‘Spooks hotel’: inside the five-star nerve centre of the US takeover of Venezuela

Key points

• Over breakfast in one of the swankiest hotels in Caracas, you can hear them mulling Venezuela’s past, present and future in sporadically hushed tones.
• As diners tuck in to plates of fried eggs, black beans and arepas, snatched fragments of conversation speak of election roadmaps, political fragmentation and oil-fuelled economic growth.
• But the murmured discussions are not being conducted in Caribbean Spanish by Venezuelan officials pondering their country’s direction after the abduction of President Nicolás Maduro.
• The accents are North American and belong to the US officials, diplomats and spies now calling many of the shots here after Donald Trump’s controversial military intervention on 3 January.
• Neighbouring tables are occupied by huddles of musclebound US marines, tattoos covering their bulging calves, baseball caps covering their heads, and walkie-talkies strapped to their hips.