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From NY Courthouse to Venezuela, Protesters Demand Immediate Release of Maduro and Cilia Flores
"We hope that in the United States, if justice truly exists, a trial will be held that will lead to President Maduro’s freedom," said one supporter of the Venezuelan leader.
Mar 26, 2026
Supporters of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro gathered in both New York and the Venezuelan capital of Caracas on Thursday to demand his release.
Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were abducted by the US military in January and brought to the US to face narco-terrorism, drug trafficking, and weapons charges. The couple have pleaded not guilty to all charges.
As reported by The Associated Press, many demonstrators picketed outside a federal courthouse in Manhattan ahead of a scheduled status hearing for Maduro and Flores, and called for all charges against them to be dropped. A group of counterprotesters, meanwhile, demonstrated in support of the couple's prosecution.
"In a noisy scene, protesters and supporters chanted, blew horns, and beat drums and cowbells," reported the AP. "Among the anti-Maduro contingent, one person waved a sign reading 'Maduro rot in prison.' On the other side of a metal barrier, people held signs reading 'Free President Maduro.'"
Hundreds of demonstrators also gathered in Caracas for a government-sponsored rally demanding Maduro and Flores' return to Venezuela, which has been governed in his absence by acting President Delcy Rodríguez.
One attendee at the demonstration, an 80-year-old retiree named Eduardo Cubillan, told the AP that he hoped for a speedy acquittal of the deposed Venezuelan leader.
"We hope that in the United States, if justice truly exists, a trial will be held that will lead to President Maduro’s freedom," Cubillan said, "because this kidnapping violated international legal principles, and we want justice to be served."
In a social media message, the Embassy of Venezuela to Trinidad and Tobago also expressed solidarity with Maduro and Flores.
"Today, court day, we demand with strength and determination, the immediate release of Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro and his wife and MP Cilia Flores," the embassy wrote.
During Thursday's court hearing, reported ABC News, Judge Alvin Hellerstein said that he would not dismiss the charges against Maduro and Flores, although he "appeared to wrestle with how to assure Maduro had access to sufficient counsel."
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The Decapitation That Failed: Venezuela After the Abduction of President Maduro
Washington’s kidnapping of Maduro was intended to demonstrate the empire’s dominance. But it also exposed its limits.
Feb 22, 2026
The kidnapping of a sitting head of state marks a grave escalation in US-Venezuela relations. By seizing Venezuela’s constitutional president, Washington signaled both its disregard for international law and its confidence that it would face little immediate consequence.
The response within the US political establishment to the attack on Venezuela has been striking. Without the slightest cognitive dissonance over President Nicolás Maduro’s violent abduction, Democrats call for “restoring democracy”—but not for returning Venezuela’s lawful president.
So why didn’t the imperialists simply assassinate him? From their perspective, it would have been cleaner and more cost-efficient. It would have been the DOGE thing to do: launch a drone in one of those celebrated “surgical” strikes.
Targeted killings are as much a part of US policy now as there were in the past. From former President Barack Obama’s drone strikes on US citizens in 2011 to President Donald Trump’s killing of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, lethal force has been used when deemed expedient. And only last June, the second Trump administration and its Zionist partner in crime droned 11 Iranian nuclear scientists.
The present US-Venezuelan détente is making history. So far—in Hugo Chávez’s words, por ahora—it does not resemble the humanitarian catastrophes imposed by the empire on Haiti, Libya, Iraq, Syria, or Afghanistan.
The US posted a $50 million bounty on Maduro, yet they took him very much alive along with his wife, First Combatant (the Venezuelan equivalent of the First Lady) Cilia Flores.
The reason Maduro’s life was spared tells us volumes about the resilience of the Bolivarian Revolution, the strength of Maduro even in captivity, and the inability of the empire to subjugate Venezuela.
Killing Nicolás Maduro Moros appears to have been a step too far, even for Washington’s hawks. Perhaps he was also seen as more valuable to the empire as a hostage than as a martyr.
But the images of a handcuffed Maduro flashing a victory sign—and declaring in a New York courtroom, “I was captured… I am the president of my country”—were not those of a defeated leader.
