Latin America Correspondent

Latin America & the US: Ghost Fleets & Venezuelan Oil; Update on Kilmar Abrego Garcia; Understanding Maria Corina Machado; Haitian Compas Music Given UNESCO Status

• Latin America Correspondent

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Latin America Correspondent Jon Bonfiglio in conversation with journalist Julia Tilton from The Daily Yonder, the US's only national news organization for rural people and places.  

Referenced in the show: 

Haitian Compas music, recognized by UNESCO - 

https://youtu.be/Zh3BLZr25-U

NYT article on Maria Corina Machado -

 https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/10/world/americas/maria-corina-machado-venezuela-nobel.html


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Julia Tilton:

Hello everyone, and welcome back to the Latin America Correspondent Podcast. I'm Julia Tilton, reporter at the Daily Yonder, a national news outlet here in the United States that covers rural communities. And I'm joined by Jon Bonfiglio for our weekly conversation on what's happening around the region. Jon, hi, how are you?

Jon Bonfiglio:

I'm good, thank you. How are you?

Julia Tilton:

I am doing well. We have a lot to discuss this week.

Jon Bonfiglio:

For a change.

Julia Tilton:

For a change. I want to start with what has been truly dominating the headlines here in the United States. On Wednesday, December 10th, the U.S. seized an oil tanker that was headed eastward in the Caribbean Sea near Venezuela. That ship is called the Skipper, and it was carrying Venezuelan oil from the state-owned oil company PDVSA. Now, US officials here are saying that the skipper had been linked to the smuggling of oil from Iran, which is, of course, a country that the U.S. has heavy sanctions against. The link to Iran, though, interestingly, is also being used as justification for the seizure of the tanker by U.S. officials. Attorney General Pam Bondi posted a video on social media that showed armed security personnel repelling down onto the tanker's decks from a helicopter. And Bondi said that the tanker had been used to transport, quote, sanctioned oil from Venezuela and Iran. Then yesterday, December 11th, White House press secretary Caroline Levitt told reporters there is a quote legal process for the seizure of the tens of millions of US dollars worth of oil that are aboard the ship. And on Wednesday, so two days ago, Trump suggested that the U.S. might just keep the oil. Now, the New York Times analyzed the vessel's tracking data over the past couple of years and found that it is true that the ship has often carried oil from countries under U.S. sanctions, including multiple trips to Iran and Venezuela over the last two years. The Times also found that in 2022, so this was under President Joe Biden, the ship was placed under sanctions by the U.S. Treasury Department. And the Treasury Department noted at the time that the vessel was part of, quote, an international oil smuggling network that facilitated oil trades and generated revenue, end quote, to support the Iran-backed militia group Hezbollah in Lebanon, as well as the Iranian military. Now, last week when I was in Washington, DC, I spotted these handmade signs reading no war and Venezuela, basically peppered across the district's Latino neighborhoods. And there was a real visceral sense of uncertainty about what's going on in that part of the world right now. So my question to you, John, is why now with this oil tanker seizure, even if the link to Iran checks out, why go after this particular ship at this particular moment, which of course comes after months of airstrikes on smaller fishing boats in the region, which the Trump administration is saying are linked to Venezuelan drug trafficking?

Jon Bonfiglio:

