The US attack on Venezuela and the kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro forms part of a declared plan from the Trump administration for imperial retrenchment in the western hemisphere. Donald Trump and his allies have already made threats of further military aggression against countries like Cuba and Colombia. How seriously should we take those threats, and what are the prospects for resistance to Washington’s new strategy in Latin America?

We spoke to Tony Wood about the situation now facing the Latin American left. Tony is assistant professor of Latin American history at the University of Colorado Boulder and a regular contributor to publications like the New Left Review, the London Review of Books, and Jacobin. He’s also the author of two books about Chechnya and Russia under Vladimir Putin.

This is an edited transcript from Jacobin’s Long Reads podcast. You can listen to the interview here.