Venezuela and its Neighbors: The Discursive Struggle for Latin America

José O. Pérez1

Abstract
Over the past decade, Venezuela has entered into a deep economic recession with high inflation
rates and deteriorating socio-economic indicators, which has resulted in millions migrating
abroad. There exists a dense political debate about who is to blame for this situation. In February
of 2019, the United States and many of its allies recognized the interim government of Juan
Guaidó, creating a standoff with the Chavista government of Nicolás Maduro. This article
conducts a nuanced analysis of the political situation in Venezuela across multiple levels as it
problematizes our ontological understanding of individuals, states, and the international system.
Through a post-structuralist theoretical approach to security studies I make sense of the “crisis”
in Venezuela, specifically arguing that individuals have been portrayed in contradictory
humanitarian discourses as a means of advancing particular political interests. Furthermore, I
critically analyze the role of space, time, and multilateralism, and their subsequent effects both in
this case study and for the inner-workings of the 21st century global order.

Key words: Venezuela, Latin America, post-structuralism, Cold War, international relations

Introduction
Michael Reid begins his 2007 ominously titled book Forgotten Continent: The Battle for
Latin America’s Soul by asking, in a world of challenging security dilemmas, changing
economic markets and development patterns, and ever-shifting discourses of power: “But what
of Latin American, the other great region of the developing world (2007: 1)?” This article
attempts to partially answer that question by focusing on the region’s current largest political
debate and hotspot, Venezuela, and how understanding the discursive struggle for the South
American country can shed insight on regional and global moves for power and hegemony.
Specifically, I seek to conduct a theoretical analysis of the situation in Venezuela, and regional
affairs more broadly, to see how this analysis can help us make sense of humanitarian assistance,
multilateral actions, and populist movements in the region.
Over the past decade, Venezuela has entered a period of economic turmoil with
hyperinflation averaging 80,000% in 2018 alone, and the number of Venezuelans going abroad
in search of better opportunities spiking from 700,000 in 2015 to an estimated 3.4 million in

1
José O. Pérez is a PhD student in Political Science at the Ohio State University (OSU), and holds a Masters in
International Strategic Studies from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) in Porto Alegre, Brazil.

1
2019, 1.5 million of them migrating to other South American countries alone (Cara Labrador and
Merrow 2019; O’Grady, Alcantara, and Emamdjomeh 2019). Without a doubt there exists a deep
academic and social debate about who is to blame for this situation, whether that be poor macro-
economic mismanagement since the presidency of Hugo Chávez and continued policy failure
under Nicolás Maduro, or hostile sabotage and crippling sanctions from the United States (U.S.)
starting with the administration of George W. Bush. It is beyond the scope of this article,
however, to review the successes and failures of the Bolivarian Revolution and properly access
blame among the parties, as that would entail an empirical and quantitative review of figures,
and would probably still fail to fully capture the nuances presently unfolding in Venezuela. The
purpose of this article is instead to focus on the discourse and discursive practices that have been
employed by various groups to define and interpret the situation in Venezuela. Likewise, I focus
my analysis on recent events, specifically since the election of Donald Trump2 in the U.S. in
2016, and the proclamation of Juan Guaidó, leader of the opposition, as interim president of
Venezuela in February 2019.
Overall, I argue that the current situation in Venezuela allows us to understand how
individuals can be constituted simultaneously through opposing, and often contradictory,
humanitarian discourses to serve various political purposes. Furthermore, I advance that this case
study illustrates how right-wing leaders can utilize multilateralism to further their masculine
image and reassert their political dominance within both domestic and foreign policy circles. In
essence, this article provides a post-structuralist reading of the “crisis” in Venezuela to help us
problematize that term and its implications for world order and political hegemonies, as well as
the ways in which social discourses are employed across various times and spaces to aid in the
production of individuals, states, and identities. The events examined in this article are still in
development, and will probably continue to develop over the next decade, hence this is a first
attempt at placing “the Venezuela crisis” within the grander legacy of Latin American politics,
and constitution of 21st century international politics.

(Re)Conceptualizing Security and the State

2
Likewise, my analysis focuses on the implications of the election of several center-right leaders in recent years
throughout Latin America: Mauricio Macri in Argentina in 2015, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski in Peru in 2016, Sebastián
Piñera in 2017 in Chile, Iván Duque in Colombia in 2018, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil in 2018, etc. This electoral shift
signifies a transition from the “Pink Tide” that had previously dominated regional politics.

