US Stake in Venezuela Reserves Sparks Outcry

Well, word this week out of Caracas is that the United States is fixing to claim itself a sizable piece of Venezuela’s energy reserves, and the Venezuelan opposition has come out swinging against it as “predatory” and “unconstitutional,” which I suppose makes sense if you don’t think about it too long, which is probably the idea.

Now here’s the part that ought to make a man sit back on his heels. The same week this stake-claiming story broke, there were reports floating around that the Trump administration had gone and abducted Nicolás Maduro himself. Two headlines, same country, same week, and nobody seems too bothered about reconciling them. You’d think a man being physically removed from his own country would be the bigger story than a paragraph in a mineral-rights memo, but apparently in Venezuela these days you can misplace a president and still have room left over to argue about oil contracts like it’s a normal Tuesday.

That’s the actual joke, and it’s not really a joke. It’s a diagnosis. When a country’s opposition can work up a full head of outrage over “unconstitutional” energy claims in the same breath as unconfirmed reports that the head of state got hauled off somewhere, you have to ask yourself what constitution they think is still standing to be violated. A constitution is a fence. It only means something if somebody’s minding it. Venezuela’s fence has had so many holes punched in it by Maduro’s own government over the years - packed courts, cancelled elections, currency that changes value depending on which official you ask - that when Washington comes along and puts its boot through what’s left, the opposition hollers “unconstitutional” the way a man hollers about somebody stepping on grass that was already paved over.

I don’t say that to excuse Washington, mind you. Claiming a big stake in another nation’s energy reserves while that nation’s own leadership is reportedly getting carried off in the middle of the night isn’t statesmanship, it’s a fella backing his truck up to the barn while the owner’s still arguing with the bank. But here’s where it gets bipartisan and equally ridiculous on both sides of this fence: Maduro’s government has spent years treating the Venezuelan constitution as a document you consult only when it’s useful for staying in power, and now the opposition wants to invoke that same document as sacred the moment somebody else violates it. You can’t guard a well you’ve been draining yourself.

It’s like two men standing in a barnyard hollering at each other about who’s got legal title to the cow, while a third fellow’s already got a rope on her and is walking her out the back gate. The opposition’s shouting at Washington. Washington’s citing whatever paperwork makes the reserves look properly acquired. And the cow - which is to say the actual oil, the actual wealth, the actual future of ordinary Venezuelans standing in gas lines and watching their savings evaporate - never once gets asked what she thinks about any of it.

The stakes here are being described in terms of sovereignty and economic future, and that’s true enough, but sovereignty’s a funny thing to invoke on behalf of a government that’s already sold most of it off in installments to whoever’d keep the lights on - the Russians, the Chinese, now apparently a piece to Washington too. Everybody’s very concerned about Venezuela’s sovereignty right up until the moment they’re the one making a claim on it.

So here’s your Shrug Report for the week: a nation reportedly loses track of its own president and gains a large new American claim on its oil in the same news cycle, and the loudest word anybody can find is “unconstitutional.” Maybe so. But you don’t usually hear a man complain about trespassing after he’s already sold the fence for scrap.