The Origins of Racist and Imperial Mentalities in the U.S.

The existence of the U.S. Empire remains unacknowledged by some. Such terminology is more regularly used to describe former European colonial powers, including the British Empire, which early U.S. revolutionaries distanced themselves from and ultimately rebelled against (Bulmer-Thomas Reference Bulmer-Thomas2018; Go Reference Go2011; Immerman Reference Immerman2010). When the existence of the U.S. Empire is explicitly acknowledged, it is sometimes depicted as a benevolent force destined to usher in an era of peace and democracy instead of, for example, chaos and authoritarianism (Boot Reference Boot2001; Ignatieff Reference Ignatieff2003 Kaplan Reference Kaplan2020; McFaul Reference McFaul2004). Indeed, many U.S. government leaders have taken great pains to proclaim how the U.S. government is not an imperial force, but rather seeks to promote sovereignty and self-determination for countries throughout the world (Amin Reference Amin2001; Go Reference Go2011; Immerwahr Reference Immerwahr2019). The reality, however, is that many consistencies exist between, for example, the British Empire and the U.S. Empire. For one, as Julian Go (Reference Go2011) has demonstrated, government elites and journalists within both empires were initially resistant to identifying their respective powers as empires. Instead of emphasizing power, control, and self-interest, individuals within both areas often emphasized goodwill, self-lessness, and the supposed humanitarian nature of their global endeavors. Many British citizens and elites, much like those in the United States, believed in the beneficence of their respective countries and believed that their global might resulted in a more peaceful and “more civilized” world (Go Reference Go2011; Horsman Reference Horsman1981; Vucetic Reference Vucetic2011).

Some social scientists, as well as formerly colonized subjects, have been much less celebratory of British and U.S. foreign relations and the alleged benevolence that has characterized such relations (see e.g., Amin Reference Amin2001; Du Bois Reference Du Bois1920, Reference Du Bois1947, Reference Du Bois1951; Jung Reference Jung, Jung, Vargas and Bonilla-Silva2011; Mills Reference Mills1956; Nkrumah Reference Nkrumah1966). Many colonized individuals, for instance, became revolutionary agents and revolutionary intellectuals focused on abolishing colonialism from their territories, and, subsequently, influenced further anti-colonial and anti-imperial efforts into the present-day period. Revolutionaries, actors, and thinkers such as Simón Bolívar in Venezuela, James Connolly in Ireland, Amílcar Cabral in Guinea-Bissau, George Padmore in Trinidad, and Aimé Césaire and Frantz Fanon in Martinique wrote from the colonial world and provided broad expression for anti-colonial sentiments and anti-colonial rebellion against, in these instances, the Spanish, British, Portuguese, and French imperial powers. Bolívar himself was influenced by U.S. revolutionaries who had defeated the British and won independence for their settler colony turned newfound country in the late eighteenth century.Footnote ¹ In their own work, such anti-colonial thinkers and revolutionaries drew attention to the dehumanizing aspects of colonial rule and how, under European control, colonial rulers drained native resources and established settler colonies with privileges awarded to European expatriates. They encouraged anti-colonial rebellion, and many—such as Connolly, Padmore, and Fanon—rejected capitalism and championed socialist and communist alternatives.

Though parallels remain between British and U.S. imperial power, there are clear divergences. The U.S. government has not pursued widespread colonial efforts in the same manner as European colonial powers did so, that is, since the U.S. rise to global power following World War II. Instead, the United States has largely operated, what scholars describe as, an informal form of empire (Appleman Williams Reference Appleman Williams1959; Bulmer-Thomas Reference Bulmer-Thomas2018; Gill Reference Gill2019; Jung Reference Jung, Jung, Vargas and Bonilla-Silva2011; Mann Reference Mann2013). That is, rather than systematically pursuing formal colonies, the U.S. government has used alternative imperial strategies in an effort to maintain global domination. In contemporary Venezuela, these efforts have primarily included the use of democracy assistance in order to buttress the efforts of likeminded political parties and non-governmental organizations. Yet, as with the British Empire, imperial force requires justification regardless of its modalities. Since feudalism gave way to capitalism and, thereafter, to capitalist imperialism, such domination has recurrently involved a rationale for its existence (Cox Reference Cox1959; Doty Reference Doty1996; Horsman Reference Horsman1981; Robinson Reference Robinson1983). What is more, such justifications for political-economic domination have historically involved racist components designed in order to naturalize hierarchies between groups of individuals (Cox Reference Cox1959; Doty Reference Doty1996; Horsman Reference Horsman1981; Robinson Reference Robinson1983; Rodney Reference Rodney1972). As a result, many social scientists describe the formation of capitalism as, more accurately, the formation of racial capitalism.