2
 Kenneth Waltz’s Man, the State, and War (1959) can be viewed as a primordial text
within the field of International Relations (IR), not only because it established neorealism and
pushed the field’s theoretical discussions into its so-called “second debate,” but more
importantly because it framed how subsequent generations of scholars learn about and analyze
IR. Stated differently, Waltz’s division of political space among three images, the individual, the
state, and the international system, has anchored mainstream IR’s thinking towards questions of
war and peace. Thus, IR scholarship can be divided between those who support Waltz’s view
that the third image (the international system) and its accompanying anarchy are the most
important place to look for answers to questions concerning global conflict, and those whom
refute that claim and instead search elsewhere for answers. Even post-structuralist and post-
modern thought, such as Richard Ashley’s (1989) theoretical endeavors, take Waltz’s three
images, and their derided ontological underpinnings, as their starting point to critique neorealist
approaches. For instance, Laura Sjoberg’s feminist critique of Waltz’s work states: “While
gender has not been characterized explicitly as international structure, I argue that such a
characterization is useful both to feminist theory and to international theory (2012: 9, emphasize
mine).” My point here is that IR scholarship aiming to criticize and nullify Waltz’s conception of
an all-encompassing international system, which through its anarchy structures states’ decision
and policy-making, seems in a way to part from his three images and proceed with critique
instead of attempting to look beyond or anterior to those three images.
The objective here, as has been advanced by many post-structuralist thinkers, is not to
suggest that we live in a world of mirages and illusions – but instead to propose that we view
individuals, states, and the international system as mutually co-constituted entities that are in a
constant state of reproduction and rearticulation vis-à-vis each other (Campbell 1992; Der Derian
2009a; Der Derian and Shapiro 1989; Doty 1993; Hansen 1997; Shapiro 1997, 2007).
Furthermore, it is their very materiality that makes it difficult to appreciate this co-constituted
quality about them. Said differently, one could apply Cynthia Weber’s line of reasoning about
the phallus to Waltz’s three images, or as she states when exploring the works of Butler and
Lacan, “Although it is impossible to ‘be’ or to ‘have’ the phallus, it is not impossible to ‘appear’
(not) to be or (not) to have the phallus. This is the very sense of pretending, the ‘seems to’ space
in a Lacanian economy of desire. It is the space of masquerade (1999: 109).” Thus, individuals,
states, and the international system can be refashioned not as well-delineated and separate

3
entities that exist apart from each other, or as objects that “are” or “have” particular
characteristics – but rather as entities that exist in tandem with each other and that appear to be
or to have. Once again, I do not challenge the materiality or “thing-ness” of the world around us.
I simply suggest that nothing exists outside of itself, or the discursive universe of socially
rendered relations of power and symbolic systems that have been constituted by human societies
across millennia (Derrida 1997; Foucault 1978, 1980; Laclau and Mouffe 2001). If Simon Dalby
provocatively asked, “What then might security mean without states (Dalby 1992: 106, cited in
Hansen 1997: 380)?” I further that inquiry by asking in the context of Venezuela’s current
situation: What then might security mean without individuals, states, and the international system
– or at least our present ontology regarding these three entities?
The answer might circuitously lead us back to Waltz’s three mirror images, emphasis
here on the word “mirror,” because mirrors hold a particular place within the Western psyche
and semiotic process stemming from their simultaneous ability to reflect back objects as they
appear to be, or distort the objects that are placed before them (see Onuf 1995). What I am
implying here is that security studies is a field centered on who/what is the proper referent object
of security, be that individuals or states (Krause and Williams 1997). Or to quote Hansen:
“By ‘saying security’ the particular case is characterized as extraordinarily important, and it is moved into a
special area where extraordinary means can be used… This points at the self-referring character of security
discourses, it is not the threat of military force which in itself characterizes the security discourse, it is the
successful construction of a threat which ‘we’ have to act upon (1997: 376-7, italics in original).”

Thus, a critical approach to security studies is one that recognizes an intersubjective relationship
between Waltz’s three images whereby they co-constitute each other, yet at the same time appear
to have a degree of distinction among them (or at least in how they are perceived by society at-
large). Returning to Hansen, she proposes three “anti-methods” (deconstruction, genealogy, and
intertextuality) for better understanding international politics that are of vital importance to our
present inquiry, especially deconstruction as it allows us to navigate the hierarchical dichotomies
that constitute Western thinking in order to undo them (1997: 372). Approaches to Latin
American security tend to oscillate between emphasizing either the state or individuals as the
proper object of desire for security, this article seeks to deconstruct those objects and
demonstrate how they are both one/whole and many/separate at the same time.
Moreover, a recent publication, the Routledge Handbook of Latin American Security,
(Mares and Kacowicz 2016) includes a theoretical sub-section with chapters on neoliberal

