Maduro Brings in the United States

Nicolás Maduro shifted gears a bit yesterday, aiming his rhetoric at the United States. He expelled three consular officials, saying they were conspiring:

Denunció que estos funcionarios han estado visitando, durante los últimos dos meses, diversas universidades privadas de Caracas para ofrecer unas supuestas visas, "pero sabemos que lo que andan es conspirando. Los tenemos precisados".

He also said that through John Kerry the Obama administration was lying:

El gobierno de la República Bolivariana de Venezuela rechaza contundentemente las declaraciones del Secretario de Estado de los Estados Unidos, John Kerry, en tanto constituyen una maniobra más del gobierno de Washington por promover y legitimar los intentos de desestabilización de la democracia venezolana que han desatado grupos violentos en los últimos días. 

El gobierno de Obama miente cuando pone en cuestionamiento la vigencia de los derechos humanos y las garantías democrática en nuestro país. Las instituciones de la República Bolivariana de Venezuela, constituidas en un Estado de Derecho y de Justicia, garantizan el ejercicio de los derechos políticos a todos sus ciudadanos, en un marco de amplias libertades cívicas consagradas constitucionalmente.

You can look at these statements through two lenses. The first is that Maduro truly believes the United States is conspiring to overthrow him. The second is that he is using this as a time honored means of rallying the troops against a foreign enemy in a time of crisis.

It may well be both are true to some extent. I have no idea what the consular officials were doing, and Maduro himself wasn't very clear on it, but the Obama administration comments were pretty vanilla. Nonetheless, 12 years ago the United States openly supported a coup in Venezuela, so it is not unreasonable to believe the U.S. government would do it again. At the same time, it is always convenient to have a foreign threat you can point to. In particular, Maduro is increasingly tying Leopoldo López personally to the U.S. government as evidence that he is a fascist traitor.

At this point I am also left to wonder what U.S. officials are even still around to expel. I still haven't seen in either Spanish or English-language press what positions the three people held. We may well be getting into interns or something.

Update: now the Venezuelan government gets more specific and names some names.