As Cedric Robinson (Reference Robinson1983) describes, while taking influence from sociologist Oliver Cromwell Cox, among others, racialist thinking involving human hierarchy developed in Europe during the feudalist period, and, as capitalism developed, it shaped its creation and came to justify slavery, colonialism, and imperialism in areas of the world beyond continental Europe. The English, for instance, racialized the Irish and portrayed them as lazy, uncivilized, and savage (Horsman Reference Horsman1981; Mac an Ghaill Reference Mac an Ghaill2000; O’Callaghan Reference O’Callaghan2013; Robinson Reference Robinson1983). In doing so, the English colonized Ireland, confiscated land, conscripted individuals to join their army, and forced the Irish to learn the English language. European powers enslaved Africans and introduced chattel slavery wherein the children of enslaved Africans were born into slavery with very little possibility for liberation (Cox Reference Cox1959; Horne Reference Horne2020; Rodney Reference Rodney1972). Much like the English, additional European colonial powers justified such relations with reference to an alleged scientific racial hierarchy situating White Europeans at the top, evidently deserving of the political-economic domination that they possessed in territories throughout the world (Christian Reference Christian2019; Du Bois Reference Du Bois1920, Reference Du Bois1947; Horsman Reference Horsman1981; Rodney Reference Rodney1972). For their own part, the English embraced their own particular vision of White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant (WASP) superiority, which placed the English above all other groups as the world’s chosen people. Under this vision, the English believed that they reserved the right to rule over the world and to establish colonial rule wherever they decided (Horsman Reference Horsman1981; Hunt Reference Hunt2009; Vucetic Reference Vucetic2011).

Though U.S. independence emerged out of resistance to British colonial power, U.S. political-economic elites had long developed an imperial, colonial, and oppressive relationship with indigenous Native Americans, Africans, African Americans, and Latin Americans (Du Bois Reference Du Bois1915, Reference Du Bois1947; Horne Reference Horne2020; Horsman Reference Horsman1981). Indeed, the philosophical ideas and beliefs among early U.S. government elites and settlers remained rooted in the same WASP vision that prevailed among the English—a view rooted in WASP chosen-ness to rule the world as God’s elite representatives and which placed WASPs above all other groups (Horsman Reference Horsman1981; Vucetic Reference Vucetic2011). Michael H. Hunt (Reference Hunt2009) identifies how

Going further, U.S. Americans developed an enhanced vision of their supremacy over and above the English, particularly after the success of the American Revolution. Reginald Horsman (Reference Horsman1981) describes that though “many of America’s leaders believed that, with the exception of the United States, England was the happiest and most democratic country under the sun. The belief that the Americans were the most distinguished descendants of the Anglo-Saxons grew rather than diminished in the decades after the Revolution” (p. 81).

Yet, while U.S. Americans pledged to create a new society based on freedom and democracy in contrast to the British Empire, a racist-imperialist, WASP mentality persisted within the newly independent settler colony. Richard Immerman (Reference Immerman2010), for instance, as well as Hunt (Reference Hunt2009), documents the existence of a racist-imperialist mentality among early U.S. government elites such as, for instance, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson—two individuals still widely venerated by many U.S. citizens. Both Immerman (Reference Immerman2010) and Hunt (Reference Hunt2009) show that Franklin and Jefferson held plainly racist-imperialist views, justifying the existence of, for example, the enslavement of Black Americans and war with Native Americans. Indeed, Jefferson himself enslaved individuals on his property. Many of these government leaders also intensely believed that U.S. Americans were a chosen people, and that they were destined by God and by Providence to “move Westward” towards the Pacific Ocean and to begin a historically superior Anglo-Saxon society in the New World.Footnote ²

Such thinking contained obvious racist views and remained buttressed by European pseudo-scientific thought. As Horsman (Reference Horsman1981) writes, “The process by which the long-held beliefs in the superiority of early Anglo-Saxon political institutions became a belief in the innate superiority of the Anglo-Saxon branch of the Caucasian race was directly linked to the new scientific interest in racial classification … Americans had long believed they were a chosen people, but by the mid-nineteenth century they also believed that they were a chosen people with an impeccable ancestry” (pp. 4-5). Early U.S. government elites thus tethered their Whiteness to an alleged superiority over all other peoples, even the British. Such a vision surely involved religion, but it also involved an emphasis on White racial ancestry that, in their view, naturally distinguished them from other peoples, particularly non-White, non-European peoples.

