Answering the call of the government of President Nicolás Maduro, people sign up to join Venezuela's civil militias at a square in Caracas, the capital, on Aug. 23, 2025. Photo: Ariana Cubillos/AP Photo.
Following a decade of economic sanctions on Venezuela, the current wave of boat strikes isn’t actually aimed at stopping drug trafficking.
CARACAS, Venezuela – At the Fort Tiuna military base in Venezuela’s capital, people of varied ages and physical conditions take target practice. They swing across rivers on ropes, dash and hide between mounds and climb trees to analyze the terrain. They are some of the over 8 million Venezuelans who have no military experience, but who have voluntarily enlisted in the Bolivarian National Militia in case President Donald Trump decides to attack their country.
On Sept. 29, the Venezuelan government signed a decree of “external commotion,” to be activated in the event of any aggression against the country. The emergency measure would grant special powers of national administration and defense for a renewable 90-day period. The announcement of the measure was accompanied by large-scale military exercises in La Orchila, an island military base off the Venezuelan coast, involving thousands of soldiers and militia members in joint naval and aerial maneuvers. President Nicolás Maduro also recently highlighted the power of Venezuela’s Igla-S arsenal, a portable air defense system designed by Russia to shoot down low-altitude aircraft, helicopters and drones.
Venezuela is responding to U.S. strikes against civilian boats in its coastal waters. In late August, the U.S. government ordered a massive deployment to the Caribbean Sea that included guided missile destroyers, amphibious assault ships, a nuclear submarine and more than 4,500 Marines, and 10 F-35 stealth fighters stationed in Puerto Rico. With the cost of its military operations in the Caribbean estimated at $18 million per day, the U.S. government has announced that an aircraft carrier with another group of destroyers would join this contingent “soon.”
Since Sept. 2, the United States has attacked 15 vessels in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, killing 64 crew members whose names and nationalities are unknown. The Trump administration argues that its ships are on an “official mission to combat drug trafficking” and alleged cartels linked to the Venezuelan government, but hasn’t provided any proof that the attacked vessels were trafficking drugs.
In addition to these lethal attacks — described by Venezuela’s ambassador to the United Nations, Samuel Moncada, as extrajudicial killings — there have been provocations involving U.S. warplanes entering Venezuelan airspace. Trump stated that the United States is evaluating potential “attacks on land-based targets” in Venezuelan territory and he confirmed he had authorized the CIA to conduct covert operations in Venezuela.
Experts assert in several media outlets that this deployment — the largest in the region in over half a century — actually aims to destabilize and eventually overthrow Maduro. During his first term, Trump stated that “all options are on the table.” Now, when questioned about whether he seeks “regime change,” he has said, “We’ll see what happens.”
The current scenario is very different from 2019, when opposition legislator Juan Guaidó swore himself in as “interim president” of Venezuela and his unelected leadership was recognized by 60 countries, including the U.S. Six years later, the opposition no longer has a “parallel” government, and Trump claims he does not know who opposition leader, and recent Nobel Peace Prize winner, María Corina Machado is. The opposition’s presidential candidate, Edmundo González, is in exile in Spain.
Essentially, the United States has increased its direct threat against Venezuela, but without a visible and organized opposition force to support it. The last time the opposition called for a protest, in January, the turnout was well below their expectations, and there has been no active public protest movement since.
“After 2019, we saw a much more diplomatic and media-driven offensive against Venezuela. The international media talked about Venezuela daily for two years,” Ociel Alí López, a sociologist and professor at the Central University of Venezuela, tells Truthdig. “That is not the case now. Today, Venezuela is not in the spotlight, but now there is a real military threat.”
López highlights the changes in the region, with the Colombian and Brazilian governments opposing a military attack on Venezuela, and Venezuela now maintaining commercial ties with the U.S. via a license granted to Chevron to extract and export Venezuela’s oil.