4
institutionalism, peripheral realism, constructivism, gender, and so forth. Curiously missing – or
perhaps occulted – is a chapter on post-structuralist or post-modern approaches to Latin
American Security, which seems to imply a greater timeless-ness to Latin American whereby it
can only possibly be read through specific lenses: colonial, Cold War, and post-Cold War
strategic competition. My objective in this article is to partially fill in that gap in the academic
literature by employing post-structuralist approaches to security, which have typically been
applied to comprehend U.S. international politics towards certain regions (see Campbell 1992;
Der Derian 2009b; Shapiro 1997, 2009: 41-63; Solomon 2015), but typically not towards Latin
America. Overall, I seek to demonstrate the value of postmodern approaches to IR for
understanding a nuanced situation such as the one currently unfolding in Venezuela. For case of
point, let us consider Michael Shapiro’s words when discussing the ideas of Foucault:
Michel Foucault put the matter of geographic partisanship succinctly when he noted that “territory is no
doubt a geographical notion, but it is first of all a juridico-political one: the area controlled by a certain kind
of power.” Now that global geographies are in flux, as political boundaries become increasingly ambiguous
and contested, the questions of power and right are more in evidence with respect to the formerly pacified
spaces of nation-states (1997: 15).

I go one step further in this study by proposing that these “global geographies” are not
only ambiguous or in flux, but I also call into question to what extent “spaces of nation-states”
were ever truly pacified in Latin America. In other words, through the theoretical deliberations of
the following sections I aim to partially outline the “violent cartographies” that are unfolding in
relation to Venezuela, and make sense of this moment in international politics. Shapiro defines
this concept in his more recent work by stating:
Violent cartographies are the ‘historically developed, socially embedded interpretations of identity and
space’ that constitute the frames within which enmities give rise to war-as-policy (Shapiro, 1997: ix).
Violent cartographies are thus constituted as inter-articulations of geographic imaginaries and antagonism,
based on models of identity-difference (2007: 293-294).

In regards to Latin America, one could say that a very specific violent cartography has
been charted in that region since the arrival of European in 1492, a cartography aimed at
reclaiming and reinterpreting enormous parcels of space for the purpose of extraction and
exploitation (see Burkholder and Johnson 2010, Galeano 1997, Schoultz 1998, Smith 2008). The
wars of independence imposed a new layer on that violent cartography as white Creole elites
took the reins of the states and embarked on their own project to discipline Latin America’s
space and the bodies that occupied it, instituting various discourses and modes of citizenship in
that process. In 1823, the Monroe Doctrine super-imposed another layer on the region’s violent

5
cartography as the U.S. and its imperial reach turned to the region as its privileged space in
which to constitute its masculinity, hegemony, and identity. To this list we could add many other
layers: the Cuban revolution, Cold War, military right-wing dictatorships, Washington
Consensus, and so forth. “The idea of Latin America” (Mignolo 2005) is not an ahistorical or
atemporal one – it is one that has been successively mapped out for centuries, and the current
situation in Venezuela cannot be divorced from this legacy. However, Latin America’s historical
legacy should not be taken as the sole means through which one can understand Venezuela
either, as will be outlined in the following sections through my discussion of discourses,
multilateralism, and other concepts.
Mainstream IR scholars might critique this article by saying it misses the material reality
of the situation in Venezuela as they reduce it to one word: oil. My rebuttal to that would be that
they miss the nuanced processes unfolding around this issue as they insist on viewing Venezuela
as nothing more than an enormous oil lake, thereby failing to appreciate the importance of
individuals, power relations, and inter-state power competitions. Likewise, the objective of this
article is not to position itself as either in favor or against any particular side of the conflict –
rather I seek to point out the contradictions and drive for power that characterize the rationales
and actions of every party involved from Maduro to Trump, and so forth. In a Foucauldian
(1978) sense, power is not moral or partisan, it is a force, or tool, that every entity within the
global order wants to employ and utilize to serve their interests.
The election of Hugo Chávez as president of Venezuela in 1998 marked the beginning of
a discursive and power dispute for the global positioning of Latin America, and its people, in the
21st century that is still on-going today. Chávez broke Venezuela’s preexisting compacted “Punto
Fijo” democracy and inaugurated a populist and participatory form of democracy that
continuously veered towards authoritarianism, while always trying to maintain an appearance of
democracy (Balderacchi 2017; Corrales and Penfold 2007; Ellner 2010, 2019; McCoy and Myers
2004). Likewise, beyond shaking domestic political discourses and institutions to their core,
Chávez challenged the place of both Venezuela and Latin America within the liberal
international world order (see Corrales and Penfold 2011). This rupture with pre-existing
discourses unleashed a process continued by his successor Nicolás Maduro, in an even more
authoritarian manner, and has had far-reaching and complicated political effects that are in need
of closer examination.

