U.S. military personnel acting under the direction of President Donald J. Trump recently kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, all as part of what Pan-African organizers, diplomats, and others describe as a ploy to siphon oil from the South American nation.
As Fravia V. Marquez Silva, a representative of Venezuela’s Afrodescendent community, explained, the Trump administration took a similar course of action in 2021 when— in collaboration with the Cape Verdean government— they defied the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and extradited a detained Venezuelan official to the U.S.
“Trump…just kidnapped…one of our diplomats…in Cape Verde, Mr. Alex Saab and kept [him] hostage,” Marquez Silva said as she took participants of a December press conference hosted by the Shirley Graham Dubois and William Worthy Collective down memory lane. “He was mobilizing ships to the coast of Cape Verde and trying to gather the countries in Latin America through the Lima Group…to isolate Venezuela and try to attack from Colombia.”
In speaking about the Trump administration’s multifaceted encroachment on Venezuela, Marquez Silva pointed out that the president took an unconstitutional, authoritarian approach.
“This was exposed also in the New York Times in an article,” Marquez Silva said. “Congress got interested in what was going on and we were able to try to stop through Congress [the] attempt to invade Venezuela. This is not new.”
On the afternoon of Dec. 5, Marquez Silva, executive director of Afro-Cumbe (International Summit for Anti-imperialist Africans and Afrodescendents), appeared alongside Venezuelan Ambassador Jesus “Chucho” Garcia, Dr. ChenziRa Davis Kahina of the Caribbean Pan-African Network, journalist-educator-organizer Obi Egbuna Jr. and the Mass Emphasis Children’s Choir during an event organized in anticipation of what would eventually become a U.S. military strike against Venezuela.
By the time of the press conference, Venezuela had been bolstering its civilian military program. Marquez Silva said the arming and training of commonfolk happened amid the Trump administration’s designation of Venezuela as a narcostate and the U.S.’ military’s extrajudicial bombing of ships in the Caribbean Sea under Operation Southern Spear.
Casualties in those bombings include members of the National Liberation Army (ELN), an entity that the U.S. government, along with Colombia, Canada, New Zealand, and the European Union, have identified as a terrorist organization.
For Marquez Silva, nothing about ELN, or the state of affairs in Venezuela, could be further from the truth, especially when such information comes from the U.S., a nation she described as hostile to Venezuela and other nations that are practicing self-determination.
“They started saying we had connections to rebels, while we were trying to organize peace talks to achieve…peace in Colombia with the FARC, with the ELN movement, since [Venezuelan] President [Hugo] Chavez was alive,” Marquez Silva said. “They were portraying these actions as actions of terrorism or financing terrorist groups like Hezbollah. So now is the moment they are bringing all together this narrative, and they are just doing executions…of citizens, not only Venezuelan citizens, but citizens from Trinidad and Tobago, citizens from Suriname, citizens from other countries that are out there just fishing in their boats, and they are portraying this as illegal activities. They are not giving proof. They are not even properly informing the U.S. Congress or the U.S. citizens.”
It’s All About the Oil and Minerals
U.S. air and naval forces captured Maduro and his wife on the early morning of Jan. 3 during a two-hour operation that involved 150 aircraft bombers and fighters along with: CIA, National Security Administration, and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.
At 4:21 a.m. EST, Trump, who didn’t notify Congress beforehand, announced the capture on Truth Social. Hours later, as clouds of smoke cleared from Caracas and other parts of Venezuela, he took to a podium and delved further into the military operation that dominated headlines.
“This was one of the most stunning, effective, and powerful displays of American military might and competence in American history,” Trump said. “And if you think about it, we’ve done some other good ones like the attack on [Iranian military officer Qasem] Soleimani, the attack on [the Islamic State’s Abu Bakr] al-Baghdadi, and the obliteration and decimation of the Iran nuclear sites just recently in an operation known as Midnight Hammer.”
For months, U.S. intelligence officials collected information about Maduro’s residence, travels, eating habits, and other aspects of his life. Per the White House, Trump gave the go-ahead for the bombing and kidnapping on Friday night. Hours later, aircrafts from nearly two dozen U.S. bases flew across the Western Hemisphere into Venezuelan airspace.
Later, once U.S. forces arrived at Maduro’s compound, Fort Tiuna in Caracas, they came under fire, with one U.S. helicopter hit but still functioning.
