Pod Insights Civics 101 What's happening with Venezuela? About this episode Sometimes, we just have to make a "101" episode of Civics 101. That is the case this week, in the wake of the arrest of Venezuela's sitting president by the United States. So, what's happening with Venezuela, Maduro, and the Trump administration's plan to "run" that country?
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Hannah McCarthy? Two days ago, I woke up and texted our boss, Rebecca Lavoie, asking if she wouldn't mind if I swapped out our originally planned episode for something else. She said yes, so I wrote this.
0:15 Hannah McCarthy? Civics 101 was not designed to be a news-responsive show, and it will continue to be the place you can turn to for the basics of American democracy, laws, and systems, whether they are in the headlines or not. But we also believe it is our responsibility to help people understand what is happening right now. So, hi, Nick.
0:38 Nick Capodice? Hello, Hannah. Heads down, thumbs up.
0:41 Hannah McCarthy? I am Hannah McCarthy.
0:42 Nick Capodice? I'm Nikita Pichet.
0:43 Hannah McCarthy? And this is Civics 101, and this is your guide to what is going on vis-à-vis America slash Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro and President Donald Trump's plan, or at least what we know of it. We are going very 101 with this, because that is why we exist. So first, Nick, what just happened in Venezuela?
1:07 Nick Capodice? Well, on January 3rd, the United States military conducted a quote-unquote "large-scale-strike," as they are calling it, in Caracas, the capital of Venezuela. As of this point, Venezuela is saying that 40 people were killed, including military and civilians, and the US military captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Celia Flores. They put them on a plane, they brought them to New York, and I know that there are federal charges against them.
1:36 Hannah McCarthy? Yeah. So, anyone wondering what's going on here?
1:41 Nick Capodice? Yeah, Hannah, I am. Me.
1:44 Hannah McCarthy? I'm gonna do my best. Stay tuned.
1:59 Hannah McCarthy? Okay, before we can talk about what just happened in Venezuela and what is supposedly going on and what else looks like it's going on, I think we need to establish something very basic. Venezuela, what do you know about it, Nick?
2:13 Nick Capodice? All right, so it is at the very northern tip of South America, I know that much, next to Colombia. I know gas prices are about 13 cents a gallon last time I looked, and they have a lot of oil.
2:25 Hannah McCarthy? They sure do. They actually have the most, the most oil of any country on earth as far as we know.
2:31 Nick Capodice? And I know that Donald Trump says the Venezuelan government has been purposefully sending a lot of drugs into the United States.
2:38 Hannah McCarthy? That is also what the federal indictment against President Maduro says. Drug trafficking charges, among a few other things, that's the justification for capturing Maduro and his wife and bringing them into the United States. Anything else you know about Venezuela?
2:54 Nick Capodice? Um, like you said, the president of Venezuela is Nicolas Maduro. I've heard him referred to as a dictator, even though the Venezuelan government is technically a constitutional republic. Like, it's got three branches: executive, legislative, and judicial. And I guess the last big thing that comes to mind is Chavez.
3:17 Hannah McCarthy? Yeah, Hugo Chavez sure does come to mind. And it might actually make sense to start there. Who was Chavez?
3:28 Nick Capodice? Chavez is someone who was also referred to as a dictator. He was the former president of Venezuela, and he died in 2013.
3:35 Hannah McCarthy? And right off the bat, Nick, I am also going to tell you that there are many people who call Chavez a hero. And to get to Maduro, and not all that much to drugs, to be honest, we have to talk about Chavez. And we have to talk about oil. Those oil reserves you mentioned, the same oil President Trump is now promising to quote-unquote "take back." Those made Venezuela one of the wealthiest nations on the planet for a while. Their economy was, and is, almost entirely dependent on oil.
4:08 Nick Capodice? Hannah, did you know that's called a petrostate? Or a petrocracy? The world wants oil, a country has oil, like a lot of oil. Oil becomes their main thing, and that causes problems.