The United States Confronts Latin America

Racist-imperialist mentalities directly extended into U.S. government elite thinking on Latin America. Such ideas were not imported into Latin America from the United States, but rather had long suffused relations between European colonial powers and indigenous and Afro-descendants in the region (Galeano Reference Galeano1971; Herrera Salas Reference Herrera Salas2005). Jesus Maria Herrera Salas (Reference Herrera Salas2005), for instance, traces contemporary racism in Venezuela to the period of European colonization, writing that the contemporary period “is nothing more than the historical continuation of the long process of conquest and slavery of the indigenous and Afro-Venezuelan populations that began in 1496” (p. 72). Indeed, such ideas of White racial domination permeated societies all throughout the Americas and persist into the present. Yet, U.S. government leaders exclusively believed it incumbent upon them to take a paternalistic approach to the region writ large and even to annex land when believed necessary. In addition, U.S. government leaders believed themselves racially superior to all Latin American peoples, regardless of European ancestry, and, in making these arguments, often emphasized the indigenous and African “blood” of Latin Americans (Horsman Reference Horsman1981).

Indeed, within several decades following U.S. independence, the U.S. government developed the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 (Booth Reference Booth2020; Fitz Reference Fitz2017; McPherson Reference McPherson2016). While U.S. government leaders claimed a desire to protect Latin American nations from foreign invasion, they primarily wanted to prohibit European powers from encroaching upon the United States’ new sphere of influence (Fitz Reference Fitz2017). U.S. governments elites had nearly always expressed geopolitical and economic interests in Latin America (Fitz Reference Fitz2017; Horsman Reference Horsman1981; Hunt Reference Hunt2009). These interests clearly manifested in the decades that followed. Instead of safeguarding the sovereignty of Latin American territory, U.S. military forces annexed land from Latin America, particularly large portions of Northern Mexico in the mid-nineteenth century. In a similar vein, and following U.S. involvement in the Spanish American War of 1898, the McKinley administration formally colonized Cuba, Guam, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico, demonstrating that at one point there was, in fact, a desire among U.S. government elites to engage in colonialism in much the same manner as European imperialists.

All the while the U.S. government engaged in imperialist efforts, U.S. government leaders justified these efforts with reference to cultural inferiority, backwardness, childlike immaturity, and a need for U.S. tutelage (Baldoz Reference Baldoz2008; Cottam Reference Cottam1994; Fitz Reference Fitz2017; Horsman Reference Horsman1981; Krenn Reference Krenn2006). In Northern Mexico, Horsman (Reference Horsman1981) reveals how U.S. government elites deployed such racist-imperialist thinking:

Horsman (Reference Horsman1981) demonstrates how U.S. government leaders believed in both the racial and cultural superiority of WASP, U.S. Americans. Though U.S. government leaders recognized that Europeans, namely the Spanish, had colonized much of Latin America, they presented Mexicans and other Latin American nations as “a mongrel race” with impure blood. Indeed, W. E. B. Du Bois (Reference Du Bois1920) references this line of thinking in his essay “The Souls of White Folk,” relaying how the U.S. government had “whetted [its] sword for mongrel Mexico and mulatto South America” in its march towards becoming an imperial power. Tomás Almaguer (Reference Almaguer1994) has similarly detailed how U.S. racist-imperialist schemas shaped policy in California in the decades following the Mexican-American War. Although land annexation and attempts to colonize new territories in Latin America ended in the aftermath of the Spanish American War of 1898, U.S. imperialism has visibly persisted beyond this moment. What is more, the racist contours of such imperial projects have also persisted.

Into the twentieth century, Du Bois became one of the first social scientists to recognize how racism continued to shape U.S. foreign policy towards the formerly colonized world, including Latin America. In his most renowned phrase, Du Bois (Reference Du Bois1903) famously described how the most prominent issue confronting the twentieth century world remained “the problem of the color-line,” which resulted in extreme disparities in access to resources between White citizens and persons of color at a domestic level, but, also, resulted in disparities between White-dominated countries and the formerly colonized world, largely composed of Black and Brown individuals. While many surely remain familiar with the first half of Du Bois’s famous passage, the full phrasing of it reads as follows: the “problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea” (Du Bois Reference Du Bois1903, p. 12). Du Bois clearly saw continuities between European and U.S. Empire. He identified how European imperial leaders promoted ideas of racial inferiority with assistance from European pseudo-scientists and journalists, who depicted White Europeans as “the heaven-sent rulers of yellow, brown, and black people” (Du Bois Reference Du Bois1947, p. 12). Thereafter, he saw how U.S. government leaders continued to champion WASP superiority (Horsman Reference Horsman1981; Hunt Reference Hunt2009; Vucetic Reference Vucetic2011). Du Bois made the connection between the transfer of global power between Europe and the U.S., and how a similar imperial vision and set of mentalities continued to characterize newfound U.S. global domination. Though he made these connections, he never fully fleshed out the relationship between the U.S and Latin America, and how U.S. imperial efforts remained in some ways continuous, but also divergent from earlier imperial policies. He surely, though, recognized the existence of U.S. global machinations, writing that colonialism had “not disappeared, even though its back is broken in India and China … American business is desperately trying to restore the essentials of colonialism under the name of free enterprise and western democracy; and are plunging the world into destruction for false ideals and misleading fears” about communism (Du Bois Reference Du Bois1951, p. 3). Du Bois thus began to glimpse the disjuncture between U.S. government leaders’ public praise for democracy and freedom, and the ugly realities of their policies abroad. What is more, he saw how the U.S. government cloaked its racist-imperialist vision with discussions of free-market economics and democracy promotion, all the while it stifled any movements that sought to move beyond capitalism and liberal forms of democracy.