6
Humanitarianism and the Effects of Space-less/Time-less Narratives
This section highlights how numerous hemispheric leaders have draw upon
“humanitarian” discourses to legitimize and rationalize their policy positioning vis-à-vis
Venezuela, specifically the Maduro government in early 2019. Overall, humanitarian discourses
function as part of a greater process that constitutes bodies, and places individual subjectivity
within those bodies, thereby resulting in a complicated process of embodiment that is not
apolitical or objective. More specifically, corporeally-centered discourses (such as international
humanitarianism), and the resulting sanctions and international interventions that these
discourses help enact, portray individuals in a passive manner or to use Foucault’s term as
“docile bodies,” (1977), thereby curtailing their agency and creating an end-effect of violence or
subjugation of “the other.” For instance, let us analyze some of the tweets3 offered by
hemispheric leaders in support of interim president Juan Guaidó, such as Chilean President
Sebastian Piñera on 30 April 2019:
We reiterate our total support for President Guaido and democracy in Venezuela. The Maduro dictatorship
must end by a peaceful force, and within the constitution, of the Venezuelan people. This will restore
freedoms, democracy, human rights and progress in Venezuela (El Comercio 2019).

Or that of Colombian President Iván Duque on the same day:

We call on the military and the people of Venezuela to be on the right side of history, rejecting dictatorship
and the usurpation of Maduro; uniting in search of freedom, democracy and institutional reconstruction,
headed by the Venezuelan National Assembly and the President Juan Guaidó (El Comercio 2019).

As has been argued by many scholars (see Finnemore 1996; Finnemore and Sikkink
1998; Vaughn 2009), international humanitarian discourses are not a given, they have been
gradually introduced and imposed gradually, and can be utilized to achieve both domestic and
foreign political objectives. For instance, both Piñera and Duque have a strategic need to present
themselves before their people as capable leaders who are responding promptly to the growing
demands of Venezuelan migrants within their national borders. Calling upon an international
humanitarian, or humanist, discourse also linguistically renders any actions they may undertake
as inherently acceptable or well-intentioned, since these discourses draw upon a Kantian

3
Tweets are particularly useful for the argument I am laying out here, because they represent a segment or sliver of
discourse that is thrown simultaneously into all of time and space, and has the ability to reach thousands if not
millions of individuals. Tweets, much like discourses, can also be “deleted,” but once they have been published can
never be completely erased, hence my employment of them here as pieces of qualitative data. Hashtags and
abbreviations have been deleted from the tweets, so as to make them easier to read.

7
cosmopolitanism that views cross-border political action as having the possibility of improving
the quality of human life. This is not to suggest that these world leaders are up to some nefarious
or deeper, more sinister “real” intention; but rather to highlight the automatically positive way in
which their discourse is framed and how that gives them political leverage both within the
domestic and international political arenas. Piñera’s employment of a “human rights” trope, or
Duque’s reflection on “freedom, democracy, and institutional reconstruction,” serves to label the
Maduro regime as unable to provide these benefits for individual Venezuelans and could
legitimize the use of violence or the violation of another state’s sovereignty. Humanitarian
discourses do not inherently lead to negative outcomes, but they do hold the potential for
enacting violence and suffering upon human bodies. Coincidentally, these bodies are the same
ones labeled by these discourses as deserving protection. Bodies then are not given – they are
materalized and rendered through discursive practices, and oftentimes in multiple and
contradictory ways (Butler 1993).
The employment of humanitarian discourses thus limits the agency of individual
Venezuelan bodies as it discursively represents their subjectivity as something that has been
taken away from them by the Maduro government, and can only be returned once regime change
occurs in Venezuela. Let us, for instance, examine the tweet of U.S. Secretary of State Mike
Pompeo on 30 April 2019 as well:
Today interim President Juan Guaido announced start of Operación Libertad. The U.S. Government fully
supports the Venezuelan people in their quest for freedom and democracy. Democracy cannot be defeated
(El Comercio 2019).

Pompeo’s claim comes off as dubious, at best, since he is an ex-CIA director and represents the
administration of Donald Trump, which has made anti-immigrant rhetoric its policy hallmark.
Furthermore, the nature of his humanitarian discourse and support for, “people in their quest for
freedom and democracy,” deserves closer scrutiny considering the Trump Administration has
separated migrant children from their parents at the Southern U.S. border in an effort to
discourage immigration, with little regard for the possible long-term psychological damage that
could cause. All hypocrisy aside, this example illustrates how different bodies in different spaces
can be discursively rendered in contradictory and nuanced ways to serve specific political aims,
even if the intentions of those aims are questionable or not.

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 The efforts of Piñera, Duque,4 and Pompeo to characterize the situation in Venezuela as
one of excessive and intolerable human suffering though was countered by supporters of the
Maduro government. For example, we can analyze the tweet of Cuban President Miguel Díaz-
Canel on 30 April 2019 as well:
We reject this coup movement that aims to fill the country with violence. The traitors who have placed
themselves at the forefront of this subversive movement have used troops and police with weapons of war
on a public road in the city to create anxiety and terror (El Comercio 2019).

