After the CIA attempted to topple Cuba’s socialist government using an army of right-wing Cuban émigrés and failed colossally, the site of the invasion, the Bay of Pigs, has become a shorthand not just for US imperialist intervention in the hemisphere, but the ineptitude and incompetence of the US security state. Last week’s truly bizarre coup attempt in Venezuela, an “amphibious raid” of such raw military power that it was actually thwarted by local fishermen, has many drawing comparisons with the Bay of Pigs. But compared to the absurd plot against Venezuela, the ignominious failure that was the Bay of Pigs comes across as a well-thought out scheme.

Precisely who was behind the attempt to overthrow the Venezuelan government is unclear. But it comes in the context of the Trump administration’s escalating attempts at regime change in Venezuela, a campaign that is fully in line with the longer history of the United States seeking to ensure its southern neighbors remain firmly under the thumb of Uncle Sam.

The plan itself has all the makings of a terrible action movie: An army of sixty would bring down the government by crossing the border and kidnapping Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro. The cast of characters could come from a social-political satire, though one perhaps a bit too on the nose. They include a private Florida-based mercenary firm, a Venezuelan general awaiting trial in the United States for narco-trafficking, and possibly an heir to a cheese fortune described by the Associated Press as “eccentric.”