Just as Du Bois (Reference Du Bois1951) noted how colonial policies had not entirely disappeared, scholars more focused on the particularities of U.S. imperialism in Latin America describe the relationship between the U.S. and Latin America as a neo-colonial relationship. Indeed, this is the sort of relationship that Du Bois had begun to describe in his prescient work in the early twentieth century. Thereafter, in the mid-twentieth century, scholars influenced by Du Bois, as well as the work of Marxist thinkers such as V. I. Lenin, Nikolai Bukharin, Karl Kautsky, and Rosa Luxembourg, drew attention to the ways the U.S. government continued to economically dominate Latin America, particularly scholars focused on what became known as dependency theory (Cardoso and Faletto, Reference Cardoso and Faletto1979; Frank Reference Frank1966; Galeano Reference Galeano1971; Nkrumah Reference Nkrumah1966; Rodney Reference Rodney1972). Dependency theorists, in brief summation, illustrated how the U.S. set prices for primary products such as foodstuffs and minerals, but resold manufactured goods at elevated prices, cultivating economic dependency and, what some termed, underdevelopment within the formerly colonized world. In addition, corporations headquartered in what was then understood as the First World utilized labor and resources in the Third World, engaging in a form super-exploitation wherein local workers were poorly remunerated—a process that further encouraged deindustrialization and off-shoring from what was, again, understood as the First World to the Third World at the end of the twentieth century. In the end, dependency theorists claimed that as long as Latin American countries remained dependent on the U.S. for trade relations and employment, their respective economies would fail to diversify and develop, and most of its people would remain impoverished. Though some scholars have taken issue with some of the finer points of the dependency school of thought, many contemporary social scientists are in agreement that U.S.-based corporations and U.S. financial capital continue to dominate the economies of many Latin American countries (Robinson Reference Robinson2003; Tuman and Emmert, Reference Tuman and Emmert2004).

As with earlier instances of European and U.S. imperial projects, the exertion of global power does not solely include control at the point of production, but it also includes attempts at geopolitical control, as well as ideological justifications for such political-economic domination in the first place. Unlike colonial rule, countries now nominally possess independence and territorial sovereignty. As a result, the U.S. government must either rely upon some form of consent from abroad or make use of interventionist strategies to achieve its objectives. To characterize these dynamics, scholars make use of the concept of neo-colonialism to thread the theoretical needle between earlier colonial projects and post-colonial U.S. imperial projects leading into the present-day period.

Kwame Nkrumah (Reference Nkrumah1966) initially developed the concept of neo-colonialism and used it to make sense of imperial projects following the formal collapse of colonialism. Nkrumah (Reference Nkrumah1966) argued that neo-colonialism remained “the main instrument of imperialism … The essence of neo-colonialism is that the State which is subject to it is, in theory, independent and has all the outward trappings of international sovereignty. In reality its economic system and thus its political policy is directed from outside” (p. ix). Further, Nkrumah (Reference Nkrumah1966) pointed out that the “ideal neo-colonialist State would be one which was wholly subservient to neo-colonialist interests” (p. xiv). According to Nkrumah, neo-colonial interests involved both geopolitical and economic domination. While economic domination involved continued corporate profiteering and exploitation of labor and resources, geopolitical domination required subordination to broader U.S. foreign policy interests. Throughout his manuscript, Nkrumah spotlights various modes through which the U.S. government has sought to perpetuate its global domination during the mid-twentieth century, including the periodic use of military warfare, the provision of foreign aid, the application of interest rates on multilateral banks loans, the encouragement of government overthrows, and the use of the Peace Corps to surveil foreign societies. Nkrumah (Reference Nkrumah1966) updates existing theories of imperialism and moves beyond a reductive focus on economic intervention alone. Though some scholars solely focused on the economics of U.S. Empire, Nkrumah (Reference Nkrumah1966) drew much needed attention to some of the geopolitical modalities of U.S. imperialism, such as coups and the use of seemingly benign U.S. agencies such as the Peace Corps.

