As Venezuela’s Chavista regime presides over the country’s descent into Latin America’s worst refugee and humanitarian crisis in modern times, a mass exodus of nearly five million Venezuelans since 2015, the rhetoric of Western anti-imperialists and the regime itself has absolved it of any responsibility for the crisis and the increasing authoritarianism that led to it by abdicating the regime's agency to act according to its own free will. This paper develops the discursive concept of nonagentic anti-imperialism, a rhetoric that effectively absolves self-declared anti-imperialist regimes, from Castro’s Cuba to Rajapaksa’s Sri Lanka, of human rights abuses and democratic erosions by arguing that these leaders had no choice but to rule with an iron fist in the face of Western imperialism. Focusing on Chavismo, this paper analyzes the steps towards Venezuela’s democratic breakdown taken by both Hugo Chávez and Nicolas Maduro, the nonagentic anti-imperialist rhetoric that deflected the true intent behind these steps, and how those steps led the country to the manufactured disaster it finds itself in today. It concludes by positing that the legitimacy of supposedly anti-imperialist policies hinges not on the fierce rhetoric surrounding them but rather on the lived ends of the people affected by them.
","abstract_html":"<p>As Venezuela’s Chavista regime presides over the country’s descent into Latin America’s worst refugee and humanitarian crisis in modern times, a mass exodus of nearly five million Venezuelans since 2015, the rhetoric of Western anti-imperialists and the regime itself has absolved it of any responsibility for the crisis and the increasing authoritarianism that led to it by abdicating the regime's agency to act according to its own free will. This paper develops the discursive concept of nonagentic anti-imperialism, a rhetoric that effectively absolves self-declared anti-imperialist regimes, from Castro’s Cuba to Rajapaksa’s Sri Lanka, of human rights abuses and democratic erosions by arguing that these leaders had no choice but to rule with an iron fist in the face of Western imperialism. Focusing on Chavismo, this paper analyzes the steps towards Venezuela’s democratic breakdown taken by both Hugo Chávez and Nicolas Maduro, the nonagentic anti-imperialist rhetoric that deflected the true intent behind these steps, and how those steps led the country to the manufactured disaster it finds itself in today. It concludes by positing that the legitimacy of supposedly anti-imperialist policies hinges not on the fierce rhetoric surrounding them but rather on the lived ends of the people affected by them.</p>","abstract_has_math":false,"creators":["Bustillo, Juan"],"institution":null,"degree_name":"Master of Arts (MA)","degree_level":"Thesis","degree_discipline":"International Studies","degree_department":null,"school":null,"contributors":["Maytha Alhassen","Crystal Murphy","Tekle Woldemikael"],"advisors":[],"committee_chairs":[],"committee_members":[],"year":2020,"date_issued":"2020-08-01T07:00:00Z","date_published":"2020-08-01T07:00:00Z","updated_at":"2026-07-24T01:38:09Z","subjects":["Venezuela","Imperialism","Latin America","Refugees","Authoritarianism","Democracy","International Relations","Latin American Studies","Political Theory","Politics and Social Change"],"languages":[],"rights":[],"rights_urls":[],"identifier_entries":[]},"links":{"outbound_url":"https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/international_studies_theses/3","outbound_label":"Repository record","outbound_source":"dc:identifier"},"metadata_groups":[{"id":"people","label":"People","entries":[{"key":"dc:contributor","label":"Contributor","values":["Maytha Alhassen","Crystal Murphy","Tekle Woldemikael"]},{"key":"dc:creator","label":"Author","values":["Bustillo, Juan"]}]},{"id":"academic_context","label":"Academic Context","entries":[{"key":"thesis:degree_discipline","label":"Discipline","values":["International Studies"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_level","label":"Degree Level","values":["Thesis"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_name","label":"Degree Name","values":["Master of Arts (MA)"]}]},{"id":"subjects_keywords","label":"Subjects and Keywords","entries":[{"key":"dc:subject","label":"Dc Subject","values":["Venezuela","Imperialism","Latin America","Refugees","Authoritarianism","Democracy","International Relations","Latin American Studies","Political