21 December 2025, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)
When the White-supremacist South African and then American centibillionaire Elon Musk blurted out online during the evening of 24 July 2020 “We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.”, the torrent of public opposition to it caused him to get that comment removed from twitter within less than 24 hours. (This was done before he owned Twitter.)
That U.S. coup (by Trump) against Bolivia was perpetrated on 11 November 2019 and grabbed that land back as a U.S. colony. Ted Snider headlined about it on 15 November 2019 “Finally Got Him: The Bolivian Coup”. His terrific documented-by-links news-report included:
The long planned coup was triggered now for three reasons. The first was opportunity. The new generation of silent American coups don’t use tanks or guns. They are silent; they are disguised. They are so disguised that they are never recognized to be coups. They are coups disguised as democracy. Coups that allow Donald Trump to call the Bolivian coup “a significant moment for democracy in the Western Hemisphere,” an act that “preserves democracy” and brings us “one step closer to a completely democratic, prosperous, and free Western Hemisphere.” …
Marco Rubio’s tweets before the vote count was even finished set the stage early for the coup. …
If Venezuela has oil, Bolivia has lithium: lots of lithium. In fact, Bolivia may have 70% of the world’s lithium reserves. And lithium is the new oil. As oil is essential for gas powered cars, so lithium is essential for electric cars. Morales, like Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, is a nationalist who sought a new relationship between his land’s people and his land’s resources: he didn’t want all the wealth from Bolivia’s natural resources slipping through the fingers of the Bolivian people and into the hands of the huge international corporations. And as that approach to oil put Chavez in the sights of the American coup planners, so Morales’ approach to lithium put him in their sights.
Morales was willing to allow foreign companies into Bolivia, but he stipulated that any lithium mining had to be carried out in equal partnership with Bolivia’s national mining company and Bolivia’s national lithium company. That made Morales a problem to the big transnational mining companies. A problem that had to go.
In 2018, Germany’s ACI Systems had come to an agreement with Bolivia. Listening to the protest of the people of the region, Morales canceled that deal on November 4, 2019. A few days later, Morales was gone.
Bolivia’s economy, while it was a U.S. colony, rose annually at only a slow clip during the period before Morales led the country, 1960 to 2005, but then soared during his 13-year Presidency (2006-2019), increasing then the nation’s per-capita GDP from the base $1,020.1 billion in 2005, to $4,203.2 billion in 2019 — more than fourfold during his entire 13 years in power. During that same period, the per-capita figures for the whole world’s economy were $7,284.3 increasing to $11,376.1, a rise of 56% above the world’s 2005 economic base, instead of what Morales’s Bolivia achieved, a rise of 312% above the 2005 base. (And the U.S. itself rose even less than the world did during that time — and its European colonies rose even less than that, and Japan rose almost not at all — but America’s billionaires’ and centimillionaires’ wealth soared during that period, and it’s only the billionaires who actually CONTROL the U.S. Government. They ARE the nation’s Deep State, which controls the entire empire.)
Musk, Trump, and the other billionaires, overthrew Morales because Morales favored his own population over the U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Musk, above all, was concerned to gain control over the world’s largest source of lithium for Musk’s Tesla Corporation’s EV car-batteries. His main lithium source then was Australia, which was much farther away, and had far less of it. Bolivia, for Musk, was merely a cost-cutting play.
Trump, like his predecessors, is trying additionally to win back Venezuela as a colony, because that country has the world’s largest reserves of oil — and now that EVs are about to crash, it’s even clearer than it was before, that hybrids (and this also means petroleum) and NOT all-electric vehicles, will dominate at least the near-term future.
The U.S. empire is DETERMINED to get back its control over Venezuela. For this reason, they have intensified their economic sanctions against that country and so driven its people deeply into poverty, as a result of which, millions of Venezuelans have relocated to other countries and many who have stayed have come to hope that America will regain Venezuela in order that its sanctions against their country will end.
The Nobel Prizes Committee is effectively controlled by America’s billionaires though itself comprised entirely of Norwegians; and, so, whereas in 2009 they awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to Barack Obama who continued George W. Bush’s lie-based war against Iraq, and Bush’s war also to conquer Afghanistan, and greatly increased America’s and Saudi Arabia’s war against Yemen, and initiated America’s war against Syria, and co-initiated (along with France) the empire’s war against Libya, and continued America’s $3.8 billion-per-year donations to Israel’s war against Palestine, and started the war in Ukraine; not ONLY does Donald Trump campaign to be awarded that same Prize, but the person whom the Nobel Committee awarded their 2025 Peace Prize to, the Venezuelan oligarch Maria Corina Machado, publicly urges Trump to invade Venezuela in order to set it free. But free from what? Free from his (and his predecessors’) sanctions — and now free also from Trump’s recently imposed absolute embargo against Venezuela (and an embargo is a legally recognized act of war). She’s participating in this war against her own country. This is how complicit in war-generating the Nobel Committee actually IS. They are such a farce, that only blithering fools (or else fellow neocons) can respect, instead of despise them — but the U.S.-and-allied ‘news’-media do respect them (because the empire’s billionaires do: that Committee serves them very well in their choices for ‘peace’, meaning for war, actually).
