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As the US openly discussed schemes to add Greenland to its list of conquered territories, it became abundantly clear that “Alternative Energy” (AltE, solar, wind, hydro power) joined fossil fuels at center stage. [1] Corporations which pull the puppet strings of governments are well aware that oil production will cease long before none remains in the ground. When extraction becomes so expensive that it takes more than a barrel of oil to obtain a barrel, then it will no longer be financially viable to pump it out. They must look to AltE.
AltE requires oil for its production. Solar panels, wind turbines, and hydro-dams are heavily dependent on oil to manufacture machinery, operate equipment and dispose of used products. Thus, oil is not separate from from AltE – they are both sketches in the bigger picture of energy production. Greenland is closer to Venezuela than they appear on a map.
But there is something particularly interesting about media coverage of Greenland in January 2026 – there has been virtually no coverage of campaigns directed at the actions of the US and other rich countries to exploit AltE sources in the poor world. Nothing about the brutal working conditions for those digging cobalt in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Nothing about Elon Musk’s role in the November 2019 coup for Bolivia’s lithium. Nothing said about the military, political and economic muscle used against countries across the globe whose main crime has been sitting atop rare earth minerals necessary for AltE.
It may seem strange that rich world media focuses on Greenland and ignores what has already been done so extensively to the poor world. Actually, it is not strange at all. Explanation only requires one word which the rich world is loathe to apply to itself: “Racism.” Or maybe another word or two: “Imperialism” and “Colonialism.”
No Invasion of Greenland or Africa, Asia or Latin America!
Let’s be clear: the nonchalant way the wielders of power suggest that they may march into Greenland is bad and should be opposed. It is the contrast between the outrage at threats to Greenland versus the complacency toward Africa, Asia and Latin America that reflects the unspoken assumption that plundering lands inhabited by people of color is part of “the natural order of things” – something not worthy of special attention. Wars for Energy are not separate from environmental racism, but integrally connect to it.
In order to understand what rendered Venezuela vulnerable to attack it is useful to review the intensely racist nature of its connection to colonialism. Satya Sagar wrote an article on “Why the Removal of Nicolás Maduro will not stop the Bolivarian Revolution” that lays out the essential role of cultural racism in political struggles for 500 years. This history explains why Maduro’s “removal is mourned by the marginalized while elites celebrate .”
Within a few generations of the Spanish invasion, Venezuelan social structure was rigidly divided between two groups: “Criollos (American-born Spaniards) owned the land and the enslaved. Beneath them lay the vast majority: the Pardos (mixed-race), enslaved Africans, and indigenous peoples, who formed the working class yet were systematically excluded from power.”
Criollo Simón Bolívar successfully led Venezuela’s War of Independence (1819-1825) which was fought mainly by pardos seeking emancipation. Though slavery was abolished after the victory, criollo landowners remained in power and pardos were still disenfranchised.
1989 Caracazo
Class hostility seethed for the next century and a half. Then came the 1989 Caracazo. Venezuelanalysis.com documents that for the 25 years beginning in 1977 Venezuelan income fell by a third, largely due to “liberalization” demanded by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Venezuela was “forced to allocate 50 % of all its export earnings to the IMF.” Poverty mushroomed, leading many in Caracas slums to eat dog food. Soon after a new president took office in February 1989 he announced a new set of IMF-demanded measures. They included a wide range of price hikes, including an immediate 30% increase in public transportation. As mass demonstrations spread, the country saw “disappearances, extra-judicial killings, tortures, raids, and other police abuses throughout the week.”
Father Matias Comuñas describes torture that was used indiscriminately “A young man was tied to a window with handcuffs by one of the Metropolitan policemen … and with a lighter the policeman began setting the young man’s arm on fire. The kid fainted in pain.”
Gidilfredo Solzano recalls that “the police went above Apartment Block 22, and shoved the bodies in plastic bags, threw them below, picked them up with a truck.”
According to Richard Gott some authorities acted differently. One officer “stopped his troops shooting at protesters, asking each person where they came from, if any were from areas where there are country clubs. When people answered ‘no,’ troops were instructed that the people protesting were their brothers and sisters from the same barrios, and they should hold fire.” Depending on the account, between 300 and 3000 died in the Caracazo. Memories of the slaughter by the rich remain burned in the minds of millions.
Less than a decade later, in 1998, Hugo Chávez was elected president with a promise to use oil revenues to improve the life quality of Venezeula’s poor. Then the unthinkable happened. Rather than leaving campaign promises on the sidelines after being elected (as has happened with so many Latin American politicians) Chávez actually did what he promised to do.