Similar to colonial policies, neo-colonial policies require justification for their existence. However, while early U.S. government elites openly broadcast their embrace of a WASP ideology, such overt forms of racism have become socially recognized as, in the least, impolite. Indeed, while many U.S. government elites in decades past appealed to phrenology and racist scientific classification, such crude, biological appeals no longer remain prevalent. Still, a racist-imperialist mentality persists and takes the form of cultural racism, often regardless of the racialized background of U.S. government leaders. In Venezuela, as I illustrate below, such mentalities continue to pervade discussions and depictions of citizens and leaders in the country. This is not entirely surprising. Depictions of Latin American individuals as uncultured, lawless, and criminal persist within mainstream U.S. media and continue to characterize the thinking of many non-Hispanic, White U.S. Americans (Berg Reference Berg2002; Lacayo Reference Lacayo2017; Ramirez and Peterson, Reference Ramirez and Peterson2020). Celia Olivia Lacayo (Reference Lacayo2017), for instance, has shown how White U.S. Americans believe in what she terms the “perpetual inferiority” of Latinos. In her interviews with White U.S. Americans, she finds that they “subscribe to the racial ideology of perpetual inferiority because they believe that Latinos are unable to change and progress (i.e., ‘become white’) because they pass down a ‘deficient’ culture to the next generation” (Lacayo Reference Lacayo2017, p. 569). Indeed, over ninety percent of her participants reported “overwhelmingly negative” characterizations of Latinos (Lacayo Reference Lacayo2017, p. 571). But, while such research has examined how citizens writ large view Latin Americans, an analysis of recent U.S. foreign policy towards Venezuela shows how these views remain tethered to contemporary U.S. foreign policymaking, a sphere heavily populated by White individuals.

In the sections below, I show how the justification for U.S. democracy promotion efforts in contemporary Venezuela remains linked with a racist legacy of U.S. foreign policymaking in the region. Since this time, U.S. government leaders have exercised a form of paternalism that envisions Latin American leaders and citizens as uncivilized, lawless, and unfit to govern, should they veer from the political-economic vision that the U.S. government has encouraged within the hemisphere. Such paternalism continues, and it continues to involve a racist-imperial understanding of Latin American leaders who, in this instance, challenge the U.S. government, as well as the Venezuelan citizens who support those leaders. For U.S. foreign policymakers, it remains unacceptable that Latin American citizens would elect a leader such as Chávez, who criticizes U.S. foreign policy, adopts divergent political-economic policies (e.g. anti-neoliberal and socialist policies), deeply aligns with U.S. foes such as Iran and Russia, and seeks to diminish U.S. global power. Given that Venezuelans voted former President Chávez into office on multiple occasions, U.S. foreign policymakers believed it was their duty to intervene into the country in order to change the minds of Venezuelans. Their justifications involve racist-imperial schemas, and this article examines them.

Depicting Chávez’s Ultimate Motivations

Throughout cables and within conversations, diplomats and functionaries never presented Chávez as driven by any sort of honorable intentions. Rather, they generally ascribed nefarious and self-serving motivations to his behavior. U.S. government functionaries generally possessed a rather simplistic and reductive understanding of Chávez and his motivations. They viewed him as primarily interested in maintaining power for its own sake. The reasons behind this desire varied, however, among different individuals. Some attributed Chávez’s alleged power-hunger, for instance, to the historical lack of democracy in the country or to machismo. They also depicted Chávez as manipulating ideas about racial inequality in order to achieve and maintain power in the country. In the end, they all searched for an understanding of Chávez, but never on the terms that he presented himself. Rather, they always sought to uncover perverse motives behind his allegedly irrational and bizarre behavior.

Indeed, diplomats continually depicted former President Chávez as a dangerous authoritarian that desired power alone. In June 2006, for instance, DCM Whitaker cabled that like “many autocrats intent on maintaining power, [Chávez] uses rhetoric as a blunt political weapon that seeks to vivisect society along class, political, social, and race lines” (Cablegate 2006c). DCM Whitaker claimed that Chávez did not truly care about such social divisions, but that he only attempted to underscore such divisions in order to stir up resentment and politically benefit from it. Three years later, in June 2009, former Chargé Caulfield similarly wrote that Chávez’s preference for “loyalty over competence, creation of parallel Bolivarian institutions, efforts to forge a one-party state, and chest-thumping nationalism also smack of creeping totalitarianism” (Cablegate 2009b). Here and elsewhere, U.S. government functionaries recurrently portrayed him as an opponent of democracy gravitating towards totalitarianism all in an effort to solidify his time in office. This, of course, does not mesh with the reality that former President Chávez continually participated in elections that included numerous opposition political parties as well as domestic and international electoral monitors.

