To Those Who Explained Venezuela to Us Without Listening |
By Enrique Lozada Garcia (El Toque)
HAVANA TIMES – The fall of dictator Nicolas Maduro and his main accomplice, Cilia Flores, in a surgical military operation carried out by the Administration of Donald Trump marked the beginning of 2026. For the first time, the world looked directly at what is truly happening in Venezuela. However, faced with this new reality, part of the ideological spectrum has chosen to impoverish the debate, reducing it almost exclusively to two axes: international law and oil.
It is undeniable that oil permeates the lives of Venezuelans: the country has made its history—and paid its tragedy—on top of the largest proven crude reserves on the planet. For decades, moreover, Venezuela’s potential has been deliberately minimized and reduced to a functional stereotype: a country of beauty queens and oil.
Likewise, international law is invoked not as a real tool of protection, but as a convenient rhetorical resource. In an increasingly multipolar global order, its application no longer responds to universal principles, but to concrete interests, camouflaged behind worn-out clichés about sovereignty and the self-determination of peoples.
Reducing the conversation about Venezuela to oil and international law is not only an analytical mistake: it is an ignorant, complicit, and dehumanizing stance. Assuming that Venezuela is merely “oil” and appealing to certain principles of international law reveals how many of those who speak of human rights, social justice, and Latin American progressivism end up functioning as useful idiots—if not as direct accomplices—of the dictatorship Venezuelans have suffered for more than 26 years.
If only those who today seek to explain our pain to us........