We can see in Díaz-Canel’s words an attempt to invoke a counter-narrative of the international

humanitarian efforts of his fellow leaders as one of violence and increased suffering, thus
articulating the agency and bodies of Venezuelan individuals in yet another manner. Thus, the
situation in Venezuela gives all parties an opportunity to present themselves before their people
as the “true” defenders and protectors of human rights and humanitarian interests. Moreover,
their present political stance in defense of the Venezuelan people could possibly be used in the
future, by any of these leaders, from Díaz-Canel to Duque, as a tool to legitimize their curtailing
of civil liberties or violating human rights in defense of Venezuelan, or another group of people.
Likewise, these all-encompassing humanitarian narratives leave out the hierarchies and
differences that exist within and between Venezuelan migrants across Latin America and the
U.S., and that are based on race, gender, class, etc. These discourses create a common center and
identity around which all Venezuelans, and their agency, can be read and decoded, temporarily
constituting them as oppressed people in search of freedom, yet the possibility for a shift in those
discourses and a securitization of Venezuelan bodies still lingers.
The point is not to degrade the humanitarian efforts of any of these leaders, in fact a
recent Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) report (Ramsey and Sánchez-Garzoli
2018) has lauded Colombian and Brazilian officials for their humane responses to Venezuelan
migrants. Instead, my aim is to underscore the internal contradictions these discourses hold and
deconstruct them to demonstrate how they give temporary stability to the public image of certain
individuals, and to the national identity of these countries by extension. Venezuela provides
Colombia, Peru, Chile, and so forth (and their respective citizenries) a political center around
which to rally and achieve specific (inter)national aims, such as increased standing or increased
spending. Meanwhile, Venezuela also provides the same impetus for Cuba, Nicaragua, and

4
Chile, Ecuador, and Peru have all moved recently to make it more difficult for Venezuelans to enter into their
national territory and obtain legal work permits, while simultaneously championing the humanitarian cause of
Venezuelan refugees.

9
Bolivia as they draw upon the image of an anti-U.S. and anti-imperialism crusade to justify their
public policy actions. In short, Humanitarian discourses lead to greater discourses in terms in
space and time that serve to order how political processes are conducted.

Space-less
To illustrate my argument about “space” and its function within the current situation in
Venezuelan, and IR more broadly, let us reflect on a specific incident that occurred in the
Brazilian town to Pacaraima, which sits close to the border with Venezuela. In August of 2018, a
mob of furious Brazilians went into the tenement housing built by Venezuelan asylum-seekers
and set it ablaze, proceeding to violently chase the migrants back across the border into
Venezuela as they chanted the Brazilian national anthem (Tsavkko Garcia 2018). The governor
of Roraima state, where Pacaraima is situated, Suely Campos of the conservative right-wing
Progressive Party (PP) also called up the Brazilian federal government to close the border with
Venezuela in an effort to stop the flow of asylum-seekers and institute security and stability
(Tsavkko Garcia 2018). The purpose of these anecdotes is to showcase how important
conceptions of space have been to determining the actions of some individuals in response to the
current situation in Venezuela. As presented earlier, IR is a field primarily concerned with
security and who is the proper object upon which to enact said security, whether that be
individuals, states, etc. Socially conceived notions of space are inherently tied to this process, as
IR attempts to establish coherent and finite delineations of space through imaginary boundaries.
These boundaries then extend towards which bodies are allowed to take up space within the
(inter)national space and how they are allowed to do so. Secondly, the preoccupation with spatial
integrity and security is an extension of concerns about the human body and destiny, as argued
by Nietzsche, and it circuitously gives agents and states a feeling of security in terms of their
identity, standing, and future (see Der Derian 2009: 155-159).
Therefore, millions of Venezuelans leaving a predefined space that has been
ontologically predetermined as “theirs” and entering other spaces inherently arouses (in)security
threats and discursive practices as was outlined above in terms of humanitarianism. Furthermore,
“responding” to the influx of Venezuelan migrants gives individual states an opportunity to
(re)assert their borders, their sense of self, their ontological completeness. Thomas Nail defines
borders by stating: “The border is ‘a process of social division.’ What all borders share in

