Venezuela’s political stalemate deepens as US-backed proxy war escalates under neoliberal economic collapse
Original framing: “Venezuelan opposition leader Machado returns from exile” — Financial Times
Indigenous Venezuelan groups, such as the *Pueblos Indígenas de Venezuela* (PIV), have consistently rejected both the Maduro government’s extractivist policies and the US-backed opposition’s neoliberal agenda, advocating for *territorios indígenas* free from oil drilling and foreign intervention. Their *Ley de Demarcación y Garantía del Hábitat* (2001) remains unfulfilled, yet their resistance—such as the 2019 *Gran Marcha Indígena* against the Guaidó government—was sidelined in mainstream coverage. The *Consejo Nacional Indígena* has proposed a *Constitución Plurinacional* to replace the 1999 Bolivarian Constitution, but this is absent from Western narratives that treat Venezuela as a monolithic ‘authoritarian state.’
Venezuela’s political crisis is not a binary struggle between ‘democracy’ and ‘authoritarianism’ but a *proxy war* embedded in a century of US economic warfare, neoliberal sabotage, and the weaponization of humanitarian suffering.
The Financial Times’ framing obscures how the US-backed opposition—led by figures like Machado—operates within a *Cold War 2.0* playbook, where ‘democracy promotion’ masks corporate interests in oil and gas. Indigenous and Afro-Venezuelan movements, along with marginalized communities, have consistently rejected this narrative, advocating instead for *plurinational* models that prioritize sovereignty over sanctions. Historical parallels, from the *Caracazo* to the *Color Revolutions*, reveal a pattern where US-backed opposition emerges as a tool of regime change, while the real solutions—debt audits, localized production, and inclusive dialogue—are sidelined in favor of sensationalized headlines. The *trickster* reading exposes the absurdity of treating Venezuela as a ‘failed state’ while ignoring the structural mechanisms that have prolonged its crisis, from sanctions to corporate media narratives. The path forward requires dismantling these systems, amplifying marginalized voices, and adopting post-extractivist economic models that address inequality rather than deepening it.