So I guess the first thing to say is that the link to Iran is verifiable. Um, right? We might get on to the ghost ship fleet in a minute, but um largely the Venezuelan ghost fleet, dark fleet network is the same as the Iranian one. They basically share ships because they share a market. They they both have sanctioned, uh heavily sanctioned oils, uh oil networks, uh, and they have the same recipients, so they have the same buyers, which largely speaking is is China. So they have similar structures and they've shared this for for years. The why now I think is it's um I I don't doubt that this has not been in the planning for weeks and months. Uh I imagine this was devised on the back of a postage stamp by some bright spark um probably in the uh on the building team at the ballroom in the east wing at the moment in the last few days. Seems to me that this is uh an implicit admission that their previous tactic, the boat strikes, was not working, and that uh so this shift in policy sort of indicates that what they're well secondary, the the shift in policy also indicates implicitly that what they're doing also has nothing to do with the with drugs in in the first place. That sort of it reveals it's the uh the curtain coming back on on Oz. I think it's also interesting that their legal justification, uh as far as there is one, also seems to be pretty uh vocally that it's fine to act illegally against something which is already illegal, uh, that there should be no no issue there. And um and I think with these uh illegal seizures against illegal oil, it's sort of worth also bearing in mind that the the oil is illegal because the US says it's illegal, and because the US has sort of international and economic might to be able to coerce others into sort of its position. Um the ghost fleet that again is shared between Iran and Venezuela, is uh generally regarded as numbering in excess of 80, somewhere between 80 and 150 vessels. And these continually it's interesting that the New York Times tracks the vessel because it's generally pretty hard to do this because the vessels often change identity, they continually uh switch off their sort of geolocators, they fly under false flags and so on. This one, the the skipper was flying under a Guyanese uh flag. Um continuing on about the sort of the biggest client being being China. There's I think there's also a flip side to that coin because in what may be something of a surprise, I mean it's not much of a surprise, but I think in an international media landscape it is something of a surprise. The largest commercial operator of Venezuela, uh Venezuelan oil, is not their ghost fleet or some foreign entity. It is, in fact, US oil giant uh Chevron, which operates unaffected by US sanctions as it holds as of August. I mean it's got a long history chevron with Venezuela, but as of August, it holds a special operating waiver license issued by the Trump administration. Uh and the US, you know, we're not exactly seeing the US undertaking made-for-television seizures of chevron tankers. Because I don't know if that answers your question.

Julia Tilton:

Well, it will be interesting to see what happens next. I want to move on to another piece of breaking news this morning on Kilmar Abrego Garcia, that is, of course, the Maryland father and Salvadoran immigrant, who was released from U.S. immigration detention yesterday evening on Thursday, December 11th. This was after he spent months in federal custody. And then this morning, this is Friday, December 12th, a federal judge in Maryland, here in the United States, ruled that immigration officials cannot detain Abrego Garcia until the court conducts a hearing. The judge issued this order in response to Abrego Garcia's lawyers who asked for his protection because he has a scheduled appointment at an immigration and customs enforcement, that's ICE, at one of their offices this morning. And it was during a similar immigration check-in back in August that Abrego Garcia was taken into federal custody where he's been for the last several months. Before that, and you probably have heard us discuss this before on this podcast, Abrego Garcia became somewhat of a flashpoint in the Trump administration's immigration crackdown. That was because he was wrongly deported to a prison in El Salvador. He had immigrated to the U.S. illegally when he was a teenager to join his brother, who had become a U.S. citizen. And in 2019, an immigration judge found that Abrego Garcia had a quote, well-founded fear of danger in El Salvador if he was deported back there due to a gang that was targeting his family, members of his family. So that 2019 settlement gave Abrego Garcia protection from being deported to El Salvador. And then, of course, under the Trump administration, he was deported to El Salvador. So it's been reported that ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has been seeking to instead deport Abrego Garcia to a series of African countries. This morning, that judge in Maryland wrote as part of her order, quote, for the public to have any faith in the orderly administration of justice, the court's narrowly crafted remedy cannot be so quickly and easily appended without further briefing and consideration. End quote. John, what do you make of this latest development?

Jon Bonfiglio:

