“The feminisation of Latin America continues to this day”

Which ones?

In a famous drawing from 1923, Uncle Sam leans over a fence towards an immature Latin America, symbolised by a young woman. The caption reads: “Sykes, My, How Have You Grown!” The mindset behind this kind of cartoon can be traced back to the famous copper engraving America by the Flemish artist Johannes Stradanus from the early colonial period around 1575–80. It depicts the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci, sword in hand, standing before an America portrayed as a naked woman lying in a hammock. A warship can be seen in the background. This image from the 16th century offers a clue as to the intellectual tradition within which the attack on Venezuela took place.

Please explain this.

The so-called Monroe Doctrine of 1817 declared that Latin America was the sphere of influence of the United States and that Europe was to stay out of it. Theodore Roosevelt later had an addendum added in the context of the so-called Venezuela Crisis of 1902–03: the United States would be entitled to intervene there at any time if a country were to “behave chronically wrongly” or “become impotent by severing its ties to civilised societies”. This is what the “How Have You Grown” refers to. What is striking is the ambiguity of Roosevelt’s wording, which once again blends the sexual and the political, as if civilisation were a matter of male, martial potency. I believe this is echoed by the American Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth when, in a speech to US generals and admirals in September 2025, he promised to give “America’s warriors” back the freedom “to kill people and destroy things”.

In your view, does this way of thinking persist to this day?

In a certain sense, yes. While US warships cruise the Caribbean, Trump referred to the Venezuelan opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate María Corina Machado as a “nice woman”, a deliberately patronising and belittling remark. Towards Delcy Rodríguez, Venezuela’s interim president, Trump issued a threat, declaring that he was seeking “total access” to the country. Here, too, undertones of Stradanus’ engraving are present—an image that in turn served as a visual and symbolic blueprint for the Monroe Doctrine of the 19th century.

“On 3 January 2026, the United States sent a clear message to the world: if you try to break away from the dollar, we will bomb you”

Isn't it also about the fight to control raw materials?

Political economy is, of course, important. The United States wants Venezuela’s oil reserves, which make up almost 20 per cent of global reserves and are therefore the largest in the world. This is also about US economic hegemony, which is based on so-called petrodollars. That goes back to an agreement negotiated by the Nixon administration with Saudi Arabia in the 1970s, which stipulated that the country would market and sell its oil worldwide in US dollars and invest part of the proceeds in the United States. In the face of international sanctions and in the spirit of the Bolivarian Revolution, Venezuela began selling oil in other currencies, particularly the Chinese yuan. On 3 January 2026, the United States sent a clear message to the world: if you try to detach yourselves from the dollar, we will bomb you, as we previously did Iraq, Iran and Libya. 

What might be the next target of this policy of hegemony — or even subjugation?

It is less South America than Europe. Trump himself said it: either you let us buy Greenland, as we did Louisiana or Florida, or we will take it. That is still not off the table. Interestingly, this is justified as a matter of pure geopolitical necessity. As early as the beginning of the 20th century, the United States increasingly began to reinterpret its de facto role as an imperial power, at least rhetorically. Expansion and military presence were no longer presented as the exercise of power, but as a responsibility. The notion of the reluctant empire—as though it did not want to rule, but had to.

So you are saying that, for the United States, Europe is just another colony?

Unlike in the 19th and 20th centuries, the United States no longer limits its claim to supremacy primarily to Latin America. Greenland is the best example, but not the only one. Trumpism has for some time been attempting to reshape the political landscape in Europe in ways that recall past US interventions in Latin America—for example, via support for far-right political movements, whether VOX in Spain, Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz, or the AfD in Germany.

How should Europe respond?

With radical pragmatism. Old certainties of the post-war order no longer apply. The threats of violence that the United States once directed primarily at the so-called Global South are now also being aimed at its former partners. We South Americans understand very well how traumatic this must feel. But it can also lead to a salutary awakening. Europe was never on equal footing with the United States. That was always a fiction. Recognising this could lead to greater sovereignty and capacity for action.

“US Latinos have two key characteristics: they tend to be politically progressive, but also socially conservative”

How will the United States react if Europe emancipates itself?

That is difficult to say. The first country to free itself in a radical way from US domination was Cuba. That also explains the hatred of the man who is clearly the architect of the current intervention in Venezuela: Marco Rubio, the current US Secretary of State. His parents emigrated from Cuba to Florida in 1956; he belongs to the community of militantly anti-communist Cuban exiles.

So in the end it is an ideologically motivated struggle?

At the very least, it is no coincidence that the January press conference on Venezuela did not take place in Washington, but in Mar-a-Lago in Florida.

Why is that significant?

One should not underestimate how crucial the Latino electorate is for US domestic politics and for Trump’s hold on power. From around 2040 onwards, despite all the administration’s efforts, the United States will no longer be a white-majority society, and the fastest-growing minority is Latinos. Trump knows he needs this base. At the same time, Republicans know they only have until November this year to do everything they want, because in the midterms—the congressional elections—they risk losing their majority in the House of Representatives.

Do you think Latinos in the US are more likely to side with Trump or against him after the attack on Venezuela?

Both reactions can be observed. US Latinos have two central characteristics: they tend to be politically progressive, but also socially conservative. The Trumpian Republicans were very good at cultivating the latter. The Democratic Party relied on this community remaining politically progressive—and that cost them the election. This context partly explains why Trump constantly talks about the war on drugs. It is true that there is a drug epidemic in the US, but it mostly concerns fentanyl, not cocaine. Fentanyl is mainly produced near the US–Mexican border, using chemicals from China. It cannot be extracted from plants and produced in drug labs in Colombia or Venezuela with their generally simple equipment. When Trump talks about this drug crisis, it is not about facts, but about appealing to the social conservatism of Latinos.

And does his calculation work?

We shall see. Alongside foreign policy, Trump has unleashed a wave of violence within the United States. Just a few days after the invasion of Venezuela, ICE agents shot dead the white US citizens Renée Good and then Alex Pretti on the street in Minnesota. This violence has long disproportionately affected Latinos and is closely monitored by the community (in 2025, 32 people died in ICE custody, the vast majority of them Latinos, editor’s note). But it is a fact that only now, as this violence has also begun to affect white US citizens, has a society-wide movement emerged that has forced Trump into a tactical retreat and may well cost him the midterm elections.