Rather than collapsing, the Bolivarian Revolution survived the decapitation. With a seamless continuation of leadership under acting President Delcy Rodríguez, even some figures in the opposition have rallied around the national leadership, heeding the nationalist call of a populace mobilized in the streets in support of their president.
This has pushed the US to negotiate rather than outright conquer, notwithstanding that the playing field remains decisively tilted in Washington’s favor. Regardless, Venezuelan authorities have demanded and received the US’ respect. Indeed, after declaring Venezuela an illegitimate narco-state, Trump has flipped, recognized the Chavista government, and invited its acting executive to Washington.
NBC News gave Delcy Rodríguez a respectful interview. After affirming state ownership of Venezuela’s mineral resources and Maduro as the lawful president, she pointed out that the so-called political prisoners in Venezuelan prisons were there because they had committed acts of criminal violence.
Before a national US television audience she explained that free and fair elections require being “free of sanctions and… not undermined by international bullying and harassment by the international press” (emphasis added).
Notably, the interviewer cited US Energy Secretary Chris Wright’s admission made during his high-level visit to Venezuela. The US official said that elections there could be held, not in three months, but in three years, in accordance with the constitutionally mandated schedule.
As for opposition politician María Corina Machado, the darling of the US press corps, Rodríguez told the interviewer that Machado would have to answer for her various treasonous activities if she came back to Venezuela.
Contrary to the corporate press’s media myth, fostered at a reception in Manhattan, that Machado is insanely popular and poised to lead “A Trillion-Dollar Opportunity: The Global Upside of a Democratic Venezuela,” the US government apparently understood the reality on the ground. “She doesn’t have the support within, or the respect within, the country,” was the honest evaluation, not of some Chavista partisan, but of President Trump himself.
Yader Lanuza documents how the US provided millions to manufacture an effective astroturf opposition to the Chavistas. It is far from the first time that Washington has squandered money in this way—we only have to look back at its failed efforts to promote the “presidency” of Juan Guaidó. Its latest efforts have again had no decisive result, leaving Machado in limbo and pragmatic engagement with the Chavista leadership as the only practical option.
Any doubts that there is daylight between captured President Maduro and acting President Rodríguez can be dispelled by listening to the now incarcerated Maduro’s New Year’s Day interview with international leftist intellectual Ignacio Ramonet.
Maduro said it was time to “start talking seriously” with the US—especially regarding oil investment—marking a continuation of his prior conditional openness to diplomatic engagement. He reiterated that Venezuela was ready to discuss agreements on combating drug trafficking and to consider US oil investment, allowing companies like Chevron to operate.
That was just two days before the abduction. Subsequently, Delcy Rodríguez met with the US energy secretary and the head of the Southern Command to discuss oil investments and combating drug trafficking, respectively.
Venezuelan analysts have framed the current moment as one of constrained choice. “What is at stake is the survival of the state and the republic, which if lost, would render the discussion of any other topic banal,” according to Sergio Rodríguez Gelfenstein. The former government official, who was close to Hugo Chávez, supports Delcy Rodríguez’s discussions with Washington—acknowledging that she has “a missile to her head.”
“The search for a negotiation in the case of the January 3 kidnapping is not understood, therefore, as a surrender, but as an act of political maturity in a context of unprecedented blackmail,” according to Italian journalist and former Red Brigades militant Geraldina Colotti.
The Amnesty Law, a longstanding Chavista initiative, is being debated in the National Assembly to maintain social peace, according to the president of the assembly and brother of the acting president, Jorge Rodríguez, in an interview with the US-based NewsMax outlet.
As Jorge Rodríguez commented, foregoing oil revenues by keeping oil in the ground does not benefit the people’s well-being and development. In that context, the Hydrocarbon Law has been reformed to attract vital foreign investment.
The Venezuelan outlet Mision Verdad elaborates: “The 2026 reform ratifies and, in some aspects, deepens essential elements of the previous legislation… [I]t creates the legal basis for a complete strategic adaptation of the Venezuelan hydrocarbon industry, considering elements of the present context.”