I mean, I guess to some extent it was inevitable, but whether the court's judgment is adhered to, or whether there's again some other kind of sleight of hand which then um brings uh Gilmar Abrego Garcia back into some kind of custody is I guess we we wait to be to to see. Obviously, there is a um uh a sort of uh dystopic strategy in place by ICE of um deliberately uh hovering around um immigration centres where uh individuals have to go to register and check in and then undertake these these arrests there. It's like a catch-22 because of course the immigration uh the immigrants are not going to want to attend these meetings, that therefore it sort of pulls them further into an illegal underground process, which makes them all the more vulnerable. Um just as an aside to the related to the topics we're talking about, but to the whole El Salvadorian gang issue, um there's sorry, not El Salvadorian gang issue, but uh uh what took place with El Salvadorian gangs in which obviously um geographically also move into the region and aren't just don't just exist in El Salvador. Um there is credible evidence emerging from Honduras of MS-13, one of the um El Salvadorian, not tourist El Salvadorian gangs, which to some extent has sort of escaped the uh the Naibu Keli crackdown, having actually participated in coercion during the recent Honduras election, um, in favor of Nazir Tito as Asfula, Trump's uh favoured candidate, which is kind of a an interesting development, and I'm not quite quite sure how that works or what that means, but uh there's definitely been quite a few voices on the ground that have sort of related that back. And of course, at the moment we're still uncertain what the uh election result in Honduras is going to um to be. Who would have thought uh a year ago that the name Gilmar Abrevo Garcia would become a sort of a lightning rod for um questionable extrajudicial practices as regards um immigration and immigration officials in in the USA, but that that's that's where we are. Um I guess another story this week, of course, which relates to the Venezuelan tanker uh thing is uh Maria Corina Machado, um now in Oslo after her daring escape, which is now what is making all of the tabloid uh headlines? I mean, there is some interesting aspects to that escape in the sense that it was a land journey. It was pretty clear when that again flight tracking data was was checked that actually she flew out of Curacao, so she was moved uh across land and water from Venezuela into Curacao and then flown up into uh Northern Ireland then across to Oslo. Has has the story of Machado arriving in um in Norway uh been a sort of an ancillary uh bit of news in the US alongside the US seizure of the tanker?

Julia Tilton:

No, I mean I was listening to NPR this morning, and the lead story was the seizure of the oil tanker, and then immediately the next story was about Machado. So it it's hard to know if if that's being linked because Venezuela is in the headlines here much more than I would say is is usual. It's it's quite rare to have any story about Latin America be the lead story, um, but it's certainly dominating headlines. Um I think the sort of intrigue around Machado's movement from Venezuela to Norway is capturing a lot of attention. I mean, there's that detail that she at one point was wearing a fake wig and then hopping on a fishing skiff, um, of course, in order to make it to Oslo to participate in the Nobel Peace Prize festivities. Uh, she arrived too late to attend the ceremony. That's why her daughter, Anna Karina Sosa, accepted the prize on her behalf. Uh, of course, uh, Venezuela has been in the news a lot recently. And so it's interesting how Machado might play a role in what's playing out. Um, I came across this line of analysis from Genevieve Glatzki's piece in the New York Times, which talked about Machado's increased visibility now that she surfaced abroad. Glatsky writes, quote, that visibility also exposes her to sharper scrutiny. Her backing of aggressive tactics and U.S. military pressure could draw accusations of warmongering, while any hesitation about backing Mr. Trump's hard line could risk upsetting a volatile White House. So again, it's interesting because she has embraced the Trump administration's military pressure in Venezuela, um, or in the region rather, and she has not openly criticized any of the strikes that we've seen thus far. Obviously, the seizure of the oil tanker is a developing story, and I have not come across anything from Machado on that front. But I'm curious what her next moves might be, John, if you have any thoughts on that.

Jon Bonfiglio:

She definitely has a uh the ear of the president and is sort of um using using the opportunity. Um and of course, now the fact that she's uh removed from Venezuela allows herself to be sort of more vocal and for the sort of press circus to follow her around um a little bit more. Uh the scrutiny point you bring up, I think, is really interesting because it it's worth noting that a number of civil organizations actually boycotted this Nobel Peace Prize ceremony exactly because of the perspective that um it was given erroneously, given that she's not she's not exactly pushing for peace with Venezuela, but actually sort of uh leveraging uh military intervention. Truth be told, I think it is an odd decision by the Nobel Committee, um, and it has generated controversy because uh she is an important figure, crucial figure for Venezuela's opposition, but she's definitely no proponent of of peace. She's a smart political operative, um, but she's urging for military interests, for uh military engagement because it's in her interest. And the other subsequent sort of point of um I guess critique which is emerging is that historically being of a particular kind of right of center political um engagement, she also has historic links to the Likud Party in Israel as well, uh which are everything that relates to that in terms of the um the ongoing genocide of the Palestinians. None of these positions are exactly, I'd say, sort of Gandhi-ish positions of non-violence. There's one other thing I'd bring up with regards to a sort of a US audience and its interest in Maria Corino uh Machado. She is regarded, and basically it's religion, so I'll give you the I'll spoil it, spoil it up before I get into detail of it. Um, she is regarded or at least sort of referenced and greeted with a kind of religious fervor, more of a sort of a saviour than than a politician. That's been the the case now for a number of years, and also she knows this. If she looks at, if you look at images of her in Oslo, there's a kind of a sort of a sandcloth and ashes austerity to her to her attire, and fairly regularly there's a very prominent Christian cross which pops up around her neck at key meetings. She also regularly actually she's sort of toned down the military incursion discourse a little bit recently, but she's shifted it, and she's now talking repeatedly about the Maduro regime as being uh an evil regime, which look you know basically you know as it it is, but the point is is her framing and the potential use of violence in her in her argument is sort of being set up as something of a of a holy war, I think, and I think that plays into sort of a US sensibility as well. But there's a kind of more uh uh Mary, Virgin Mary, really, than it is sort of a Margaret Thatcher who she regularly references as being one of her main main role models. But I think we're gonna we're gonna hear a lot more of her, and she undoubtedly has. I don't know, I don't know what particular uh means of communication, uh signal or otherwise she has to the White House, but uh she definitely has uh regular conversations with with Donald Trump and is now one of the the most strident voices in the next steps of whatever it is that happens in Venezuela.

