In 2002, Venezuela’s democratically elected president, Hugo Chávez, was kidnapped and held captive on La Orchila Island. Corina Machado, several businessmen, and the New York Times supported the coup. The opposition proclaimed Pedro Carmona (businessman and member of Opus Dei) as the new president. Carmona decreed the dissolution of the National Assembly, the Supreme Court, and other institutions. Machado signed the declaration of support for these measures.

The New York Times welcomed the coup led by “a respected businessman,” whose purpose was to end the elected dictatorship in Venezuela. According to declassified documents, the CIA knew that George Bush knew. On April 25, the Times reported that the money for the social unrest prior to the coup had been channeled through third parties, such as the National Endowment for Democracy, with $877,000. According to a cable dated July 13, 2004, organizations such as USAID had sent nearly half a million dollars to provide “training for political parties.” Cuban Otto Reich (one of the organizers of the Contra harassment in Nicaragua and part of the Iran-Contra maneuver) was another person in charge of contributing to the coup.

Returned to power by popular protests, Chávez pardoned several coup plotters. Among them were opposition figures Henrique Capriles and Leopoldo López, who would continue their political activity “denouncing the dictatorship.” On August 14, the Venezuelan Supreme Court acquitted military officers Efraín Vásquez, Pedro Pereira, Héctor Ramírez, and Daniel Comisso, participants in the coup “against the dictatorship.”

Frustrated by the failure, on August 23, 2005, televangelist Pat Robertson, in front of the television cameras of his powerful Club 700, addressed a million faithful to propose assassinating Hugo Chávez “for destroying Venezuela’s economy, for allowing the infiltration of communists and Islamists into his cabinet”. It does not matter that none of this is true. “The option of assassination is clearly more economical than launching a war… with this we will not interrupt Venezuela’s oil supply… we have the Monroe Doctrine and other doctrines to apply.” The influential pastor, a friend of Guatemalan dictator Efraín Ríos Montt and other Christian genocidal leaders such as Roberto D’Aubuisson of El Salvador and Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, wanted to assassinate a president elected by the people who was also a fervent Christian.

On December 9, 2007, at the University of Miami, an event announcer announced, for the Univision network, the “First Republican Party Presidential Forum in Spanish,” mentioning the rules: in the Spanish forum, Spanish will not be spoken.

One of the moderators of the non-debate was María Elena Salinas.

Salinas: “A week ago, Venezuela rejected changes to President Hugo Chávez’s constitution…”

Applause interrupted María Elena, who hid a smile.

Salinas: “Many believe that Chávez is a threat to democracy in the region. If you were president, how would you deal with Chávez?”

Paul: “Well, he’s not the easiest person to deal with, but we have to deal with everyone in the world, with respect, trying to dialogue and trade with…”

Loud boos. Ron Paul, with his tired eyes but his face weathered by long years as a conservative dissident, insisted:

Paul: “…we talk to Stalin, we talk to Khrushchev. We talk to Mao… In fact, we should talk to Cuba…”

The boos grew like a hurricane over Miami.

Paul: “…and travel to Cuba and trade with Cuba. But let me tell you why we have problems with them: because we have been meddling in their internal affairs for so long… We created the Chavez, the Castros of this world, by interfering and creating chaos in their countries, and they responded with their legitimate leaders.”

The boos reach their climax. Miami wants to eat him alive, without rum. The civilized rules of the Forum require the next candidate, who has listened very carefully to the voice of the people, to remain indifferent.

Huckabee (Trump’s future ambassador to Israel): “Even though Chávez was elected, he wasn’t elected to be a dictator… My mom used to say, ‘If you give someone enough rope, they’ll hang themselves,’ and I think…”

Giuliani: “I agree with the way King Juan Carlos spoke to Chávez. (Applause) Better than what Congressman Paul wants to do… There is hope that people will understand the need for open markets, for freedom… I believe that President Calderón was elected, but I think Chávez had something to do with that…”

Not counting Corina Machado’s participation in the 2002 coup (you could say that happened two decades ago and everyone can correct themselves as they go along), her latest public calls, in 2025, for a U.S. military invasion of Venezuela disqualified her from any Nobel Peace Prize.

The much-desired invasion of Venezuela, an old imperialist brutality supported by the classic sepoyism of the colonized with privileges, would leave thousands dead, if not a civil war or a new Palestine to be bled dry with successive bombings and strategic “peace agreements.”

Even Henrique Capriles opposed that petition. At the same time that Corina Machado was knocking on the Pentagon’s doors, at the end of August Capriles acknowledged something that was mere common sense: “most of the people who want a US invasion do not live in Venezuela.” Not so Juan Guaidó; everyone knows he is a cheap mercenary and not even the Venezuelans in Florida want him.

If they wanted to reward someone from the opposition in Venezuela, it is quite obvious that there were many other ordinary Venezuelans there fighting, legitimately, for their convictions and without foreign money or big capital. If they wanted to intervene in Venezuelan politics in a less obscene way, they could have considered that the Nobel money would have financed them for a while. But no, it had to be Corina Machado.

It seems quite obvious that oil, Venezuela’s “malediction,” is the central factor in all this. Just as Trump murders unknown Venezuelans in the Caribbean, seeking to distract the American people and find an excuse to invade Venezuela, they reward a well-known figure who calls for an invasion. They don’t reward her with the Nobel Prize in Business, but with the “Nobel Peace Prize.” Those summary executions a piacere, without due process, were applauded by Corina Machado. On Fox News, she called them “With courage and clarity towards a criminal enterprise bringing misery to our people and destabilizing the region in order to harm the United States.”

Of course, what can we expect from an award, more famous than prestigious, that has distinguished historical genocidal figures such as Henry Kissinger and angels such as Obama who, while smiling, bombed everything that moved in the Middle East, a record that includes everything from children massacred by drones to the destruction of Libya, a country with remarkable development and dangerous independence. Always in the name of democracy and freedom, which, in the United States today, are no longer even respected in speeches.

It’s all very surreal, but logical at heart.

jorge majfud, octubre 10, 2025

Ideology and Intervention: A Critical Review of Jorge Majfud’s The Wild Frontier