So, how do Venezuelans feel about Machado versus Maduro? A pro-Maduro Venezuelan ‘polling’ firm ‘finds’ that 91% of Venezuelans hold an unfavorable view of Machado, but a pro-Machado British polling firm ‘finds’ that 63% of Venezuelans “said Maduro is not a legitimate president.” However, my personal impression is that many pro-Maduro Venezuelans believe that both sides in 2024 were rigging the vote-counting (pro-Maduro in some areas, and pro-Machado — her candidate in that contest being Edmundo Gonzalez — in other areas. So, it is entirely possible for BOTH of those alleged findings to be accurate.
Here, in any case, is background information about the U.S. empire’s (its billionaires’) choice to replace Maduro:
Maria Corina Machado’s father, Henrique Machado Zuloaga, was a high executive in the family’s steel company, Sivensa, which has been Venezuela’s top private steel producer since 2008; and her mother, Corina Parisca de Machado, is a psychologist and academic. Corina studied Industrial Engineering at the Andrés Bello Catholic University and completed studies in leadership and public policy at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Administration (IESA) and Yale University’s World Fellows Program.
Her father’s brother, Oscar Augusto Machado Zuloago, was one of Sivensa’s 5 co-founders:
Oscar [Augusto] Machado Zuloaga
Caracas, October 13, 1920 - [Died] Denver (United States), October 4, 1988 Engineer and businessman. Son of Oscar Augusto Machado Hernández and Ana Teresa Zuloaga. He studied at El Paraíso School and the San Pablo Institute in his hometown. He entered the Central University of Venezuela in 1935 and graduated as a civil engineer in 1938. That same year he traveled to the United States to pursue specialized studies in mechanics and electricity at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), but when World War II broke out (1939) he had to abandon them and return to his country. In 1939 he began working at the La Electricidad de Caracas company. At the age of 26, he presided over the Caracas Chamber of Industries (1946-1948) and during that period he was also part of the board of directors of FEDECAMARAS. In 1947, together with other aviation enthusiasts, he founded the La Carlota airport. The following year, during the annual assembly of FEDECAMARAS, he was elected president of the organization. After the overthrow of Marcos Pérez Jiménez in 1958, he was called upon by the Governing Junta to occupy the Ministry of Transportation and Communications. In 1961 he participated in the negotiations that led to the creation of the Venezuelan International Aviation company (VIASA), the result of the association between the private capital of the Avensa airline and the public company Aeropostal. The new airline would manage the international routes that belonged to the state-owned aviation company, Aeropostal. From 1963 he chaired the board of directors of VIASA by appointment of the national government. In 1973 he assumed the position of president of La Electricidad de Caracas, until his retirement in 1985, remaining from that date as a director and permanent advisor to the board of directors. He was a promoter, founder, and president of the Venezuelan Association for Institutional Development (ACIDE, 1978), among whose objectives is to support free enterprise in Venezuela. He was a founder and continuous collaborator of the Pro-Venezuela organization.
He also participated in the creation of the Caracas airport (1972), which bears his name. He presided over the Radio Club of Venezuela and was among the founders of the Metropolitan University (1970).
Spain’s El Pais reports about Corina Machado that:
María Corina Machado is an industrial engineer with a specialization in finance from the Institute of Advanced Studies of Administration (IESA), the most important business school in the country. The eldest of four sisters, she is divorced and has three children who live abroad, as well as a sentimental relationship with a lawyer called Gerardo Fernández. Her family has a long local lineage: her father, Henrique Machado Zuloaga (who passed away recently), was an important businessman in the metallurgical sector, and her family was the founder of the electric utility Electricidad de Caracas, one of the great national capital corporations of the 20th century. The Machado family businesses – particularly the Sivensa and Sidetur steel companies – have been expropriated.
The term “expropriated” there might be intended to convey that the firm was simply seized by the socialist Government, but that isn’t what actually happened, in either case: In the case of Electricidad de Caracas, the corporation’s president at the time of the change-over in 2007, said “this deal is a fair one.” And the Government official “assured that the remaining shares, which are mostly held by small investors, including the company’s workers would remain in private hands. ‘We are preserving the interest of the minority shareholders.’” Only the oligarchs’ shares — the controlling shares — in that electrical utility were nationalized. In the case of Sidetur Steel, which changed over during 2012, the U.S. sanctions had already started in 2010 to take hold and place the country’s economy in virtual free-fall; so, the negotiations were frictious with Sidetur, and the company’s management weren’t quoted at all in the English-language news-report about it. Perhaps the Machados, who are pure capitalists, harbor particular resentment from that event.
It’s probably normal for an extremely wealthy family whose large corporation has been involuntarily expropriated to seek revenge against the Government that did it. However, for that family then to try to overthrow their Government, and for them to solicit an enemy nation — in this case the U.S. — to invade their country for that purpose, making deals with that enemy Government, to benefit themselves, against their own countrymen, should be considered to be nothing less than traitorous, and should be dealt with accordingly.
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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.
So, Bolivia has Lithium? We need that to make batteries? They need to sell it to make moneys? If they need help digging that stuff out, we can sell them equipment and manpower? why do we need to make a coup? Do you shop at Home Depot? Do you need to kill the store manager to get the shit for free?