Latin America’s history is often flattened in Western narratives into a repetitive cycle of corruption, instability, and underdevelopment. This framing is not accidental. It strips the region of political agency and obscures the central truth that has shaped its past and present: Latin America’s modern history is, above all, a history of resistance against empire. It is the story of societies repeatedly forced to choose between sovereignty and submission, dignity and dependency. Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s fate, whatever one’s view of his leadership, belongs squarely within this long and unresolved struggle.

From the outset of colonial rule, Latin America was structured not as a collection of societies meant to develop on their own terms, but as an extractive system designed to enrich external powers. Spain and Portugal organized economies around forced labor, racial hierarchy, and the export of raw materials. Indigenous populations were dispossessed, African slaves were imported in vast numbers, and local elites were trained to govern in service of distant crowns. Independence in the early nineteenth century shattered formal colonial rule, but it did not dismantle this underlying logic.

The first generation of Latin American independence leaders understood this clearly. Figures such as Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla and José María Morelos in Mexico did not merely seek separation from Spain; they envisioned social transformation. Their calls for land reform, abolition of slavery, and racial equality challenged not only colonial authority but also the local elites who benefited from it. Simón Bolívar and José de San Martín carried this struggle across the continent, defeating Spanish armies while dreaming of a united Latin America capable of resisting future domination. Bolívar’s warnings about foreign influence, particularly from the rising United States, now read as eerily prophetic.

The nineteenth century confirmed his fears. As European empires receded, the United States emerged as the dominant external power in the hemisphere. Through the Monroe Doctrine and later the Roosevelt Corollary, Washington asserted a unilateral right to intervene in Latin American affairs. Sovereignty became conditional. Governments were tolerated so long as they aligned with US strategic and economic interests; those that did not faced destabilization, coups, or invasion.

This dynamic produced a stark political divide that has never disappeared. On one side stood leaders who attempted, in different ways, to assert national autonomy. On the other stood rulers who secured their power by aligning with external forces, often at the expense of their own populations.

The costs of resistance were severe. Augusto César Sandino’s guerrilla campaign against US occupation in Nicaragua forced American troops to withdraw in the 1930s. His reward was assassination at the hands of Anastasio Somoza, whose US-backed dynasty ruled Nicaragua for over four decades. In Chile, Salvador Allende pursued a democratic road to socialism, nationalizing copper and expanding social programs while remaining within constitutional limits. His government was economically strangled, politically undermined, and ultimately destroyed in a violent coup supported from abroad. Allende died in the presidential palace, while Chile entered years of dictatorship.

Cuba offered a different path but faced similar consequences. Fidel Castro and Ernesto “Che” Guevara openly defied US dominance, transforming the island into a symbol of revolutionary independence. The response was relentless: embargoes, sabotage, assassination attempts, and diplomatic isolation. Whether admired or criticized, Cuba demonstrated the price of refusing to conform. Sovereignty came at the cost of permanent siege.

In the late twentieth century, imperial control adapted rather than disappeared. Open military dictatorships gradually gave way to neoliberal economic governance. Privatization, deregulation, and structural adjustment programs were imposed across the region, often under the guidance of international financial institutions dominated by Western powers. Leaders who embraced these policies were praised as reformers and modernizers, regardless of the social devastation that followed.

Peru offers a telling example. Fernando Belaúnde Terry and later Alberto Fujimori dismantled state control over strategic sectors and opened the economy to foreign capital. The promised prosperity failed to materialize for most Peruvians. Instead, inequality deepened, public institutions weakened, and in Fujimori’s case, authoritarianism and mass human rights abuses flourished under the guise of “stability” and “security.” Obedience to external economic models did not bring development; it brought dependency in a more sophisticated form.

Against this backdrop, Hugo Chávez’s rise in Venezuela marked a revival of an older tradition. Elected rather than imposed, Chávez challenged the neoliberal consensus of the 1990s by reasserting state control over oil resources, expanding social programs, and promoting regional integration independent of Washington. His Bolivarian project explicitly framed itself as part of Latin America’s historical struggle for sovereignty. Oil revenues, Chávez argued, should serve Venezuelans rather than multinational corporations.

Nicolás Maduro inherited this project under far harsher conditions. Plunging oil prices, internal mismanagement, and external pressure combined to produce a severe economic crisis. Yet it is impossible to understand Venezuela’s situation without acknowledging the scale of foreign intervention. Sanctions, financial blockades, diplomatic isolation, and overt support for alternative claimants to power have systematically narrowed the country’s room to maneuver.

The emergence of Juan Guaidó as a foreign-recognized “interim president” illustrated a modern iteration of an old pattern. Legitimacy was not sought from Venezuelan voters but from Washington and its allies. The implicit message was clear: sovereignty is negotiable, and power can be imported if external approval is secured. This approach echoed a long history of Latin American elites turning outward rather than inward to consolidate authority.

Maduro’s detention and prosecution by US authorities, framed as a matter of justice and legality, fits seamlessly into this historical continuum. Charges may be presented as technical or criminal, but the broader political context is unmistakable. Leaders who defy imperial interests are not treated as legitimate adversaries; they are criminalized, isolated, and removed from the acceptable spectrum of politics. The law becomes another instrument of power.

None of this requires idealizing Maduro or any other figure. Latin America’s history does not offer saints, only imperfect actors navigating brutal constraints. Sovereignty has never meant flawless governance. It has meant resisting a system that rewards submission and punishes autonomy. Leaders who choose independence often make mistakes, sometimes grave ones. Yet the alternative-rule by external approval-has consistently produced inequality, repression, and hollowed-out states.

The lesson of Latin America is harsh but consistent. Empires change their language but not their logic. They promise partnership, stability, and development, yet demand obedience in return. Collaborators are rewarded briefly and discarded when no longer useful. Those who resist are demonized, sanctioned, overthrown, or eliminated.

That is why figures associated with resistance endure in popular memory, despite controversy. They represent not perfection, but possibility-the insistence that Latin America can belong to itself. Maduro’s story, like those before him, is not merely about one man or one country. It is the latest chapter in a centuries-long struggle over who has the right to decide Latin America’s future: its people, or an empire that has never fully let go.

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Source: Weekly Blitz :: Writings