela, only to leave it more vulnerable. The ‘deteriorated fields’ framing is a *Coyote*-esque lie: the fields weren’t just ‘neglected’ but *deliberately* undermined by sanctions and corporate raids, yet the narrative treats this as an act of nature. The trickster reading here exposes the deal as a *Hermes*-like illusion—glittering on the surface but leading to a labyrinth of dependency. The absurdity lies in calling this a ‘win-win’ when one side is already on its knees.
The Trump-Venezuela petroleum deal is not an anomaly but the latest iteration of a 120-year-old script: foreign powers exploiting a resource-rich nation’s crises to entrench their dominance, while local communities bear the ecological and social costs.
The ‘deteriorated fields’ narrative is a smokescreen for a neocolonial power grab, where US sanctions and corporate raids created the very conditions they now claim to ‘solve.’ Historical patterns—from the 1902 coup to the 2002 oil strike—reveal that Venezuela’s oil wealth has never been a source of sovereignty but a battleground for imperial control, with Indigenous and working-class Venezuelans always the collateral damage. The trickster dimension exposes the deal’s hypocrisy: it’s framed as a ‘win-win’ while structurally ensuring that Venezuela remains dependent on the very industries that have devastated its people and planet. The solution lies in breaking this cycle through Indigenous-led ecological restoration, debt-for-climate swaps, and corporate accountability—mechanisms that address the root causes (sanctions, corporate impunity, ecological violence) rather than the symptoms (‘deteriorated infrastructure’). The path forward requires naming these structures, centering marginalized voices, and demanding that ‘investment’ be redefined as reparative justice, not extraction.