User:Komodt/sandbox

Potential Topics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States%E2%80%93Venezuela_relations This article does not really contain any information regarding U.S. involvement in the country before the early 2000's. I would like to dive deeper into history and add information from the cold war period

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcos_P%C3%A9rez_Jim%C3%A9nez This article needs expansion according to Wikiproject Venezuela. I plan do add sources, but I am particularly interested in his regime and its violence against critics.

Jimenez Regime (April 1953-December 1958)
Under the rule of the Dictator Marcos Perez Jimenez, the Venezuelan economy experienced a boom, born from Venezuela's great oil wealth. During this prosperity, foreign investment, particularly from American oil companies, grew along with the support from the Jimenez Regime. In 1952, the Treaty of Reciprocal Trade with the United States was renewed, which permitted a wide range of manufactured products from the U.S. to flow into Venezuela, overrunning national markets. Additionally, the staunchly anti-communist regime allowed and supported the exploitation of the country's natural resources by the American oil industry, as a portion of the profits made its way from companies like Mobil and Exxon to the personal coffers of Perez Jimenez. For his support of these American companies, he received the Legion of Merit from the U.S. Government in 1954.

At the same time, United States intelligence agencies collaborated with Perez's Seguridad Nacional to silence communist voices in Venezuela. The Seguridad Nacional, headed by Pedro Estrada, disappeared and tortured thousands of Venezuelans, both in it's headquarters in Caracas and in a confinement camp on Guasina Island in the jungles of the Orinoco. When a coup overthrew Jimenez, more than 400 prisoners were found in the basement of the headquarters of the Seguridad Nacional. In the days following the coup, United States troops were sent to the Caribbean, in the event their assistance would be required.