All the while U.S. government diplomats described Chávez in racist ways, some claimed that he specifically manipulated race in order to win support. One former USAID employee suggested to me that perhaps Chávez had played “the race card” in order to gather support. When asked about his understanding of Chávez’s rise to office, he told me

For this individual, who devised policy in Washington towards Venezuela, Chávez manipulated weak minds by suggesting that racial/ethnic minorities were oppressed by a corrupt, White elite minority. Despite much evidence to the contrary and even a prosecution of a former president for corruption, this individual entirely denied the corrupt nature of pre-Chávez politics. According to this official, Chávez only deployed such a narrative of rampant corruption and racial/ethnic inequality to achieve power, and he suggested that Chávez might not have even believed that racial/ethnic oppression existed, but only wanted to push a particular perspective in order to use it as “a vehicle” to reach the presidency. In doing so, he contrasted Chávez with Martin Luther King, Jr., and King’s apparently honest concern with racism.

Subsequently, U.S. government officials, including Chargé d’Affaires John Caulfield, depicted former President Chávez as an individual who “craves attention and influence abroad” (Cablegate 2009b). Despite Chávez’s ambitions, however, Chargé Caulfield labeled former President Chávez a “world leader wannabe” (Cablegate 2009a). In his attempts to become a world leader, Chargé Caulfield wrote that “Chávez travels extensively and doles out substantial foreign assistance in an effort to achieve international status as Latin America’s foremost leader. He jealously guards his exaggerated self-perception, and reacts negatively to other Latin American countries’ receptivity to [U.S.] initiatives and [U.S.] attention focused on other Latin American heads-of-state” (Cablegate 2009a). Caulfield thus presented Chávez as a highly jealous leader, and he hypothesized that Chávez would be jealous of all the attention paid to U.S. President Barack Obama at an upcoming Summit of the Americas conference (Cablegate 2009a). In this high-ranking diplomat’s opinion, Chávez wanted power at home and, thereafter, he wanted to project power around the world. In his perspective, it might have been the case that Chávez provided foreign aid to countries abroad. However, in his opinion, these endeavors were more akin to vanity projects designed only to serve Chávez’s ego.

Despite his attempts to capture international attention and to become a prominent global actor, diplomats disparaged Chávez in their cables. Such cables show how U.S. government diplomats aimed to annoy him on this particular issue, that is, by illustrating apathy and indifference to his comments on the United States. Indeed, while Chargé Caulfield, an Obama appointee, referred to Chávez as a “world leader wannabe,” the Deputy Chief of Mission to Venezuela under the George W. Bush Administration, Stephen McFarland, dismissed former President Chávez’s international ambitions. Under a section of an embassy cable ironically titled “The World Revolves around Caracas,” former DCM McFarland wrote that Chávez’s speeches on his weekly television program “demonstrated a typical, exaggerated view of Venezuela’s geostrategic importance and of U.S. media coverage of Venezuela” (Cablegate 2005). In a nonchalant response to Chávez, McFarland claimed that the U.S. Chargé d’Affaires under the Bush Administration told local radio “that ‘[the US Embassy] didn’t know if President Bush was aware of Chávez’s comments,’ a statement calculated to annoy President Chávez” (Cablegate 2005). U.S. officials thus attempted to convey that Venezuela remained rather unimportant to the United States, and that Chávez acted in a delusional manner regarding Venezuelan significance. Bush, of course, knew very well that Chávez disagreed with his foreign policy. U.S. officials, however, tried to signal to Chávez that President Bush cared little about what Chávez thought. These signals, however, were at odds with how much energy successive U.S. administrations devoted to the country.

U.S. government diplomats and functionaries indeed often pointed out how they believed Chávez was only interested in power, and sometimes they even connected such a disposition to cultural elements in Chavez’s background. In doing so, they denigrated Venezuelan culture and plainly evidenced culturally racist views. One individual who worked for the National Security Council told me, for instance, that “Chávez was the failure of the two-party system [in Venezuela], and he knew how to use symbols, [to] take advantage of symbols [and] demagoguery.” In doing so, this U.S. government functionary expresses a sort of sympathy for Chávez and told me that due to Chávez’s upbringing in Venezuela he could not truly understand the ways of democracy: “People used to say how undemocratic Chávez was. His idea of democracy was kind of warped by living under Venezuela under the previous regime. It was clear that it was a democracy in name before Chávez. He almost couldn’t be blamed for not understanding democracy, because he grew up in this undemocratic society.” While this individual claimed that Chávez could not understand democracy because he grew up in a deficient location, another U.S. government functionary who worked with USAID in Venezuela personally opined to me that perhaps “machismo” lay behind Chávez’s support for, what the functionary saw as, the failed ideology of socialism. Machismo refers to the hyper-masculine, arrogant behavior that is allegedly characteristic of Latin American men. In both instances, such U.S. government functionaries refer to Chávez’s apparently deficient cultural heritage in order to make sense of his presently deficient views, that is, from their perspective.