10
common, following this definition, is that they introduce a division or bifurcation of some sort
into the world (2016: 2).” Sense of self can be taken in this context to mean possessing control
over a parcel of space that a group inherently feels ownership and/or protectorship over. Thus
Governor Campos, despite being a woman, did not employ any humanitarian or motherly
discourses to support her policy stance towards Venezuelan refugees, many of which are women
and children. On the contrary, to rationalize her actions Campos called upon masculine
conceptions of the nation-state and homeland as a territory that must be defended from outside
intruders. The demonstrators who burned down temporary housing and sang the Brazilian
national anthem as they chased Venezuelans out of “their” space also invoked this same line of
reasoning. I present here examples from Brazil, but similar xenophobic incidents, stemming from
gendered and fixed notions of space, border, and nation, have played out everywhere
Venezuelans have sought refuge.
By “space-less” I mean that space possesses a continual and inherent quality in the way it
drives the human psyche to partition the world and enact social divisions that must then be
defended through violent practices in the creation of “self’ and “other,” or “insider” and
“outsider.” This process though is not universally encompassing and is subject, ironically, to
changes across space. For instance, the legacy of white settler colonialism in Latin America has
purposefully left blurry and difficult to defend borders that function to obfuscate social
inequality. Historic problems around land demarcation and border fixing in Latin America even
caused tension among the region’s right-wing military dictatorships during the Cold War and
have sparked numerous inter-state conflicts (see Centeno 2002, Mares 2001). From the Treaty of
Tordesillas, to the diplomatic efforts of the Baron of Rio Branco at the turn of the 20th century, to
the current situation in Venezuela – Latin American politics has been marked by an incessant
and cumbersome need to make sense out of space.
The well-televised clash in February 2019 at the bridge between Colombia and
Venezuela where humanitarian aid was prevented from entering into Venezuela is another
example of how space and its representation plays a role in shaping Latin American political
processes (Casey 2019). The bridge incident gave both Colombian and Venezuelan leaders an
opportunity to demonstrate their masculinity, draw upon their national identity, and temporarily
enact a well-defined border between the two countries. Much of the debate about the situation in
Venezuela also carries out these objectives, while reiterating the centrality of “the state” within

11
global politics and giving it a concrete and perennial appearance, despite its abstract and
imaginary state of being. IR, and diplomatic efforts more broadly, can be taken as a continual
process through which we reiterate our commitment to states as the proper way to divide space
and ourselves from each another, thereby consecrating imaginary differences that are taken as
central and determining of policy and politics. But as Nail argues, “the border is not reducible to
space (2016: 9),” implying that time and other social constitutions play a role in the creation of
states, bodies, and social division.

Time-less
Similarly to how space and its concurrent effects for IR are often-ignored variables
within mainstream scholarship, the same reading can be made of “time.” Within most positivist
approaches to IR time is seen as just there, running its course across the face of a clock with little
affect on the framing and outcomes of human events. As R.B.J. Walker (1993) has pointed out,
time is infused within IR theories typically as either marching towards a Judeo-Christian notion
of salvation and redemption (neo-liberalism), or as functioning in a cyclical manner of repeated
Greco-Roman tragedy (neo-realism), both stemming from a Western psychoanalytical basis. Our
understanding of the “development” of time greatly shifts when we begin to view it as a socially
constituted discourse that works to regiment how we experience and decipher events. Time has
the ability to appear static, progressive, and/or cyclical, all at once – thus scaffolding our
perception of politics.
In regards to the current situation in Venezuela we can see this process playing out daily.
Time is static for the millions of Venezuelan migrants scattered across the globe who view the
situation in their homeland as a constant situation of hyperinflation, crisis, and destruction. For
them, the “reconstruction” of their lives and self-images will be an arduous process as they
attempt to integrate themselves into new societies. This process may ultimately prove futile as
they may be permanently caught in a desire to return to a different time that does not exist, a pre-
crisis Venezuela. For others, such as the U.S. government, time here functions in a progressive
manner allowing it to legitimize calls for regime change or violent engagements with/within
Venezuela in an effort to bring about an “inevitable” alteration in the course of Venezuelan,
hemispheric, and global history.

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 Finally, for many others time also simultaneously appears in a cyclical manner as it
allows them to symbolically represent their stance vis-à-vis the crisis in historic terms that have
been previously utilized to discursively constitute Latin American realities. Specifically, a Cold
War discourse has been employed to divide the debate here as between democracy/dictatorship,
communism/capitalism, freedom/oppression, right/left, and so forth. Despite the fall of the
Soviet Union in 1991, the red scare it jointly represents with Cuba has maintained a durable
quality in its ability to galvanize political action throughout Latin America and set the parameters
for what is and is not acceptable. For case of point we have the tweet of Brazilian president Jair
Bolsonaro, also on 30 April 2019, where he points out the support of Brazilian left-wing political
parties for the Maduro government in an effort to position himself both domestically and
internationally:
Brazil sympathizes with the suffering Venezuelan people enslaved by a dictator supported by the PT
[Worker’s Party], PSOL [Socialism and Liberty Party] and their ideological allies. We support the freedom
of this sister nation to finally live a true democracy (El Comercio 2019, brackets mine).

