While I strongly believe that the Chicago Maroon is the campus’s flagship student paper (I might be biased), UChicago has numerous student-run publications, all of which provide insight into the goings-on of our university and our fellow students. Among those that I regularly go through are the Harper Review, the Chicago Phoenix, and the Chicago Thinker, usually to help get my own writing juices flowing. Yet, one article recently published in the Thinker made me pause.
The article, entitled “Venezuelan Migrants Share their Stories with the Thinker and Celebrate Maduro’s Removal,” quoted anecdotes from migrants on the hardships they faced living in Maduro’s Venezuela, including rampant corruption, authoritarianism, and violence. There is no doubt that these experiences are real, widespread, and worthy of platforming, especially given that Maduro’s government has inflicted immense harm on Venezuela through restricting information and steadily eroding democratic principles and living conditions. Yet, the Thinker article paints a clear picture of these past weeks’ events: one of celebration and ideological vindication, leaving little room for Venezuelans who, while condemning Maduro’s abuses, fear what U.S. intervention may bring.
Other outlets covering the aftermath treat Venezuelan public sentiment as messier and more uncertain, rather than as a single, triumphant mood. Reporting from AP portrays the people of Caracas as trying to figure out who is actually in charge. Long lines formed from gas stations and groceries, and people stocked up preparing for the worst. Some supporters burnt U.S. flags, with signs reading, “Gringo go home.” Others such as Guillermo, a Venezuelan man who currently lives in Chicago, voiced their direct concerns. “It’s confusing. I’m happy that Maduro has lost power, but scared because I fear the consequences of the US taking over my country,” Guillermo said in an interview with The Conversation. These perspectives reflect a real current in Venezuela: the fear that even a hated leader’s exit can be twisted to justify a breach of sovereignty, and the fear of having your country treated as a chessboard for other nations.
Even if you set aside the question of Maduro’s record and the fact that many Venezuelans feel genuine relief, an American intervention as the instrument of “removal” should make us uneasy. It sets a precedent that powerful states can decide, unilaterally, when sovereignty no longer counts, and it hands the U.S. Executive Branch yet another way to act first and justify later. In the hands of a president who has already made dozens of moves to consolidate his authority, this foreign win helps his domestic political capital. And because Venezuela is not just any country, but a major oil state, the optics and incentives are inseparable from the resources. Trump has reportedly met with oil executives to discuss Venezuela’s future, and, even in that meeting, executives expressed reluctance to move in, describing the country as effectively “uninvestable” under its current legal and security conditions. When I hear intervention and investment pitches saddled this close together, it brings me back to the history of American imperialism in Latin America. To be fair, I wouldn’t say that what I’ve written is required in a story about Venezuelans sharing their viewpoints, but some level of background is necessary to have comprehensive reporting. This does not require praising Maduro or denying his abuses; it just requires admitting that the methods do matter, and that a student publication should not treat interventionist politics as an afterthought.
The problem isn’t that the Thinker interviewed migrants who are relieved. It’s that the piece treats this relief as the full story, and, in doing so, it normalizes a set of assumptions that deserve some scrutiny. By foregrounding celebration and ideological “net good,” the article sends the implicit message that the “how” of Maduro’s removal is either self-evidently justified or not worth questioning. The Thinker’s mission statement interprets a quote by former UChicago President Hanna Holborn Gray as arguing: “[T]he university possesses a duty to expose its students to numerous and varied ideas.” To stand by these ideals, readers of the Thinker deserve to hear from Venezuelans who celebrate and Venezuelans who worry. Including multiple perspectives isn’t forcing a two-sided debate; it’s just basic reporting transparency. And, at a time when this same U.S. administration is floating military options in other countries, it’s even more vital that our journalism distinguishes moral relief from the normalization of intervention as a U.S. tool of consolidating power.