The Social Revolution Is the Core Revolution
Venezuelan elites were less than happy with what they saw. In 2002 Chávez announced that he would “replace some of the bosses who controlled the state-owned oil company.” On April 12, business leaders and dissident military officers, with the aide of right-wing media and the US government, seized the presidential palace and arrested Chávez. This was the 47-hour coup. The coup plotters announced that the head of the nation’s business association would be “president.” In “less than two days…Hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans—eager to protect the gains of the Bolivarian Revolution and determined not to go back to the old ways—poured into the streets of Caracas to demand the reinstatement of Chávez.” It quickly occurred.
Changes promised by Chávez increased. Similar to Cuba, ordinary citizens had the opportunity to determine the direction of the country via participation in community councils and institutions including the military, judiciary and even the national cabinet.
Also similar to Cuba, the Chávez government increased the ability of citizens to read and write with a literacy campaign and sought to establish pride in African and indigenous heritage.
Perhaps the strongest Cuban influence was in health care. Doctors from Cuba went to the most violent urban communities and remote rural areas where Venezuelan doctors feared to tread. For the first time in their lives many Venezuelans received medical care and poor students were urged to attend medical school.
The venom of the criollos knew no bounds. The hatred of Cuba by right-wingers in the US and Venezuelans could well have contributed to 32 Cubans among the 80 murdered during the January 3 invasion. It could also contribute to the lack of medical treatment for Maduro’s wife, Cilia Flores, who was kidnapped with him. When in US custody she went “without medical assistance for almost three days” despite “fractures and possibly a severe rib hematoma.”
The way the Venezuelan elite viewed Maduro is indicated by their reference to him as “the bus driver,” confirming their contempt for anyone whose labor showed that he was not part of the in-group they felt should run the country.
They despised Chávez even more. His appearance was clearly that of a person of considerable African descent. So they referred to him as “the monkey.” These are the friends of Americans who engineered the January 3 kidnapping.
Not Another Caracazo in Venezuela or the World
Both the rich in the US and Venezuela have a preferred champion in the person of María Corina Machado, “the daughter of a wealthy steel baron, educated at elite private institutions.” Machado’s strongest allies include those who engineered the slaughter of the 1989 Caracazo, attempted the 2002 coup against Chávez, and sneered at him as a “monkey.” Her platform of privatizing the oil company (that Chávez nationalized) would leave poor Venezuelans without financing of programs for health care, education, sanitation and food.
Machado’s receipt of the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize demonstrates the European desire for Venezuela to return to the business-friendly days of the Caracazo. Those making this award appear to believe that “peace” means that the poor world must willingly sacrifice the necessities of life so the rich do not have to seize it from them.
Would they also believe that Elon Musk promotes “peace” by helping to engineer the 2019 coup against Evo Morales so he could get lithium from Bolivia for a lower price? Or were those who machinated to remove Pedro Castillo form power in Peru? Or should those be deemed “peace” advocates who removed Jacobo Árbenz from power in Guatemala in 1954 or Salvadore Allende in Chile in 1973?
Yes, Wars for Energy (Wars for Oil and Wars for AltE) are parts of the broader wars to extract natural resources from the poor world that have gone on for at least five centuries. Cultural subjugation of people of color is not merely linked to those wars – crushing of the many is a fundamental part of increasing wealth production for the few.
Corporations abhor the environmental revolutions that threatens their profits and scorn the cultural revolutions that demand equal access to resources and civil rights for all. Their politico-military counter-revolution is what globs together their environmental and cultural counter-revolutions.
That is why the solution for the War on Venezuela is more than calling for Trump to be arrested and extradited to Caracas. A genuine solution would require fundamental economic change including (a) reducing manufacture for the war machine and other destructive, unnecessary, and luxury items in the rich world so that (b) it can help the poor world increase the necessities of life. If getting rid of what is unnecessary is sufficient, it would be what many call “degrowth.” [2]
Notes
1. This article is based on comments the author gave at the January 7, 2026 rally to defend Venezela from US aggression and the kidnapping of its president Nicolás Maduro. Presentations were made by the Universal African Peoples Organization, African Peoples Socialist Party, Organization for Black Struggle and Green Party of St. Louis.
2. A degrowth perspective might suggest that reparations from the US government and oil companies could provide Venezuela with enough revenue to dramatically reduce oil extraction.
Don Fitz (fitzdon@aol.com) has taught Environmental Psychology at Washington University and is author of Cuban Health Care: The Ongoing Revolution. He is Outreach Coordinator for the Green Party of St. Louis and on the Editorial Board of Green Social Thought where a version of this article first appeared.
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