During a Fox & Friends phone interview, Trump said Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, unsuccessfully attempted to escape when Maduro was unable to close the door to a steel safety room. They immediately surrendered thereafter.
“All perfectly executed and done. No nation in the world could achieve what America achieved yesterday or, frankly, in just a short period of time,” Trump later said during his Saturday press conference, flanked by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
“All Venezuelan military capacities were rendered powerless as the men and women of our military working with U.S. law enforcement successfully captured Maduro in the dead of night,” he continued. “It was dark. The lights of Caracas were largely turned off due to a certain expertise that we have. It was dark and it was deadly.”
On Sunday, Cuba reported 32 of its citizens were killed during the capture of Maduro.
Maduro, Flores, and their adult son, all of whom are currently detained at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, face drugs and weapons charges, according to U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro. On Saturday, Trump announced that the U.S. will take control of Venezuela’s oil reserves.
The U.S. will also have control of Venezuela’s government pending a “safe, proper and judicious transition.” Though Venezuela’s Supreme Court appointed Vice President Delcy Rodriguez as acting president, there’s reportedly some contention from opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado.
In early December, as U.S. officials finalized plans for Maduro’s capture, Garcia spoke to a virtual audience at the press conference titled “Venezuela Speaks to Mother Africa and Her Children” about what he understood to be Trump’s true intentions.
“In the U.S., they only have enough reserves for five years,” said Garcia, Venezuelan ambassador to Benin, Togo, Ghana and Ivory Coast. “At this moment, [they] need the mineral[s] for the process of artificial intelligence… Trump’s strongest strategy right now is to capture our wealth… So it’s not only narcoterrorists or narcotics, it is about capturing the wealth of Venezuela.”
As of 2025, Venezuela has what’s recognized as the largest oil reserves in the world, surpassing Saudi Arabia by nearly 10 billion barrels. Most of that heavy crude oil is concentrated in the Orinoco Belt.
A U.S. court recently approved the sale of Citgo, a majority Venezuelan-owned oil company, to Amber Energy. The $5.9 billion sale, intended to satisfy Venezuela’s debt, came at the end of a two-year legal battle.
The sale, scheduled to wrap up in 2026, will go through regulatory clearances via the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control.
The Venezuelan government, which decried the decision, has entered an appeals process. Garcia, who also serves as a diplomatic liaison to the African Union, called the sale an affront to the legacy of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who championed nationalizing oil to fund social programs.
“Chavez said, ‘Okay, this oil [is] very free for Black people, for Latino people, and indigenous people,’” Garcia said as he spoke about the thousands of Citgo gas stations scattered throughout the U.S. “It was the first time that a third-world country was helping a first-world country in solidarity. It’s in the time the cheaper oil. In this moment, the situation in Venezuela is very strong. Our vice president says it was illegal to sell Citgo, and Donald Trump is doing this.”
The Bigger Picture, as It Relates to the Caribbean
The Caribbean, a tropical region between North and South America that’s bordered by the Caribbean Sea, has oil reserves, not only in Venezuela, but Guyana, Trinidad & Tobago, Cuba and Jamaica.
As Davis Kahina explained last month, her stomping grounds of St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands also has some petroleum for the taking. So much so that she and others living on the island are still feeling the long-term effects of what was once a Hovensa oil refinery.
In 2011, Hovensa, an entity also known as Limetree Bay Refinery, entered a multimillion-dollar settlement related to Clean Air Act violations going back decades. A decade later, Hovensa restarted operations on the U.S. Virgin Islands, which caused pollution of rainwater collection systems and made residents nauseous from fumes.
But Davis Kahina said there was more to come behind the environmental hazards.
“Predominantly people of African ancestry…. left or were literally pushed out because of the impact on the environment,” Davis Kahina said. “Before, we were concerned with that but as recently as today, we see some of the largest warships and battleships coming through this non-incorporated non self-governing territory colony… in the middle of the Caribbean.”
During the Dec. 5 program, Davis Kahina pointed out that the U.S. military activity taking place on the Virgin Islands shifted to Venezuela.
“There are those of us here that are very clear, we did not consent to that,” Davis Kahina said. “Let us need persons to get context of the other reason why this is really of concern, to those of us that are in these Caribbean spaces, whether they’re colonized, whether they’re weaponized. But at the end of the day, we know that this is about capitalism, imperialism [and] greed.”