ARHU Faculty Members Respond to Trump’s Actions in Venezuela

Ryan Long, Karin Rosemblatt and Jayson Maurice Porter provide expert context on the use of U.S. military force and the administration’s stated interest in oil.

By ARHU Staff 

As the Trump administration escalates U.S. military action in Venezuela and openly cites the country’s oil reserves as a strategic interest, scholars across the University of Maryland’s College of Arts and Humanities are weighing in with historical, political and environmental context. ARHU faculty members Ryan Long, Karin Rosemblatt and Jayson Maurice Porter reflect on what this moment reveals about the long history of U.S. intervention in Latin America, the erosion of international norms, and the environmental and human consequences of resource extraction in the Americas.

Ryan Long, Professor of Spanish and Director of the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Center

Long’s primary areas of study are Mexican literature and culture, the writing of Roberto Bolaño and the life and work of Hannes Meyer. His published books include “Queer Exposures: Sexuality and Photography in the Fiction and Poetry of Roberto Bolaño” (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021) and “Fictions of Totality: The Mexican Novel, 1968, and the National-Popular State” (Purdue University Press, 2008).

Long says:

“There’s a long history of U.S. intervention in Latin America that takes different forms—occupation, invasion, takeover. Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua. U.S.-backed military coups in Guatemala and Chile, and support for military or non-democratic regimes in places like El Salvador and Argentina. This goes back to 1848 and the Mexican-American War. And it’s really about domination, not partnership or collaboration, and it produces lasting damage and trauma.”

“Congress was not consulted. The United Nations was not consulted. No hemispheric allies were consulted. And when you have this idea that ‘might makes right,’ it really leads to further conflict. These kinds of interventions tend to erode the rule of law—both for individuals within nations themselves and among nations.”

“One of the things I’ve been thinking a lot about is the normalization of this already. You look at the news and it’s just, ‘Okay, this is happening.’ Removing the head of state of a sovereign nation starts to feel like business as usual. Extraordinary actions start to blend into the background, and that’s a very dangerous place to be.”

“The instability that U.S. intervention creates in Latin America is one of the major motivations for immigration from multiple countries in the region. From that perspective, it’s hard to see how this would simplify the immigration picture in the United States.”

Karin Rosemblatt, Professor of History

Rosemblatt is a historian of 20th-century Latin America whose work focuses on the transnational study of gender, race, ethnicity and class and their relationship to policymaking. Her most recent book, “The Science and Politics of Race in Mexico and the United States, 1910–1950” (University of North Carolina Press, 2018), won the PROSE Award from the Association of American Publishers for the best book in North American/U.S. history in 2019.

Rosemblatt says:

“In the past decades, the United States has not paid much attention to Latin America. It has been more focused on, say, the Middle East. But there is now a renewed interest in a region the United States had long considered its ‘backyard.’ In terms of what has motivated the United States, I would say we have always centered U.S. Latin America policy on geopolitical and economic interests. Even Franklin Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor policy was aimed in part at securing a steady supply of tin, copper, rubber and other natural resources for the Allied war effort. Beginning with Jimmy Carter, the promotion of human rights became a U.S. foreign policy goal. But even so, the United States has tolerated or supported many governments that perpetrated horrific human rights abuses.”

“President Trump has been particularly frank about his interest in Venezuela’s oil. That’s new. Recent U.S. administrations have at least feigned interest in democracy.”

“The Trump administration has routinely rejected expertise and the lessons history can teach. The Venezuela intervention seems to fit that pattern, as there is no discernible plan for the country. The commander of U.S. Southern Command retired rather than carry out attacks on boats the administration claimed were carrying drugs. It’s likely he felt uncomfortable about military action that is clearly illegal or was concerned about whether the actions would lead to desirable outcomes. That said, Secretary of State Marco Rubio is known to be knowledgeable about Latin America. We don’t yet have a sense of how this might fit into a broader Rubio plan to undermine left-wing governments in the region.”

“The United States has always found allies among Latin American militaries and oligarchies. Venezuelan opposition leader Corina Machado has said that ‘Venezuela will be the best ally of the United States.’ At least some Venezuelans celebrated the U.S. action. But the United States appears unwilling to put boots on the ground and cannot count on the Venezuelan military. In that context, the administration apparently favors keeping members of the former regime in power. It’s possible Trump merely wanted a flashy ‘win.’ At least for now, his attention has turned to Greenland.”

Jayson Maurice Porter, Assistant Professor of History

Porter is an environmental writer and historian who researches the environmental histories of Mexico, the African Diaspora, food systems, agrochemicals, and environmental justice and injustice. He recently published a chapter titled “Oilseed Archives: Reading Afro-Mexican Landscapes in Plants and Plantations” in Afro-Mexican Lives in the Long Nineteenth Century (Cambridge University Press, 2025), the first book-length study of abolition and its legacies in Mexico.

Porter says:

“One of the things environmental histories of extraction show again and again is that even when extraction benefits states or corporations, it rarely benefits the communities where extraction actually happens. Most extraction occurs in rural spaces, and improvements in poverty rates tend to reflect urban populations, not the countryside. The environmental damage and long-term consequences stay local, even when profits move elsewhere.”

“You see this pattern across extraction in the Americas—first with agriculture and botany, then commodities like sugar, cotton, rubber and now oil. The United States has long asked what resources can be brought back and how the conditions of extraction can be controlled. Those political and environmental costs have consistently remained in place, even as the benefits flow outward.”

“One of the recurring patterns I see is the devaluation of labor. Extraction moves from exploiting people to not needing them at all. Communities become obstacles rather than stakeholders. In parts of Latin America, multinational extraction has meant displacement and violence because companies don’t need local labor—they just need political access to land.”

“What feels destabilizing right now is the sheer volume and speed—Venezuela, then Greenland, then somewhere else. You can’t get your footing before the next move. That instability is deliberate. It keeps people from responding coherently, and that too has a long history in how power operates.”

Photo of Caracas skyline courtesy of Adobe Stock.