Latino

The Trump administration's new special envoy for Venezuela, Elliott Abrams, clashed Wednesday with freshman Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., during a House hearing on the Caracas crisis after the congresswoman tried to turn focus to Abrams' history in Latin America while asking him point-blank whether he'd support "genocide" if it served American interests. 

As most of his cohorts in the Venezuelan embassy in Washington hastily burned documents and packed their bags to return to the capital Caracas, after President Nicolas Maduro severed all diplomatic ties with the United States last week, the country’s military attaché’ Col. Jose Luis Silva instead became the first high-ranking officer to defect since opposition leader and head of the National Assembly, Juan Guaido, formally challenged Maduro for the nation’s leadership last week.

Thousands swarmed the Venezuelan streets this week, across the country calling for their regime leader Nicolas Maduro to step down. But the anti-government demonstrations were far from spontaneous.

Draped in the flag of their country – once the richest and most prosperous in Venezuela – thousands of Venezuelans poured into the streets on Wednesday and Thursday, vigorously calling for reigning President Nicolas Maduro to be removed from office.

US Vice President Mike Pence has issued a message to Venezuelans, condemning their “dictator” leader Nicolas Maduro and declaring official U.S support for the opposition leader, Juan Guaido.

It’s a relationship that has a history of coziness, but as the regimes of Iran and Venezuela become increasingly isolated and sanctioned by the U.S and much of the international community – the two governments, with the help of Tehran’s proxy Hezbollah, are believed to be tightening the bond.

A Venezuelan Supreme Court justice, who was considered to be a longtime Maduro government loyalist, defected to the United States with his family over the weekend, claiming to object to the President’s forthcoming second term.

With a potent push of instability from neighboring Venezuela and its own internal struggles, Colombia’s Nobel-winning peace process with is on increasingly feeble ground.

The depth of the Venezuelan catastrophe threatens to unravel the stability and wreak financial havoc beyond just Latin America, with little end in sight.

Though Latino voters are a key part of the Democratic coalition, there is a larger bloc of reliable Republican Latinos than many think. And the GOP's position among Latinos has not weakened during the Trump administration, despite the president's rhetoric against immigrants and the party's shift to the right on immigration.