As Karl Marx presciently observed about the present context, people “make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances.” The present US-Venezuelan détente is making history. So far—in Hugo Chávez’s words, por ahora—it does not resemble the humanitarian catastrophes imposed by the empire on Haiti, Libya, Iraq, Syria, or Afghanistan.
But make no mistake: The ultimate goal of the empire remains regime change. And there is no clearer insight into the empire’s core barbarity than Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s speech at the Munich conference with his praising of the capture of a “narcoterrorist dictator” and his invocation of Columbus as the inspiration “to build a new Western century.”
Washington’s kidnapping of Maduro was intended to demonstrate the empire’s dominance. But it also exposed its limits: the durability of the Bolivarian Revolution and the reality that even great powers must sometimes negotiate with governments they detest. The outcome remains uncertain.
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Laura Dogu: The American Coup Expert Appointed by Trump as Top US Envoy in Venezuela
Dogu’s appointment ultimately signals not innovation but continuity: a recalibration of tactics in pursuit of the same objective that has defined US policy toward the Bolivarian Revolution for decades—regime change.
Feb 13, 2026
Laura Dogu, newly appointed US envoy to Venezuela, is described by the Los Angeles Times as an appropriate choice because she “navigated crises” in Nicaragua and Honduras during periods of “social and political volatility.” What the LA Times fails to add is that it was precisely Dogu’s job to create crisis and volatility in both countries.
In Latin America she is widely regarded, for good reason, as the “US ambassador of interventions and coups.”
The LA Times appears entirely relaxed about a US diplomat’s job being to meddle in the internal politics of a country whose president the US has just kidnapped in an operation resulting in the murder over 100 people and involving the bombing of key public buildings and health facilities.
Dogu enters the fray “leveraging her experience with authoritarian regimes” and her “deep Latin American expertise.” The LA Times implies that her job is likely to be proactive, looking for ways to ease out the Chavista government and replace it with one more to Washington’s liking, even if that takes a while.
Nicaragua
Signaling that this is the case, the LA Times reporter asked right-wing opposition figures from Nicaragua for their opinions of Dogu, presumably on the basis that she is charged with working with similar quislings in her new role. Predictably, they praised her, admitting to having had clandestine meetings with her when she was based in the country and noting her public support for opposition groups.
Dogu was US ambassador in Managua from 2015 until October 2018, a period coinciding with the preparations and then the coup attempt that began in April 2018 and was defeated in July. At the start of her term, she had relatively cordial relations with the government. That changed after President Daniel Ortega was reelected in 2016 with an increased popular mandate. It became clear to Washington that electoral means to oust the Sandinistas lacked sufficient public support.
Instead, as the State Department admitted, the US concentrated their efforts on “civil society” groups led by opposition figures, “limiting their contact” with the elected government. It later emerged that, in the run-up to the April 2018 insurrection, millions of dollars were spent promoting such groups.
When the coup attempt fizzled, President Ortega explicitly identified Laura Dogu, as Washington’s representative, of being “the leader and financier of this conspiracy, the destruction, the fires, the torture, the disrespect for human dignity, the desecration of corpses, and other acts carried out with cruelty against all Nicaraguans marked by the great sin of being Sandinistas.” Within three months, Washington replaced her.
Honduras
In Honduras, Xiomara Castro of the progressive Libre Party became president in January 2022. Laura Dogu arrived in Tegucigalpa as US ambassador just three months later.
The Center for Political and Economic Research (CEPR) catalogued some of her egregious interferences including with energy and tax reforms, creation of a Constitutional Tribunal, replacement of the attorney general, and the building of a prison.
By 2023, Dogu was already drawing criticism from the Honduran foreign minister, who asked her to “stop commenting on internal Honduran matters.” He criticized her again for similar reasons, in December 2024, after she held a series of meetings with NGOs critical of the government.
In August 2024, President Castro complained about Dogu, after the US diplomat criticized Honduran officials for meeting with their counterparts in Caracas. The ambassador characterized this meeting as “sitting next to a drug trafficker."