Julia Tilton:

Yeah, that's so interesting. Your point about using religion as a way to leverage power and and grasp attention. Certainly, I don't think the next steps in Venezuela are going to be peace, but we we'll see on that.

Jon Bonfiglio:

I mean the the the the tanker seizure has been a success for Donald Trump and the Trump administration. There is little doubt that it has been a success as a television, as a televisual prime time viewing opportunity. And it's also been a success because it is going to it does strangle Nicolas Maduro uh where it hurts, which is uh in the little functioning economy that Venezuela has, is based around oil. So I suspect that that's going to be an ongoing angle of um of engagement for the next few weeks. Um it's also been a week, Julia, which has sort of launched us back into some of the basis rhetoric from the US president, specifically as relates um to term migrants. Uh, of course, uh at the forefront of this have been Somalian, the Somalian community and the Haitian community as well.

Julia Tilton:

Yeah, so our listeners might remember that one of Trump's favorite and perhaps his most racist insults, which is he says a lot of racist things, so that's really saying something. Um, back in 2018 during his first term, was to refer to countries with majority non-white populations, Haiti and El Salvador among them, as quote, shithole countries. This prompted a firestorm in the media after those comments in 2018. And after denying that he made those comments for years, Trump finally fessed up to using that, again, particularly vulgar language somewhat nonchalantly this past week at a rally in Pennsylvania on part of his uh economics tour. It's worth noting that back in 2018, Trump specifically singled out Haiti as well during debates over a bipartisan immigration deal at the time, and he told lawmakers behind closed doors that he did not want any more immigrants from Haiti. But to end on somewhat of a more positive note, and in sticking with Haiti this week, the Haitian music and dance genre Kompa made UNESCO's cultural heritage list. Kompa is inspired by merengue. And it's infused with percussion. It combines the Haitian drum tanbo with kongas, electric guitars, and trumpets, among other instruments. UNESCO said this week that the music holds deep cultural significance and often touches on themes of love, freedom, peace, and resistance. And Dominique DuPoy, Haiti's foreign former foreign affairs minister, called the inclusion of Kompa on UNESCO's list, quote, an ode to joy.

Jon Bonfiglio:

Love, freedom, peace, and resistance. How very 1970s? All of that, uh we'll we'll link to some of the music in the in the show notes for anybody who wants to follow through on that. Um, but I think there's more good news, isn't there, Julia? Because how many days away are you from attending the Bad Bunny concert?

Julia Tilton:

I am eight days away.

Jon Bonfiglio:

Do you have like an advent calendar that you open the windows and reveal another little trinket, Puerto Rican trinket as you get closer to the to the day?

Julia Tilton:

Oh, that's a good idea. Perhaps I should do that maybe for the last the the final week leading up to the concert.

Jon Bonfiglio:

Yeah, and I think um when you do get to the concert, can you make sure to take a big crucifix with you, please? I'd like a photo of you at a bad bunny concert. Uh aping Maria Corina Machado. Well, look as ever, thanks a lot and look forward to talking to you in a week.

Julia Tilton:

Thanks, John.