Yet, though many U.S. government functionaries viewed Chávez as “a clown,” they also saw him as capable of successful manipulation. Indeed, this is how they largely understood his capacity to win support and succeed at the ballot box. Similar to how they often depicted Chávez, U.S. diplomats and functionaries also depicted Chávez’s supporters as irrational and generally unintelligent, and thus susceptible to Chávez’s “demagoguery.” In embassy cables, diplomats described Venezuelans as a “frenzied” mass of supporters who eschew free thinking and instead offer unwavering support for their leader. In June 2006, DCM Whitaker wrote that while to “outsiders Chávez’ long and rambling speeches are semi-coherent and at times laughable. To the average Venezuela, however, Chávez’ words have meaning, offering hope or fear, depending on the message” (Cablegate 2006c). In this passage, Whitaker presents Venezuelans as unlike U.S. Americans, for instance, who have the apparent capacity for discernment. In his understanding, individuals like Whitaker and seemingly other U.S. Americans can easily see the allegedly ridiculous nature of Chávez’ incoherent “rambling.” Yet, according to him, Venezuelans, for some reason, could not see Chávez’s incoherence, and they cannot see him for the apparently “laughable” fool that he is.

As a result of Chávez’s manipulation, DCM Whitaker claimed that such rhetoric resulted in “a frenzied and fearful, or at best intimidated, population incapable of resolving basic conflicts … [and this] frenzied populace [is] afraid to express anything other than support, genuine or not” (Cablegate 2006c). From this vantage point, Whitaker depicts Venezuelan citizens as automatons who followed Chávez’s lead. In addition, he presents Chávez’s supporters as under the emotional control of their leader’s oratorical skills and incapable of independent thought. In other words, he paints his supporters as irrational individuals, incapable of utilizing any type of reason to understand that chavista policies are not truly beneficial to them or their society. From the outside, U.S. government officials argued that Chávez’s speeches were “laughable,” but to the rather simple minds of the Venezuelan masses, they insinuated, these speeches potentially offered hope. Indeed, this understanding of Chávez and Venezuelans offered the basis from which U.S. government diplomats and functionaries justified their intervention into the country.

The U.S. Duty to Intervene in Venezuela

Such depictions of Chávez as a tyrant who manipulated his supporters and sought power alone provided justification for U.S. government intervention into the country. U.S. diplomats and functionaries indeed believed it was their responsibility and their duty to intervene into the country in order to show Venezuelans their true interests and bring real democracy to the country, which, not unsurprisingly, involved supporting political parties and groups opposed to Chávez and his allies. During the years that Chávez maintained the presidency (1999–2013), the U.S. government operated a multiplicity of democracy assistance programs within the country, primarily through USAID and the NED and its associated groups, including the International Republican Institute (IRI) and the National Democratic Institute (NDI). Through these programs, the U.S. government assisted the Venezuelan opposition in their efforts to unseat Chávez and his allies. In doing so, the U.S. sought to transgress the judgments of Venezuelan citizens, who supported Chávez, and attempted to cultivate opposition to him.

Indeed, this represents the sort of neo-colonialist and paternalistic pattern in the realm of politics that remains evident elsewhere today, wherein the U.S. government privileges some political actors over others, regardless of whether they actually retain public support (Burron Reference Burron2013; Gill Reference Gill2019; Robinson Reference Robinson1996). Unlike former European colonial powers, U.S. leaders usually do not select a U.S. citizen to rule over a foreign country in a dictatorial manner. Instead, the U.S. government often aims to shape the electoral playing field by supporting only those actors who the U.S. government deems to be the political players who should operate governments abroad. In Venezuela, this has included center-right politicians who challenged Chávez during presidential elections and who displayed visible affection for the U.S. government. For instance, during the 2006 presidential campaign, the IRI provided opposition presidential candidate Governor Manuel Rosales with several technical specialists to assist with his campaign (Cablegate 2006e). The U.S. government also continually urged opposition members to unite behind one opposition candidate, that is, so that they would not splinter their vote. One former ambassador told me, for example, that they continually met with political party leaders and urged them to do this. They said that they had “met with the opposition—I can’t tell you how many times. I told them they need to come up with a plan and needed to unite. There were 50 opposition parties registered!” In doing so, high-ranking diplomats strategized with opposition leaders so they could possibly defeat Chávez and his allies when elections arose. While Rosales was unsuccessful in the election, this did not deter the U.S. from supporting the opposition in later years.