Then after a conflict with Dogu over Honduras’s extradition treaty with the US in September 2024 and a spate of rumors about the president’s family, Castro warned that a coup attempt was underway. Dogu concluded her term in Honduras before the presidential elections at the end of 2025, where the US did, in fact, decisively interfere.
Venezuela
The LA Times ingenuously commented that Dogu was “an unusual pick signaling a strategic shift in US policy.” It was neither. US policy remains regime change, but the tactics have shifted in response to the successful and unified resistance of the Bolivarian Revolution.
Venezuelan analyst Francisco Rodriguez noted: “Laura Dogu presented credentials as diplomatic representative of the US to the government of [acting President] Delcy Rodríguez today, that would count as an act of formal recognition.”
As for Dogu being “an unusual pick,” her record, as shown above, suggests a continuation of business as usual. CEPR put it bluntly: “Dogu’s appointment suggests that the administration sought someone with experience in aggressively interfering in a host country’s domestic affairs.”
There is nothing unusual about that. Between 1898 and 1994, the US perpetrated coups and government changes in Latin America at least 41 times. Dogu now presides over just another such attempt. The only reasons Washington itself hasn’t suffered a coup, Latin Americans quip, is because there is no US embassy there.
Far from breaking with the past, Dogu actually invokes it: “We never left the Cold War in Latin America,” she said.
Dogu recently tweeted: “Today I met with Delcy Rodríguez and Jorge Rodríguez to reiterate the three phases that @SecRubio has outlined regarding Venezuela: stabilization, economic recovery and reconciliation, and transition.”
The comment drew an immediate repudiation from the aforementioned Jorge Rodríguez, president of Venezuela’s National Assembly. The failure by Dogu to refer to him and acting President Delcy Rodríguez by their formal titles is a disrespectful snub. He characterized her remarks as “diplomatic blackmail” and a “colonial roadmap.” The Venezuelan leadership may have a gun held to their heads, but they continue to respond militantly.
For now, Dogu is concentrating on the “stabilization and economic recovery” phases of the Rubio dictate. The more contentious third phase will be “transition.”
In a telling pivot from its previous myth-making that the “opposition [is] more unified than ever,” the LA Times now admits that Dogu is just the right official to be foisted on Venezuela because of her experience navigating “fragmented opposition movements.” The opposition to the Chavista government has long been fractious despite hundreds of millions of dollars pumped into “democracy promotion” by the US.
Contrary to the myths in the corporate press, María Corina Machado and her hand-picked surrogate Edmundo González Urrutia may not be the people’s choice in Venezuela. No lesser authority than Donald Trump himself commented that Machado “doesn’t have the support within or the respect within the country.”
If the claims that the opposition won the July 2024 presidential by a 70% landslide were credible, why didn’t González present his evidence when summoned by Venezuela’s supreme court? Failing to do so left no constitutional basis for him to be declared the winner.
But that was the whole point of the Washington’s interference in backing an astroturf opposition with more traction inside the Beltway than in Caracas. The US objective was not to win the contest but to delegitimize Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. The deadly sanctions—illegal unilateral coercive measures—were explicitly designed as collective punishment to erode Maduro’s authority with his compatriots.
And when that failed and the Bolivarian Revolution prevailed, Washington escalated further, culminating in the January 3 kidnapping of a constitutional head of state. That military action formed part of its hybrid war, accompanied by sustained demonization of Maduro before the US public.
Conclusion
Laura Dogu’s appointment ultimately signals not innovation but continuity: a recalibration of tactics in pursuit of the same objective that has defined US policy toward the Bolivarian Revolution for decades—regime change through pressure, attrition, and delegitimization. Whether branded as “stabilization,” “economic recovery,” or “transition,” the underlying premise remains that Venezuela’s political future should be shaped in Washington, not Caracas.
Yet the record in Nicaragua, Honduras, and Venezuela itself suggests that external coercion has limits. Dogu’s mission will test not only Venezuela’s resilience but also the durability of the unremitting US strategy of Latin American interventions.
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