Venezuela doesn’t produce illegal drugs
Washington justifies its deadly attacks on Venezuelan boats with the allegation that the boats carry narcotics, and has put forward the theory that the rise in overdose deaths in the U.S. constitutes an “armed attack” by cartels, pointing the finger at Venezuela to justify the use of lethal force. However, the data doesn’t support the notion of Venezuela as a narco-terrorist threat.
The overdose crisis in the United States is primarily based on the consumption of fentanyl, and much of the illicit fentanyl comes from Mexico, with precursor chemicals legally supplied by companies based in China. As for cocaine, Venezuela is not a producer country, and the Caribbean Sea route has accounted for only a tiny proportion of the cocaine flow into the United States.
“The figures provided by the United Nations, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration itself, and so-called independent studies within the United States, state that between 80% and 90% of the cocaine that reaches the country comes via the Pacific,” María Fernanda Barreto, a Colombian Venezuelan political analyst, tells Truthdig.
In the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime reports from 1999 to 2025, Venezuela does not appear as a country of significance in the realm of illicit drugs, narcotics or stimulants. Not even the DEA’s 2024 annual report mentions Venezuela.
Pino Arlacchi, the former secretary-general of the U.N. office, stated that the U.S.’ real goal is to seize control of Venezuela’s oil reserves, the largest in the world. It’s also worth asking, as Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez did, why did Venezuela’s anti-drug performance improve after the DEA was expelled from the country in 2005?
U.S. institutions also play a key role in managing the drug trade, Barreto argues, saying, “U.S. banks launder the capital.” Indeed, banks such as HSBC, Wells Fargo and TD Bank have received record fines for their involvement in laundering money from drug trafficking.
US Aircraft Carrier Rumored to Intend to Attack Venezuela in Operational Pause
Life for ordinary Venezuelans
Two distinct moods are palpable on the streets of Venezuela: tension mixed with fear, and disinterest tinged with disbelief. Despite this, people are also continuing with everyday life, participating in celebrations of the beatification of Venezuela’s first saints, José Gregorio Hernández and Carmen Rendiles, and planning their Christmas festivities. Most are at least as concerned about the cost of preparing our traditional Christmas dishes as they are about speculating over Trump’s intentions.
The sudden military pressure from the U.S. only compounds the effects of a decade of economic and media-based attacks. The U.S.’ unilateral sanctions, especially on the country’s oil industry, have led to extreme hardship. In 2021, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on unilateral coercive measures, Alena Douhan, warned that, due to the sanctions, food availability had decreased by 73%; 180,000 surgeries could not be performed due to a lack of antibiotics or anesthesia; 2.6 million children were deprived of vaccines for meningitis, rotavirus, malaria, measles, yellow fever and influenza; and 80,000 HIV/AIDS patients had to suspend their treatment.
This has forced Venezuela to develop its local production capacity, and it is now able to produce 97% of the food it consumes, while domestic medicine manufacturing has reached 80%. But even if the basics are available now, people often lack the means to acquire them, with many working multiple jobs or struggling to save amid persistent inflation.
The Venezuelan government has had to perform a difficult balancing act in its attempt to stabilize the economy. Since October last year, the Central Bank of Venezuela (BCV) has been progressively devaluing the national currency. The exchange rate between the U.S. dollar and the bolivar has increased from 1 to 40 to over 1 to 200 over the past year — a loss of 80% of the bolivar’s value.
The exchange rate has also been affected by the terms of a new license issued to Chevron at the end of July that allows the company to operate in Venezuela but limits its payments in foreign currency. In this regard, the amount of foreign currency that the BCV has provided through its foreign exchange desks is 32.26% lower than last year, likely due to limited international reserves.
López said the U.S. military attacks have forced the government to allocate resources to defense, reducing the amount of foreign currency available for the rest of the economy. “The gap between the official exchange rate and the parallel rate is almost 50%. That is having a tremendous effect on prices, especially on food,” he added.
Since August, the price of meat in Caracas stores jumped from $9.80 per kilo to at least $15 per kilo. In addition, public transportation fares, which had been frozen since April, rose by 60%.