Theory","Politics and Social Change"]}]},{"id":"identifiers","label":"Identifiers","entries":[{"key":"dc:identifier","label":"Identifier","values":["https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/international_studies_theses/3"]}]},{"id":"additional","label":"Additional Metadata","entries":[{"key":"dc:description.abstract","label":"Abstract","values":["As Venezuela’s Chavista regime presides over the country’s descent into Latin America’s worst refugee and humanitarian crisis in modern times, a mass exodus of nearly five million Venezuelans since 2015, the rhetoric of Western anti-imperialists and the regime itself has absolved it of any responsibility for the crisis and the increasing authoritarianism that led to it by abdicating the regime's agency to act according to its own free will. This paper develops the discursive concept of nonagentic anti-imperialism, a rhetoric that effectively absolves self-declared anti-imperialist regimes, from Castro’s Cuba to Rajapaksa’s Sri Lanka, of human rights abuses and democratic erosions by arguing that these leaders had no choice but to rule with an iron fist in the face of Western imperialism. Focusing on Chavismo, this paper analyzes the steps towards Venezuela’s democratic breakdown taken by both Hugo Chávez and Nicolas Maduro, the nonagentic anti-imperialist rhetoric that deflected the true intent behind these steps, and how those steps led the country to the manufactured disaster it finds itself in today. It concludes by positing that the legitimacy of supposedly anti-imperialist policies hinges not on the fierce rhetoric surrounding them but rather on the lived ends of the people affected by them.
"]},{"key":"dc:source","label":"Dc Source","values":["Bustillo, Juan Andrés. \"The Origin of Usurpation and Tyranny: Nonagentic Anti-Imperialism of the Twenty-First Century and the Legacy of Chavismo.\" Master's thesis, Chapman University, 2020. https://doi.org/10.36837/chapman.000173"]},{"key":"dc:title","label":"Title","values":["The Origin of Usurpation and Tyranny: Nonagentic Anti-Imperialism of the Twenty-First Century and the Legacy of Chavismo"]}]}],"canonical_facts":{"dc:contributor":["Maytha Alhassen","Crystal Murphy","Tekle Woldemikael"],"dc:creator":["Bustillo, Juan"],"dc:description.abstract":["As Venezuela’s Chavista regime presides over the country’s descent into Latin America’s worst refugee and humanitarian crisis in modern times, a mass exodus of nearly five million Venezuelans since 2015, the rhetoric of Western anti-imperialists and the regime itself has absolved it of any responsibility for the crisis and the increasing authoritarianism that led to it by abdicating the regime's agency to act according to its own free will. This paper develops the discursive concept of nonagentic anti-imperialism, a rhetoric that effectively absolves self-declared anti-imperialist regimes, from Castro’s Cuba to Rajapaksa’s Sri Lanka, of human rights abuses and democratic erosions by arguing that these leaders had no choice but to rule with an iron fist in the face of Western imperialism. Focusing on Chavismo, this paper analyzes the steps towards Venezuela’s democratic breakdown taken by both Hugo Chávez and Nicolas Maduro, the nonagentic anti-imperialist rhetoric that deflected the true intent behind these steps, and how those steps led the country to the manufactured disaster it finds itself in today. It concludes by positing that the legitimacy of supposedly anti-imperialist policies hinges not on the fierce rhetoric surrounding them but rather on the lived ends of the people affected by them.
"],"dc:identifier":["https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/international_studies_theses/3"],"dc:source":["Bustillo, Juan Andrés. \"The Origin of Usurpation and Tyranny: Nonagentic Anti-Imperialism of the Twenty-First Century and the Legacy of Chavismo.\" Master's thesis, Chapman University, 2020. https://doi.org/10.36837/chapman.000173"],"dc:subject":["Venezuela","Imperialism","Latin America","Refugees","Authoritarianism","Democracy","International Relations","Latin American Studies","Political Theory","Politics and Social Change"],"dc:title":["The Origin of Usurpation and Tyranny: Nonagentic Anti-Imperialism of the Twenty-First Century and the Legacy of Chavismo"],"thesis:degree_discipline":["International Studies"],"thesis:degree_level":["Thesis"],"thesis:degree_name":["Master of Arts (MA)"]},"updated_at":"2026-07-24T01:38:09Z"}