Regime that cried wolf Distorted fever dreams of US invasion made real by return of Trump

It was the fever dream of the revolution, a dark fantasy spun so many times - each version wilder than the last - until it almost became a joke: the Yankees are coming.

- Rory Carroll

Hugo Chavez, who ruled Venezuela from 1999 to 2013, conjured the scenario again and again, warning that the US president and his henchmen in the CIA and Pentagon were mobilising forces to strike.

Spies, saboteurs, assassins, special forces, mercenaries, missiles, poison, submarines, fighter planes - the empire would stop at nothing to smite Venezuela’s Bolivarian revolution and overthrow its leader.

“Would it be so strange that they’ve invented the technology to spread cancer and we won't know about it for 50 years?” Chavez said in 2011, when he was being treated for cancer. He evoked US submarines prowling off Caribbean beaches and airborne troops attacking the capital, Caracas.

It was, in large part, theatre. Aconfection of claims to justify authoritarian rule, burnish anti-imperialism credentials and delegitimise opponents. Over time, even some supporters rolled their eyes at tales of the Yankee bogeyman.

Yet now, 13 years after an ailing Chavez passed power to his protege, Nicolas Maduro, the fever dream is real. On Saturday US forces bombed Caracas and seized Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores - the “empire” of Chavez’s rhetoric made manifest. No UN mandate, no congressional approval, just raw military power.