Tony Boza, an economist and United Socialist Party of Venezuela legislator, believes the Venezuelan economy is suffering the consequences of dollarization and the government’s “monetarist vision.” While he acknowledges that the U.S. sanctions have hit the oil industry and isolated the country, he maintains that current policies prioritize inflation control over the well-being of the majority.
“According to figures from some private analysts — because the BCV does not publish them — the size of our current economy is around $140 billion, but the current liquidity is less than 3%,” Boza tells Truthdig. “At the worst moment, which was in 1950, the liquidity in circulation was equivalent to 10% of GDP.”
According to Boza, the focus on reducing liquidity to prevent inflation is leading to low wages and pensions. The monthly minimum wage in Venezuela is less than one U.S. dollar, and most income is received as bonuses. Pensioners get about $50 a month in bonuses, for example. Since May 1, public sector workers have been receiving $160 a month, which mostly comes from the Economic War Bonus.
Furthermore, Boza points out that the distribution of foreign currency by the BCV is a nontransparent mechanism. “We don’t know if the U.S. dollars are being given to businesspeople who bring in supplies for their production or to shell companies that speculate and create the exchange rate gap,” he says.
The legislator from Zulia state argues that the Venezuelan government has “neglected” fundamental issues such as the distribution of wealth.
“The publication of the Gini coefficient was discontinued because wages are the pivot point for wealth distribution and have an impact not only on the public sector but also on the private sector,” he says. In his view, in economic terms and within this context of growing external pressure, the country is experiencing a “free-for-all” that the government must correct.
People and government act in response to the U.S. boat strikes
The government has sought to project an image of stability conducive to foreign investment. But now, as it prepares to protect its sovereignty, its attention has turned to defense and diplomacy. Venezuela convened an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council and over the past few weeks, countries like Russia and China, as well as multilateral organizations like the Non-Aligned Movement, have condemned the United States’ attacks. One Russian legislator reportedly said on Tuesday that his country has sent air defense systems to Venezuela.
Domestically, the Maduro government has focused on a mobilization campaign and says a total of 8.2 million Venezuelans participated in the first two days of military readiness activities for the Bolivarian Militia, a voluntary corps that complements the conventional armed forces. The militia was initially created in 2005 as the National Reserve, then in 2009 it took on its current name.
Anaís Márquez, a spokesperson for the 5 de Marzo Comandante Eterno Commune in Caracas and a member of the National Directorate of the Communes Union, tells Truthdig that the organized grassroots, including militias and commune members, are ready for what may come.
“We have answered the call from our president, we have enlisted, and we are preparing ourselves both physically and psychologically,” she says. “This is a new kind of war against Venezuela … and we cannot deny that it has us on edge, but we trust in a government that has known how to be strategic and stand its ground.”
Márquez said that the volunteers hold “physical preparedness” drills every Saturday at Fort Tiuna, one of the best-known military bases in Caracas. “These exercises are open to all who wish to participate, but those who are most aware of what is happening are the ones who attend. And, the psychological preparation focuses on workshops to debunk the fake news that is generated, especially on social media.”
In her opinion, “If they were to try and take Venezuela by land,” the organized grassroots would deploy as the final line of defense. “We are not fully prepared, but we are working on it.” However, Márquez rejects the way Trump and some media outlets have mocked the Venezuelan people, especially the women in the communes and militia.
She says the majority of the Venezuelan people want “our country to remain a territory of peace, where one works to achieve dreams,” and that only some members of the opposition advocate for military intervention.
National private polling firms like Datanálisis show that, although a sector of the Venezuelan population wants political change, only 3% would support a foreign military intervention.
(Truthdig)
Jessica Dos Santos
Jessica Dos Santos is a journalist at Radio del Sur and a writer for the web portal 15yUltimo and Épale CCS magazine. She is the author of the book “Caracas en Alpargatas” (2018) and a university professor. She’s won the Aníbal Nazoa Journalism Prize in 2014 and received honorable mentions in the Simón Bolívar National Journalism prize in 2016 and 2018.