The framing of the situation in Venezuelan as a Cold War struggle between polar
opposite entities has been a ubiquitous feature of this on-going struggle because it conditions
individuals on how to act, think, and respond to events.5 Violent domestic clashes within
Venezuela between the police and protestors then call to mind the Hungarian Revolution of 1956
or the Prague Spring of 1968, and in spite of the distance between these events in physical/linear
time – they become closely related in the way people experience their temporality. The symbolic
positioning of Venezuela within a Cold War discourse is not recent though, as it has been
employed since Hugo Chávez’s early days in office, and throughout the entire “Pink Tide” wave
of governments, to explain the mentality of these Latin American leaders. The Cold War is both
simultaneously over and still underway across the hemisphere as it can still be deployed to
discursively make sense of political events, even though it has technically been relegated to
history books. My point in this section has been to delineate humanitarian discourses and then
place them within a post-structualist conceptualization of space and time to show how these
variables come together to partially render Venezuelans as docile bodies within global politics.
Docile bodies that can be used for political ends – by every party involved – as they further state-

5
Likewise, the Maduro government is able to internally enact a cyclical discourse of U.S. imperialism and
aggression to explain and decode the present situation.

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centric visions of (inter)national power and aid in the production of Shapiro’s violent
cartographies.

Multilateralism and the Future of Global Hegemony

Now I turn my discussion towards a closer look at “multilateralism” in this context in an
effort to place my discussions within a greater debate on global hegemony and power at the
beginning of the 21st century. Multilateralism is generally seen as a positive force that seeks to
reinforce the international liberal world order. When we conjure images of multilateralism in our
psyche we typically picture the United Nations, G8 meetings, or international conferences
designed to address the “big questions” of global governance. According to neoliberals,
multilateralism and its resultant cooperation are some of the key forces that work to cement our
global order. I however suggest that instead of viewing multilateralism as something of the
center-left (think UNHCR) or a force that joins right and left (think BRICS), we conceptualize it
as a force that can work from any point of the political spectrum, or across it, to achieve political
aims.
For instance, Trump and his foreign policy approach have generally been seen as
possessing a strong dislike and aversion towards multilateralism. This view though is myopic
because although Trump has shown a distaste for specific types of multilateralism, mainly
forums he perceives as leftist or presenting undue burdens such as the Paris Climate Agreement
or NATO, he has still been willing to participate in or entertain efforts which he views as
favorable to his personal standing. Venezuela is a good example of this because Trump views
regime change in Venezuela as possessing a particular potential and opportunity for U.S.
strategic and economic interests, which includes, but goes well beyond oil. To achieve regime
change in Venezuela the Trump Administration has joined with right-wing leaders in Chile
(Piñera), Colombia (Duque), Brazil (Bolsonaro), and so forth, displaying a cordial manner of
engagement that he has not demonstrated towards Angela Merkel or Enrique Peña Nieto, for
example. Multilateralism, done well, typically tends to present participants with certain
discursive benefits: 1) presenting them as engaged world leaders that have “a seat at the table” in
important decision-making processes, 2) providing them with a cover for domestic policy
actions, and 3) allowing them to reassure their domestic political status because they possess
some kind of information, knowledge, or credibility that others lack.

14
 In other words, for individuals like Duque or Piñera, engaging with Trump on the
perceived threat to hemispheric democracy and stability that is Venezuela, allows them to
present themselves before their domestic constituencies in a masculine light as defender of noble
causes and the physical integrity of the homeland. This masculine image could then be used
discursively to push for other policy proposals or reforms, or even to justify violent domestic or
international actions. Masculinity can also be translated from the discursive into concrete
advantages, as leaders who are perceived as taking “tough” stances are typically better evaluated
than those that are viewed as “weak.” Proximity to the hegemon and its military power also
creates a certain image and possibility for spillover of technological, military, and economic
benefits. Participating with the U.S. in its crusade to rid South America of a communist menace
allows these Latin American states, and their leaders, to reassert their core identity and view of
themselves, while their extensions and peripheral boundaries extend discursively towards that of
the regional hegemon creating a mixed self-image. Engagement in multilateralism blurs time and
space and leads to a semblance where it is more difficult to separate the U.S. from Colombia, or
Brazil, and so forth, in terms of who is acting or making decisions and who is to receive blame or
credit for outcomes.
Multilateralism shakes the apparent structure of states as it brings them closer to some
states and individuals, discursively speaking at least, and creates the illusion of distance from
others. Multilateralism, thus, holds the potential to make leaders and states feels masculine and
encouraged in their ontological sense of themselves and their identity, and even more
importantly it affords a fledging (but often intense) notion of security through the bonds and
connections it tenuously builds. Through this case study of Venezuela, we can see how
multilateralism both shakes and stabilizes the imagined/abstract compositions of individuals,
states, and the international system, and how it is one of many modes or types of discourses that
are utilized for that end. My focus here has been on outlining how the Trump administration and
its center-right allies have embarked on this process to displace the Maduro government, but the
same analysis can be made on the other side of the multilateralism that has been inspired among
Venezuela and its allies in the past two decades. This goes back to my point that multilateralism
should not be viewed a having a partisan or ideological face, as it can be molded to serve
numerous discourses and political objectives: some humanitarian, some non-humanitarian, and
some even both of these concomitantly.

