So, after the mess, I am considering to re-form the US lore with a few differences:
- The Reconstruction process is still happening, and neither Andrew Johnson nor Ulysses S. Grant did pull out Union forces from the South. While being impeached, Johnson used the strength of the Union Army to stamp out Nathan Bedford Forrest and his colleagues in the KKK, while Ulysses S. Grant continued the effort. Eventually, Reconstruction process would be stopped, but Union troops would still be stationed in areas of predominantly African-American population to protect them from political and civil violence during the Jim Crow era (that would make a strong case in the Republican historical opposition against racism).
In Venezuela there will be several major changes:
- Venezuela is released from the US nearing the onset of World War II (around 1939). A dictator, under the name (fictional) of Anton Castillo, more popularly known as El Presidente, rules Venezuela after the US left. The nation would basically still be an US puppet, but Venezuela would have full control of its military and foreign relations, and is able to interfere with 3rd World conflicts (like Cuba and the Soviet Union). El Presidente rules with an iron fist, similar to Fidel Castro in Cuba, and the only party allowed in Venezuela would be the "National Bolivarian Party of Venezuela", and the ideology is nationalism. The economy would follow a fiscally conservative, capitalist method. It would be aligned to NATO. For the better part of the Cold War, the US would be using Venezuela as a proxy for illicit deals (think the Iran-Contra affair, but all the blame is delegated to another nation).
I am willing to do a guerilla war this style, but remember that
El Presidente ruled Venezuela with an extremely tight grip, using an assortment of CIA agents to secret police all the way to employ cocaine cartels as his personal paramilitary and intelligence.