A very interesting and relevant volume that complicates the expressly non-partisan nature of US democracy promotion efforts with exhaustive archival research and field work, as well an ambitious theoretical document that attempts to fuse decolonial thought and critical Black studies with literature on US foreign policy.--Benjamin Barson, Bucknell University
In this timely and urgent study, Timothy Gill exposes the latest sordid chapter in the shameful history of US intervention in Latin America. He untangles the labyrinth of programs and organizations that the United States has assembled, under the banner of 'promoting democracy, ' to undermine the effort by the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela to construct a democracy that would actually empower the broad masses. This is a must-read for students of Latin American and international politics and US foreign policy. Encountering US Empire in Socialist Venezuela will also be of great interest to all those concerned with building a more just and equitable international order.--William I. Robinson, author of Global Civil War: Capitalism Post-pandemic
No other work brings into such sharp focus how the United States shaped Chávez's context. Gill exposes how the US promoted not democracy but an opposition with antidemocratic, racist proclivities. He deftly reveals how US contractors, advisors, and diplomats viewed Chávez, Chavistas, and the opposition as unfit, duped, and dependent on US tutelage. We need this book to understand Venezuela today.--Leslie C. Gates, Binghamton University
The United States has long promoted itself as a defender of democracy. In this fine study, Gill gives the lie to this view and shows how US democracy assistance programs were used to undermine rather than strengthen democracy in Chávez-era Venezuela. Using diplomatic cables and interviews, Gill deftly shows how nineteenth-century racism takes on new modalities in Washington's twenty-first-century empire.--Gabriel Hetland, University at Albany