Roundtable on Venezuela, Oil, and Global Politics

Join us for a timely conversation among leading left critics of the Trump administration’s attack on Venezuelan sovereignty and its attempt to seize that nation’s oil wealth. Matt Huber challenges interpretations of these events as simply another case of “blood for oil.” Steve Maher assesses the implications for global political economy, Christy Thornton offers analysis of the diverse effects on – and responses by – Mexico and other Latin American states, and Camilo Pérez-Bustillo explores the relationship between U.S imperial aggression in Latin America and terror against migrants at home.

Matt Huber is Professor of Geography and the Environment at Syracuse University and the author of Lifeblood: Oil, Freedom, and the Forces of Capital, and Climate Change as Class War.

Steve Maher is Assistant Professor of Economics at SUNY Cortland, and Co-Editor of the Socialist Register. With Scott Aquanno he is the co-author of The Fall and Rise of American Finance: From J.P. Morgan to Blackrock. Steve also authored Corporate Capitalism and the Integral State: General Electric and a Century of American Power.

Christy Thornton is Associate Professor of History at New York University, where she is also affiliated faculty in the Department of Sociology and the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. She is the author of Revolution in Development: Mexico and the Governance of the Global Economy. Christy is also the co-director, with Quinn Slobodian, of the History and Political Economy Project. She served for five years as Executive Director of the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA).

Camilo Pérez-Bustillo is the co-founder and coordinator of the International Tribunal of Conscience of Peoples in Movement (Mexico City). He is also the leading translator into English of work by Argentine/Mexican philosopher Enrique Dussel, including The Theological Metaphors of Marx (Duke, 2024)