Written by: José Negrón Valera Sputnik
Interview with Victor Hugo Majano, editor of La Tabla/Data Journalism Platform
The Caribbean, once synonymous with calm waters and open trade routes, has become a stage for an act that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has described as a phase that seemed long forgotten in the region.
“They’ve dropped the mask… [the U.S.] committed an absolutely criminal and illegal act when they executed a military assault, kidnapping, and theft like Caribbean pirates on a commercial, private, peaceful ship… They have inaugurated a new era: that of criminal naval piracy in the Caribbean,” he asserted.
Meanwhile, Executive Vice President Delcy Rodríguez lodged a formal complaint with the International Maritime Organization (IMO), deeming the act a “vulgar robbery” and emphasizing that “the real truth is they want our oil, and they want it without payment.”
In this context, Venezuelan researcher Víctor Hugo Majano unravels for Sputnik the intricate threads of this economic aggression.
His diagnosis is clear: what is happening in Caracas is a shift from financial blockade to a de facto naval blockade, ultimately aiming to physically prevent Venezuela from trading its primary resource, thereby choking any possibility of economic resilience.
The evolution of sanctions
For Majano, understanding the seizure of the oil tanker by Washington requires a historical perspective. “It seems like something completely unexpected and new, but it isn’t,” he clarifies.
The researcher traces the origin back to 2018, with the executive order from then-President Donald Trump, which targeted the heart of the oil sector. The initial tool was asset designation by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the Department of the Treasury.
“It was fundamentally aimed at the oil issue and, in a way, progress was made, but I think one of the most important things generated at that time was the identification of ships, specifically tankers, companies, and [vessels], so that they could be designated, meaning subjected to sanctions,” explains Majano.
This process intensified in 2019, extending not only to PDVSA’s own fleet—constructed during Hugo Chávez’s government with vessels from Russia, China, and Spain—but to any asset capable of transporting Venezuelan crude.
However, the expert notes a sort of “dispersion” in the application of these sanctions for a while.
“Amidst all this bureaucratized structure that seeks to lend some legality to the issue, the same U.S. Administration loses its sense,” he reflects.
According to his analysis, recent events mark a dangerous refocusing. “What they’ve done in recent days is to refocus on the most damaging mechanism of hybrid warfare, which is precisely to prevent our main resource from being traded.”
Materialization of the threat
Are we already facing a naval blockade? Majano does not hesitate to assert that the logic leads directly to this.
“By identifying those vessels and expressly stating that they couldn’t be used for the transport of Venezuelan crude… you truncate the fundamental element of a productive process, which is commercialization,” he declares.
The action against the oil tanker and the subsequent sanctioning of six vessels of this kind—“not just any tanker, but specifically the largest,” emphasizes Majano—reveals the tactic. It involves attacking critical logistic links to “inflict significant harm,” he ponders.
But the strategy of siege does not limit itself to exportable crude. Majano recalls a previous episode, less publicized yet equally vital: the interception of a vessel transporting diluents for PDVSA.
These chemicals are essential for moving the heavy oil from the Orinoco Belt, from production fields to shipping ports.
“Without the diluents, our heavy oil cannot even be mobilized internally, let alone leave the production field,” the specialist warns. This fact shows, in his view, that the objective is to comprehensively sabotage the production chain, sealing any escape valve that allows Venezuela to navigate through financial sanctions. It’s an attempt to hermetically seal the blockade.
Venezuelan refinery – Sputnik Mundo,
Is there a limit for the U.S.?
One of the questions is how far the U.S. government is willing to go with its actions in the Caribbean. Venezuela maintains strategic alliances and oil agreements with powers like Russia, China, Iran, and India. Would Washington risk seizing a cargo destined for one of these countries?
“We should think about the possibility of the hegemonic imperial power acting in such a manner,” adds Majano.
His reasoning goes beyond the act itself: the deterrent effect on third parties is part of the calculation. “The question is who will offer such services. They want to break the will of the trader, the service provider, the shareholders of a company that lose a tanker, that lose an asset so important. It’s what Washington is betting on,” highlights the expert.
However, the analyst introduces a crucial variable: military escalation. “We have agreements… that would of course work in a scenario of no physical confrontation. But in this case, we are talking about the deployment of the most powerful military equipment and ships in the world, willing to do whatever it takes.”
This scenario, he warns, places allied great powers in a high-tension dilemma, where they’d have to act in defense of their own energy security interests.
“It’s no longer just a ‘you take the products made in your country’… In this case, you’re being prohibited from even trading your oil, your production. It’s an extreme matter,” affirms Majano. This prohibition on trade, he insists, is an attack on a fundamental right of any sovereign nation.
A crossroads for Latin America and the global order
The seizure of the oil tanker is not an isolated incident in the Caribbean. Majano frames it within a global containment strategy, where the indefinite freezing of Russia’s Central Bank assets by the European Union is seen as part of the same pattern.
“What is the real threat that these hegemonic powers face? It’s precisely the creation of a market and financial alternative,” he argues.
The real danger to established power, according to his analysis, is the loss of the dollar monopoly as a tool for trade and coercion. The aggressions against Venezuela and sanctions against Russia ultimately respond to this common goal: to smother any alternative to the unipolar financial system.
Majano’s warning is a call for lucidity and unity.
The “era of criminal naval piracy in the Caribbean,” denounced by Maduro, is the violent manifestation of a struggle for economic sovereignty and multipolarity.
Overcoming it, the researcher concludes, will depend on “the unity of the people and their Government in defense of their interests and the legitimate right to produce and trade their production.”