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Aaron Coy Moulton
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Jan. 15, 2026
8:20 PM PT
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In the aftermath of the U.S. military strike that seized Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on Jan. 3, the Trump administration has emphasized its desire for unfettered access to Venezuela’s oil more than conventional foreign policy objectives, such as combating drug trafficking or bolstering democracy and regional stability.
During his first news conference after the operation, President Trump claimed oil companies would play an important role and that the oil revenue would help fund any further intervention in Venezuela.
Soon after, “Fox & Friends” hosts asked Trump about this prediction.
“We have the greatest oil companies in the world,” Trump replied, “the biggest, the greatest, and we’re gonna be very much involved in it.”
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As a historian of U.S.-Latin American relations, I’m not surprised that oil or any other commodity is playing a role in U.S. policy toward the region. What has taken me aback, though, is the Trump administration’s openness about how much oil is driving its policies toward Venezuela.
As I’ve detailed recently, U.S. military intervention in Latin America has largely been covert. And when the U.S. orchestrated the coup that ousted Guatemala’s democratically elected president in 1954, the U.S. covered up the role that economic considerations played in that operation.
By the early 1950s, Guatemala had become a top source for the bananas Americans consumed, as it remains today.
The United Fruit Company, based in Boston, owned more than 550,000 acres of Guatemalan land, largely thanks to its deals with previous dictatorships. These holdings required the intense labor of impoverished farmworkers who were often forced from their traditional lands. Their pay was rarely stable, and they faced periodic layoffs and wage cuts.
The international corporation networked with dictators and local officials in Central America, many Caribbean islands and parts of South America to acquire immense estates for railroads and banana plantations.
The locals called it the pulpo — “octopus” in Spanish — because the company seemingly had a hand in shaping the region’s politics, economies and everyday life. The Colombian government brutally crushed a 1928 strike by United Fruit workers, killing hundreds of people.
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The company’s seemingly unlimited clout in the countries where it operated gave rise to the stereotype of Central American nations as “banana republics.”
In Guatemala, a country historically marked by extreme inequality, a broad coalition formed in 1944 to overthrow its repressive dictatorship in a popular uprising. Inspired by the anti-fascist ideals of World War II, the coalition sought to make the nation more democratic and its economy more fair.
After decades of repression, the nation democratically elected Juan José Arévalo and then Jacobo Árbenz, under whom, in 1952, Guatemala implemented a land reform program that gave landless farmworkers their own undeveloped plots. Guatemala’s government asserted that these policies would build a more equitable society for Guatemala’s impoverished, Indigenous majority.
United Fruit denounced Guatemala’s reforms as the result of a global conspiracy. It alleged that most of Guatemala’s unions were controlled by Mexican and Soviet communists and painted the land reform as a ploy to destroy capitalism.
United Fruit sought to enlist the U.S. government in its fight against the elected government’s policies. While its executives did complain that Guatemala’s reforms hurt its financial investments and labor costs, they also cast any interference in its operations as part of a broader communist plot.
It did this through an advertising campaign in the U.S. and by taking advantage of the anti-communist paranoia that prevailed at the time.
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United Fruit executives began to meet with officials in the Truman administration as early as 1945. Despite the support of sympathetic ambassadors, the U.S. government apparently wouldn’t intervene directly in Guatemala’s affairs.
The company turned to Congress.
It hired well connected lobbyists to portray Guatemala’s policies as part of a communist plot to destroy capitalism and the United States. In February 1949, multiple members of Congress denounced Guatemala’s labor reforms as communist.
Sen. Claude Pepper called the labor code “obviously intentionally discriminatory against this American company” and “a machine gun aimed at the head of this American company.”
Two days later, Rep. John McCormack echoed that statement, using the exact same words to denounce the reforms.
Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., Sen. Lister Hill and Rep. Mike Mansfield also went on the record, reciting the talking points outlined in United Fruit memos.
No lawmaker said a word about bananas.
Seventy-seven years later, we may see many echoes of past interventions, but now the U.S. government has dropped the veil: In his appearance after the strike that seized Maduro this month, Trump said “oil” 21 times.
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Aaron Coy Moulton is an associate professor of Latin American history at Stephen F. Austin State University in Texas and the author of “Caribbean Blood Pacts: Guatemala and the Cold War Struggle for Freedom.” This article was produced in collaboration with the Conversation.
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Ideas expressed in the piece
The Trump administration has been unusually explicit about prioritizing oil access as a driver of its Venezuela intervention, departing from historical U.S. foreign policy approaches in Latin America that concealed economic motivations behind alternative justifications[1]. The administration has stated that oil companies will play an important role and that oil revenue would help fund further intervention, with President Trump mentioning “oil” 21 times during his appearance following Maduro’s capture[1].
This transparent approach contrasts sharply with past U.S. interventions in the region, which employed rhetorical cover stories to mask economic interests. The 1954 U.S.-orchestrated coup in Guatemala, for example, was framed around anti-communist concerns and the alleged threat to American democracy, even though United Fruit Company’s financial interests in Guatemalan land holdings were central to the operation[1]. Corporations working with the U.S. government strategically deployed anti-communist language and Congressional lobbying to advance their economic agenda while obscuring the true drivers of intervention[1].
The removal of explicit denialism around resource extraction represents a significant shift in how the U.S. government discusses its foreign policy objectives, as the Trump administration has dropped what historians describe as the traditional veil that once obscured commodity-driven motives behind intervention[1].
Different views on the topic
Trump administration officials have framed the intervention around broader foreign policy objectives beyond oil extraction, with the stated goal of removing an authoritarian government and supporting democratic governance in Venezuela[2]. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has characterized the U.S. involvement as intended to “ensure economic and political stability in Venezuela” and to benefit both Americans and Venezuelans[1].
Business analysts contend that U.S. involvement in Venezuela’s oil sector could reduce investment risk and stimulate regional energy development, suggesting the intervention may have economic benefits extending beyond simple resource extraction[3]. The involvement could facilitate capital investment needed to modernize Venezuela’s deteriorated oil infrastructure, which would require more than $100 billion to restore production to historical levels[5].
The Trump administration has emphasized that U.S. oil company investment would help rebuild Venezuela’s dilapidated infrastructure and generate revenue to support the country’s economic recovery and governance improvements[1][4]. Under this framework, increased U.S. oil industry participation is presented as a mechanism for delivering capital and technical expertise to a nation suffering from decades of underinvestment and mismanagement[1].