4:21 Hannah McCarthy? It sure can. Power concentrates, corruption spreads. But before things went south, Venezuela had all this oil. Giant oil corporations, including United States companies like Exxon, Mobil, and Chevron, were down there playing a major role. And then the country went through decades of attempting to nationalize the oil industry.
4:44 Nick Capodice? Meaning what exactly?
4:45 Hannah McCarthy? Meaning essentially Venezuela wanted to take control of operations and keep as much oil money in the country as possible. But there was a little problem in the 1970s and 80s with re-oil. Any guesses?
4:59 Nick Capodice? Yeah. The energy crisis. Long lines at the gas station in that hazy 1970 sunshine. And that energy crisis was caused by a lot of things, like war.
5:12 Hannah McCarthy? Yeah, and if you want an episode on the energy crisis, drop us a line because it is not happening right now. But Venezuela was going through a lot of political changes. The government wanted to nationalize those oil operations, gain that economic sovereignty, aka be the ones in charge of the stuff that makes the money. So this combination of taking control and super-low oil prices by the 1980s leaves Venezuela in a pickle. Also, taking over the oil industry left them in big-time debt to American oil companies. Those companies either got the heck out of Dodge, or they struggled to negotiate new contracts. And they also really wanted to recoup the investment they made in their now-lost oil pipelines and rigs, among other things.
5:55 Hannah McCarthy? Now, that is a debt Venezuela has struggled to pay off. The United States also imposed sanctions on Venezuelan oil, which I am not going to get into right now, but which made it even harder to sell that oil and to make money and to pay off that debt.
6:11 Nick Capodice? All right, Hannah, take a breath and hang on here. When President Trump says Venezuela stole our oil...
6:19 Nick Capodice? Is that true?
6:20 Hannah McCarthy? No. Venezuela owns its own resources. Foreign companies negotiate contracts with the government in order to have oil operations there. Or if the government and the industry is in turmoil, they perhaps fail to negotiate those contracts, which is what happened to some US companies in the past.
6:40 Nick Capodice? All right. And the political turmoil part?
6:43 Hannah McCarthy? So to the political science and history professors listening, I am so sorry because this is the broadest brush I got here. This is my broad Chavez brush. All right, the oil stuff was a mess. The government was blamed, the economy was in trouble, people were hungry, they were starving, there were riots. A military officer named Hugo Chavez attempts a coup. He goes to jail. He gains a lot of support. He already had some, now he has even more. He gets let out of jail. He runs for president, promises to end poverty, corruption, and the old political system, and he wins.
7:20 Nick Capodice? And he stayed in power a long time, right?
7:26 Hannah McCarthy? Chavez was elected in 1998. And, uh-oh, my brush is getting even broader. Chavez says the people are in charge, the people have ultimate power, like more power than the legislature and more power than the Supreme Court. And basically, Nick, basically, there is a constitutional convention with delegates, who are almost entirely Chavez supporters. They change the Venezuelan constitution. They pretty much, you know, overturn the Supreme Court, a lot of firings, a lot of replacements. The legislature is pretty much neutralized, it loses most of its power.
8:00 Nick Capodice? Is this why people called Chavez a dictator?
8:02 Hannah McCarthy? Well, you know, this is also why people call Chavez a hero. And again, broad brush, why people call Chavez a dictator. Also, Nick, the way people in the US talk about Chavez is not necessarily the way that everyone talks about Chavez. The new constitution was chock full of human rights, supports for impoverished people, supports for workers. It also made the president very powerful. Chavez stayed in that power for a long time. While he was in power, the economy got worse and worse, there was a lot of corruption, there were, as it turns out, a lot of human rights violations. The oil industry became even more of a mess. And then in 2013, as you mentioned, he died. And Nicholas Maduro stepped up.
8:46 Nick Capodice? Okay, so now we are on to Maduro.
8:48 Hannah McCarthy? We are on to Maduro, rolling right along here because again, what on earth is going on, right? But we are going to take a very quick break. Stay tuned.