15
 Turning towards the U.S. specifically, the current situation in Venezuela affords it some
distinctive discursive and strategic opportunities to make up for losses elsewhere in terms of its
identity and sense of place within the international system. Likewise, involvement in Venezuelan
affairs allows the U.S. to smooth out, or paint differently, at least one small part of its violent
cartography, which has become particularly gruesome since the beginning of George W. Bush’s
global war on terror and the invasion of Iraq. More concretely, in a world where the Trans-
Pacific Partnership and the discourse it sought to enact have failed (due to Trump’s own
handling), but where the Chinese Road and Belt initiatives are thriving – the U.S., simply put,
needs a win. By “win” here I mean an area of the world where it can reaffirm its masculinity and
hegemony and feel, at least temporarily and spatially, secure in its self-image and future. Latin
America has historically always been where the U.S. has tested its hegemonic capacities and
strategies, and where it has gone back to after setbacks in other locations to regain its lost sense
of self. Or as Cynthia Weber writes:
“Caribbean cases could be paired with other U.S. concerns, reading, for example, the Cuban case in the
context of the Cold War generally, the Dominican invasion as “Vietnam writ small” (Wiarda, 1975: 835)…
Grenada as a simulated success in light of the failures in Lebanon and Nicaragua, Panama as a preface to
the Persian Gulf War, and Haiti as a diplomatic success to balance out the diplomatic failures in Bosnia
(Weber 1999: 5).”

Could Venezuela then be an opportunity to discursively make up for U.S. failure, or

inability, to act in Syria, Crimea, or other places? If Obama unsuccessfully pivoted to Asia, could
Trump then be pivoting towards Latin America as the place to remake the image of U.S.
hegemony in the 21st century’s multipolar world order? This pivot may not be welcome in the
region by all, as it holds the potential for violence; but it may become a cornerstone of U.S.
foreign policy initiatives nonetheless with an upcoming presidential election in 2020. Trump
kicked off his last precedential campaign attacking Mexican immigrants, and has made curtailing
immigration from Latin America a central narrative of his administration. He is keenly aware of
the utility that Latin America holds for advancing political narratives within the U.S.’s
intertwined domestic/foreign political spheres. Trump’s sudden empathy for the suffering of the
Venezuelan people might at first seem paradoxical, considering his disregard for the thousands
of immigrants pleading for help at the Southern U.S. border – but both of those processes are
deeply connected because they function in tandem to legitimize policies, violence, and continued
regional hegemony. Moreover, the U.S. is not the only hegemon involved, as both China and
Russia are closely engaged with Venezuela through their multilateral efforts, and will read the

16
outcome of events there as a measure of continued U.S. influence, or lack there of, in the region.
Thus, this section has focused on delineating how multilateralism can come from all sides and
function in the production of global hegemonic narratives as it partially assists in the constitution
of individuals, states, and the international system.

Conclusion, or “Chronicle of a Death Foretold”

In November 2005, Chávez famously declared at the Summit of the Americas meeting in
Mar del Plata, Argentina that he was there to bury the Free Trade Area of the Americas
agreement (Smith 2008: 353-354). Chávez might have been correct in the short-term as he and
other Pink Tide leaders strategically and discursively out-maneuvered the Bush Administration
and thwarted the negotiations; but they ultimately failed to upend U.S. regional hegemony. Latin
America enjoyed a considerable level of egalitarianism in the early post-Cold War environment
of the “end of history,” which encouraged opportunities for (inter-)regional cooperation.
However, the region’s long-term policy options might be curtailed by an anxious U.S. foreign
policy community that increasingly perceives the global multipolar order as turning against it,
with the apparent rise of China and other actors.
In this article, I employed Waltz’s three images and deconstructed them by arguing that
they are not mutually exclusive levels but rather discursively co-constituted entities that reinforce
and affect each other. From there, my analysis outlined how individual Venezuelan refugees can
be painted within grand narratives that exclude hierarchy and nuance, or within contradictory
humanitarian discourses that demonstrate how bodies are at the fore-front of global power
rivalries. Likewise, this study nuanced our collective approach towards time, space, and
multilateralism, as well as their subsequent impact on international politics and security.
Returning to Hansen, she argues that a post-structuralism approach to security underscores a
difficulty in political decision-making because it does lead to scant and diametrically opposed
policy options which leaders can mechanically select from, on the contrary post-structuralism
challenges us to revisit our epistemology and ontology and leaves numerous options open (1997:
384). In many ways, that has been my objective here as I described the paradoxes and
incongruences that compose the current situation in Venezuela by focusing on the relations of
power and identities that it helps to both stabilize and alter. I do not claim clairvoyant abilities to
decide what the future will hold for Venezuela, or if it would be better off with or without

17
Maduro – but we can be certain that the struggle for Venezuela will continue as part of various
violent cartographies and processes that seek to reaffirm Latin America and its people as a
privileged sphere of U.S. influence.

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