NewsTracker Answers for week of Mar. 30, 2020

Q: President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela was indicted in the United States last week in a narco-terrorism and cocaine trafficking conspiracy in which prosecutors said he led a violent drug cartel even as he amassed power. Where is Venezuela?

Circle the area on this map


Q: The indictment accused Maduro and other members of his inner circle of conspiring with rebels in the nation on Venezuela’s western border “to flood the United States with cocaine” and use the drug trade as a “weapon against America.” What nation is Venezuela’s neighbor?

A. Brazil

B. Colombia

C. Guyana

D. Trinidad and Tobago


B. Venezuela is bordered on the west by Colombia, Brazil to the south, Guyana to the east and the island nation of Trinidad and Tobago to the northeast in the Caribbean Sea. Maduro and his associates were accused colluding with a dissident faction of FARC, a Marxist-Leninist guerrilla group that disbanded in a 2017 deal with Colombia’s government.


Q: Maduro is already under U.S. sanctions and has been the target of a U.S. effort aimed at pushing him from power. Venezuela’s economy is in shambles despite the nation having its greatest wealth in which resource?

A. Coal

B. Gold

C. Iron

D. Oil


D. Venezuela has more proved reserves of crude oil than any other nation in the world. But after oil prices plummeted, the nation descended into an economic and political crisis under Maduro. It is estimated that 6 million refugees have fled worsening conditions in Venezuela in recent years.


Q: The U.S. and Venezuela have been ideological foes for two decades, when Maduro’s predecessor, the late Hugo Chávez, initiated socialist policies after he was elected president in 1998. Which nation supports Chavez’s socialist heir Maduro?

A. Canada

B. Brazil

C. Russia

D. Spain


C. Russia and Cuba have been longtime political and financial supporters of the Venezuelan regime. Russia last week called the U.S. charges against Maduro absurd and said that sanctions on Venezuela could become “a tool of genocide” amid the coronavirus pandemic.


Q: Chavez called his socialist program a "Bolivarian Revolution," named after Simon Bolivar, the great South American revolutionary of the early 1800s. He was born in the city which is now the capital of Venezuela. What is the capital?

A. Caracas

B. La Paz

C. Lima

D. Quito


A. With metropolitan population of nearly 3 million people, Caracas also is the largest city in Venezuela. “El Liberatador” Bolivar led what is now, Venezuela, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Panama to independence from the Spanish Empire.