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12:23 Hannah McCarthy? You're listening to Civics 101. We are talking about Venezuela, what just happened in terms of the United States capturing President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, and bringing them to the United States and charging them with federal crimes. And before the break, we talked a bit about how we got to Maduro as president, right? Hugo Chavez wanted him to be his successor. Maduro won a tight election, so tight that his opponent called for a recount. That recount did not happen.
12:54 Nick Capodice? Uh-oh.
12:55 Hannah McCarthy? Maduro is not Chavez. Chavez was beloved by many. He was super charismatic. And he led this sweeping regime change, and he told the people that they were in charge. Maduro inherited a collapsing economy and opposition to his leadership. He cracked down on protests. He killed people. In 2018, he was declared the president again in an unopposed election, but a lot of countries refused to recognize that as legitimate. Maduro jailed or exiled opponents. In 2024, he claimed to have won again, despite evidence that his opponent had won. More political prisoners end up in jail.
13:34 Nick Capodice? But Hannah, all of this, this is not why the United States captured Nicolas Maduro, all of the political oppression.
13:42 Hannah McCarthy? No. Maduro was captured after months of the United States conducting strikes on alleged Venezuelan drug trafficking boats and killing over 100 people because of federal charges being brought against him by the United States in the form of a federal indictment. That indictment accuses Maduro, his wife, and four others of narco-terrorism.
14:04 Nick Capodice? Which, I mean, I can guess, Hannah, but for the folks in the back...
14:10 Hannah McCarthy? So Maduro is accused of flooding the US with thousands of tons of cocaine and other substances to get himself and others rich, and acquiring and using things like machine guns to do it.
14:22 Nick Capodice? Is that true?
14:23 Hannah McCarthy? Well, you know, there's gonna be a trial. There's the truth, and then there's the American legal system. Experts say that Venezuela plays a minor role in trafficking drugs that reach the United States. Most of the trafficked drugs come from countries like Mexico, Ecuador, Guatemala, or Venezuela's neighbor, Colombia.
14:43 Nick Capodice? But we didn't capture the leaders of those territories.
14:46 Hannah McCarthy? No, but I am gonna circle back around to that. But no, we captured Maduro.
14:50 Nick Capodice? And why were we allowed to do that, exactly?
14:53 Hannah McCarthy? Allowed is tricky because US intervention of this kind has long been scrutinized, criticized, and challenged. There are people who say this is an illegal kidnapping. We have, by the way, captured foreign leaders in the past. A lot of people are comparing this one to the US capture of Manuel Noriega. You remember that one?
15:12 Nick Capodice? I do. I remember. I was in grade school when it happened. That was Panama under George H.W. Bush, right?
15:17 Hannah McCarthy? That's the one. Noriega was a military dictator in Panama. He was accused of drug trafficking, among other things. The United States captured him in 1989. He was tried. He was imprisoned. The difference there is that Panama had declared itself at war with the US prior to Noriega's capture. Prior to Maduro's capture, the Venezuelan president told a journalist that he wanted to work with the US on drug policy and oil agreements.
15:45 Nick Capodice? And just real quick, Hannah, back to this allowed thing. How is it that the US can just go in and... Grab someone. There's got to be some kind of something under that.
15:57 Hannah McCarthy? Well, first, I will tell you that this is almost certainly a violation of international law. There is a United Nations treaty that says that you cannot use military force against other countries without that country's permission, the UN's permission, or, you know, in self-defense. None of which appear to apply here. But US presidents have claimed in the past that they have constitutional powers that basically, you know, kind of float above or outside of international law. That is how Noriega's capture was justified, for example. I will also tell you that Trump is saying that the Monroe Doctrine is one of the reasons the US can do this, although Trump is now calling it the Donrow Doctrine.
16:40 Nick Capodice? Yeah, I think I heard that one. Now, the Monroe Doctrine, I sort of know about. It was the 1800s?
16:46 Hannah McCarthy? 1823.
16:47 Nick Capodice? And it's called the Monroe Doctrine, you know, named after President James Monroe. And from what I understand, it was basically a deal that said the US is going to stay out of European conflict and issues if Europe stayed away from countries in the Western Hemisphere.
