It was the fever dream of the revolution, a dark fantasy spun so many times \u2013 each version wilder than the last \u2013 until it almost became a joke: the Yankees are coming.<\/p>\n
Hugo Ch\u00e1vez, who ruled Venezuela from 1999 to 2013, conjured the scenario again and again, warning that the US president and his henchmen in the CIA and Pentagon were mobilising forces to strike.<\/p>\n
Spies, saboteurs, assassins, special forces, mercenaries, missiles, poison, submarines, fighter planes \u2013 the empire would stop at nothing to smite Venezuela\u2019s Bolivarian revolution and overthrow its leader.<\/p>\n
Caracas on Saturday morning. Photograph: Jose Abreu\/@Jabreu89\/X\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
\u201cWould it be so strange that they\u2019ve invented the technology to spread cancer and we won\u2019t know about it for 50 years?\u201d Ch\u00e1vez said in 2011<\/a>, when he was being treated for cancer. He evoked US submarines prowling off Caribbean beaches and airborne troops attacking Caracas.<\/p>\n Hugo Ch\u00e1vez in 2011. Photograph: Eraldo Peres\/AP<\/p>\n It was, in large part, theatre. A confection of claims to justify authoritarian rule, burnish anti-imperialism credentials and delegitimise opponents. Over time, even some supporters rolled their eyes at tales of the Yankee bogeyman.<\/p>\n Yet now, 13 years after an ailing Ch\u00e1vez passed power to his protege, Nicol\u00e1s Maduro, the fever dream is real<\/a>. On Saturday US forces bombed Caracas and seized Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores \u2013 the \u201cempire\u201d of Ch\u00e1vez\u2019s rhetoric made manifest. No UN mandate, no congressional approval, just raw military power<\/a>.<\/p>\n President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro alongside the first lady, Cilia Flores, during his closing election campaign rally in Caracas in July 2024. Photograph: Fernando Vergara\/AP<\/p>\n Amid the shock and uncertainty about what happens next there is a surreal twist. For years Chavismo \u2013 the ideology bequeathed by the late president \u2013 exaggerated the US threat in order to cry wolf. When the wolf showed up he turned out to be an American version of Ch\u00e1vez.<\/p>\n Donald Trump in his Mar-a-Lago resort on Saturday watching the US military operation in Venezuela with the CIA\u2019s director, John Ratcliffe. Photograph: @realDonaldTrump\/Reuters<\/p>\n Donald Trump\u2019s populist authoritarianism echoes the Venezuelan strongman<\/a>: both masters of thunder and dazzle who polarised voters, intimidated opponents and hijacked institutions. The real estate mogul obviously differs in myriad ways from an army officer who embraced socialism \u2013 but his ability to tap grievances, break norms, suck up all the oxygen and turn power into a TV show are pure Ch\u00e1vez<\/a>.<\/p>\n It transcends irony that Trump\u2019s greatest spectacle is the operation to abduct Chavismo\u2019s heir. As international law lies in shreds<\/a>, and Venezuelans swing between hope and dread, history has completed a bizarre circularity.<\/p>\n In 2002 George W Bush\u2019s administration tacitly backed a coup that briefly ousted Ch\u00e1vez \u2013 a move that elicited comparisons to the cold war era, when the CIA toppled leftist leaders across Latin America.<\/p>\n Ch\u00e1vez, backed by barrio-dwellers and the military, regained power, won fresh electoral mandates and spent the rest of his reign taunting Bush as a donkey, a cowboy, a devil. After the 2003 US invasion of Iraq \u2013 justified by false claims about Saddam Hussein\u2019s weapons arsenal \u2013 many around the world agreed with Ch\u00e1vez that the US president was indeed more dangerous than a monkey with a razor blade.<\/p>\n Ch\u00e1vez made repeated claims of US plots against him. Given CIA efforts to kill Fidel Castro and US military interventions in Grenada in 1983 and Panama in 1989, and Bush\u2019s post 9\/11 overreach, a strike against Venezuela was plausible. But none came. The US continued to buy Venezuela\u2019s oil and sat back while Ch\u00e1vez hollowed out his economy.<\/p>\n Two US soldiers guard three Grenadian prisoners in St George\u2019s, Grenada in October 1983, with an American M-60 tank behind them, after American troops invaded the island. Photograph: AP<\/p>\n Maduro, taking the reins in 2013, continued the fiction of an imminent US military threat. With the economy cratering and voters rebelling, Maduro needed to rig and steal elections<\/a> to stay in power \u2013 and a Yankee bogeyman was more useful than ever. The dictator talked up limited sanctions by the Obama and Biden administrations as a blockade.<\/p>\n In recent months Trump deployed his own distortions and fabrications. He accused Maduro of heading a \u201cnarco-terrorist\u201d cartel that was \u201cflooding\u201d the US with drugs \u2013 an extrapolation of Venezuela\u2019s role as a conduit for Colombian cocaine, which mostly goes to Europe. Trump also accused Venezuela of a role in his debunked claim that Joe Biden stole the 2020 US presidential election.<\/p>\n On Saturday Trump claimed a victory for the ages. \u201cThis was one of the most stunning, effective, and powerful displays of American military might and competence in American history. No nation in the world could achieve what America achieved.\u201d<\/p>\n The US raiders cut the power supply to Caracas thanks \u201cto a certain expertise that we have\u201d, paving the way for a flawless operation that evicted a tyrant, Trump said.<\/p>\n In his mausoleum, Ch\u00e1vez must have spun. He used to blame power cuts \u2013 the result of a crumbling energy grid \u2013 on CIA saboteurs. He used to say the gringo superpower wished to reimpose the 19th-century Monroe doctrine<\/a> of US pre-eminence in the hemisphere, and here was Trump declaring a \u201cDonroe doctrine\u201d of \u201cdominance\u201d.<\/p>\n