Throughout the mid-2000s, for instance, USAID had the explicit aim of tearing supporters away from Chávez, particularly within poor urban neighborhoods, where darker-skinned Venezuelans primarily live. Into the present, Venezuela, a former European colony marked by African and indigenous slavery, remains an intensively segregated society (Cannon Reference Cannon2008; Duno Gottberg Reference Duno Gottberg, Smilde and Hellinger2011; Herrera Salas Reference Herrera Salas2005). Before Chávez, the country contained a light-skinned political-economic elite whose members could often directly trace their roots back to Europe (Herrera Salas Reference Herrera Salas2005). In poor, urban neighborhoods, USAID established community programs that seemingly sought to promote community ideals like participatory democracy. However, they established these programs with opposition political parties, who helped them locate opposition activists in the area. Thereafter, they helped opposition activists create seemingly neutral organizations, so that they did not appear to be linked with the opposition and thus could attract Chávez supporters to their meetings. The ultimate purpose of these community groups was to slowly introduce Chávez’s supporters to opposition viewpoints and to put them into direct contact with opposition activists, who would attempt to steer them into the opposition camp. One of the individuals who directly worked on these programs in Venezuela told me that USAID and its local contractors:

Throughout all of these programs, the U.S. government message was rather clear: “the politician who you have supported, you really shouldn’t support.” Instead, the U.S. government through USAID sought to convert Venezuelans into anti-Chávez voters. U.S. government functionaries believed that Chávez was manipulating the populace, buying them off with social development projects, and offering them false promises of participatory democracy and socialism. They believed it was the United States’ responsibility to show Venezuelans their true interests, and that they should support center-right politicians, who represented a different sort of politics than what Chávez offered.

U.S. government functionaries who designed these programs depicted Venezuelan citizens as requiring U.S. tutelage amid such circumstances. In 2006, for instance, DCM Whitaker described the U.S. government’s vision of foreign assistance for the country and its people:

In this instance, Whitaker presents Chávez’s apparent manipulation of Venezuelan citizens as possessing unintended consequences that the U.S. government might harness to build, in this diplomat’s vision, a truly democratic society. Whitaker presents Venezuelans as “deeply confused” and stuck in a developmental process of “maturation.” Indeed, this is the same sort of language that U.S. foreign policymakers used in earlier instances of imperialism abroad—that they could help, for instance, Puerto Ricans, Filipinos, and Nicaraguans move forward in a developmental process towards true democracy albeit only with U.S. tutelage (Fitz Reference Fitz2017; Horsman Reference Horsman1981). In much the same way, Whitaker presents the United States as capable of alleviating Venezuelans’ “deep confusion” and of showing Venezuelans how to do politics correctly.

Whitaker, however, moves beyond simply involving Venezuelans in politics, but also involving them in a clearly partisan manner against Chávez. He cabled that while “Venezuela’s institutions have always been deeply flawed … Chavez continues to loudly define and distort what democracy is all about” (Cablegate 2006d). As a result, and

In these passages, Whitaker clearly depicts Chávez as distorting democracy and “brain-washing” Venezuelans, who apparently could not think for themselves. As a result of such manipulation, U.S. diplomats like Whitaker believed it was now the duty of the U.S. to counter Chávez’s ideas and develop training modules and materials designed to properly educate Venezuelans, particularly those in “low-income neighborhoods,” where support for Chávez historically remained high.

This sort of interventionist and neo-colonial thinking turned up in many conversations with additional diplomats and functionaries. An individual who contracted with USAID to operate programs in Venezuela, for instance, told me that he believed it was the duty of the United States to show Venezuelans how to do democracy properly and to spread “Jeffersonian democracy” throughout the world. This vision of politics is derived from U.S. politician Thomas Jefferson, who owned slaves, embraced “westward expansion,” and advanced a liberal vision of democratic politics primarily rooted in the rights of the individual, albeit only applying to White male property-owners. This vision deeply contrasts with the more collective form of economic and participatory democracy encouraged by the Chávez government. Similarly, a former U.S. ambassador to Venezuela during the years of Chávez’s rule asserted that Chávez routinely attacked what the U.S. government sought to cultivate abroad: “a conventional Western-style democracy.” In this phrasing, this individual contrasts Chávez with “the West,” and, in doing so, presents him as somehow anti-Western. Such a distinction is similar to the sort of Orientalism described by Edward Said (Reference Said1978) and Aníbal Quijano (Reference Quijano2000), among others, in their work examining how Europeans often depicted non-European individuals and societies.

Taken together, U.S. government functionaries in Venezuela sought to establish U.S. supremacy in the realm of politics. That is, although there are many variants of democracy (e.g. direct, participatory, representative, Jeffersonian), the U.S. government wanted to impart its own vision and promote those actors who embraced it. In doing so, U.S. government leaders embraced a form of cultural racism, viewing Venezuelans and Venezuelan society as undeveloped and “immature.” Indeed, some government functionaries spoke and wrote quite plainly in cultural-developmental terms, presenting Venezuelans as culturally lagging behind U.S. Americans. In the end, these depictions of Venezuelans, as well as their president, provided the justification for U.S. intervention and the U.S. government’s accompanying democracy assistance programs.