17:02 Hannah McCarthy? Yeah, not much of a deal, actually, because European nations initially were like, okay, whatever, Monroe. When France put an emperor in Mexico in the 1860s, the US did tell them to get out of there. Eventually, they did. And then Theodore Roosevelt came in with the Roosevelt Corollary.
17:19 Nick Capodice? The what now?
17:22 Hannah McCarthy? Roosevelt essentially thought the Monroe Doctrine could also mean that we can go in and get involved in unstable Latin American countries, which ultimately is how the US scored the Panama Canal Zone. And this principle of using the Monroe Doctrine to help out American interests, and I don't mean interests like keeping drugs out of the US, is the way that a lot of experts are viewing what is going on with Venezuela right now.
17:47 Nick Capodice? I mean, you know, oil did become a talking point pretty much right away.
17:53 Hannah McCarthy? Something to keep in mind here is that, quote, "Western Hemisphere, part of the Monroe Doctrine." Trump is now suggesting that Colombia needs to watch its back. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is suggesting that Cuba is in play as well. The Cuban government, by the way, has issued a statement telling all nations of the region to, quote, "remain alert as the threat hangs over all."
18:18 Nick Capodice? Huh. Well?
18:20 Nick Capodice? Okay, we'll just keep watching, I suppose. And because we are not clairvoyants, all we can do right now is talk about Venezuela, right? Because Hannah, I have one and only one really big question.
18:34 Hannah McCarthy? Go for it.
18:35 Nick Capodice? President Trump said the United States is gonna run it. Run the country of Venezuela. Explain that one to me.
18:45 Hannah McCarthy? Well, Nick, I can't really. And Trump has not really either. What he has said is that if Maduro's vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, quote, "does what we want," we won't have to send US troops into Venezuela to help run the country.
19:02 Nick Capodice? Okay, but Hannah, run the country.
19:06 Hannah McCarthy? I know. Experts do not see a legal basis for this. The phrase "violation of international law" is coming up a lot lately. As of now, Marco Rubio seems to be the one poised to help the, quote, "running of the country" thing, if necessary. Trump has said that Rubio talked to Vice President Rodriguez and that she was willing to, quote, "do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again," unquote. Rodriguez, meanwhile, is saying the US illegally kidnapped Maduro and said that Venezuela will never again be the colony of another empire.
19:43 Nick Capodice? I feel like I'm kind of harping on a string, Hannah, here about the oil. The oil thing seems to be the thing here. Trump talked a lot about oil.
19:52 Hannah McCarthy? Yeah, you may be hearing in the news quite a bit that, you know, despite all of these drug claims, there's been a pivot to oil. Oil's the talking point. Trump has said that US oil companies are going to go and spend billions of dollars to revitalize what is currently a crumbling oil industry in Venezuela, and then they'll get reimbursed and they will make tons and tons of oil money. How that's supposed to happen without a stable government or the ability to guarantee employee safety, write these contracts, that's not clear. However, Trump has stated that he spoke with American oil companies both before and after both the strike in Caracas and the capture of Maduro and his wife. Even so, there's a lot we don't know.
20:35 Nick Capodice? Well, you did your best, McCarthy. I think we gotta leave it there for now.
20:40 Hannah McCarthy? I think we gotta. Would you call that a 101?
20:44 Nick Capodice? Definitely not.
20:45 Hannah McCarthy? I know. Maybe like a 201?
21:04 Hannah McCarthy? All right, that does it for this episode. It was produced by me, Hannah McCarthy, with Nick Capodice. Marina Hanke is our producer. Rebecca Lovoy is our executive producer. Music in this episode comes from Epidemic Sound. If you have questions for us, and I have questions for us, you can always submit it at our website, civics101podcast.org. Stay tuned. We're gonna keep watching and we're gonna keep trying to figure out what's going on right alongside you. Civics 101 is a production of NHPR, New Hampshire Public Radio.
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