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delcy rodríguez
Venezuela: Don’t Blame the Victim
The solidarity movement must unite in the broadest alliance around the defense of national sovereignty and the right to self-determination, strongly opposing the farcical New York trial of Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores, demanding the lifting of all sanctions, and calling for the return of stolen assets.
Aug 14, 2026
“Nothing is easier than to be idealistic on behalf of others.”—Karl Marx, 1858
Under cover of night, the US military kidnapped the lawful Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife and National Assembly deputy Cilia Flores on January 3, 2026. Collateral damage included over 100 fatalities of civilians and Cuban and Venezuelan guards.
This unprovoked surprise attack flagrantly violated international law. The hegemon acted in full expectation that it could operate with impunity. Even the neighboring left-leaning governments of Brazil and Colombia offered only mild rebukes. Then Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yván Gil said, “We found ourselves alone.” That is the context in which subsequent developments need to be understood.
The egregious military action culminated a quarter of a century of US and allied (particularly Canada and the UK) machinations against Venezuela: asphyxiating sanctions, stolen assets, diplomatic isolation, cyberattacks, assassination attempts, mercenary invasions, and establishing an ersatz parallel government. For the two months preceding the invasion, the US navy blockaded oil shipments. Still the empire’s goal of regime change was not achieved.
The Revolution’s Resilience Compelled the US to Escalate
Washington and its allies failed to destroy Chavismo, the movement founded by Hugo Chávez and carried forward by his successor Nicolás Maduro. Venezuela did not collapse or degenerate into chaos after the decapitation. Domestic peace prevailed.
The US-backed and funded far-right opposition did not seize power, but found itself ever more marginalized and in disarray.
The Chavista leadership continued in a seamless constitutional succession with Vice President Delcy Rodríguez sworn in as acting president. The unity of the top command held firm, backed by the National Assembly and supreme court. Likewise, the civic-military union and the communes and grassroots Chavista institutions fully supported the government.
Notably, the core Chavista leadership, the military, Socialist Party, and communal formations have remained united under tremendous pressure—pressure designed to fracture that unifying accord.
Relying on its overwhelming military superiority, Washington made a Mafia-style offer you can’t refuse. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio called Rodríguez on that day of infamy and delivered an ultimatum to collaborate with the US or face the country’s military destruction and the murder of her and other leaders. Variations of this scenario are corroborated by both the corporate press and Chavista sources.
President Donald Trump explicitly threatened, “There is more where that came from.” The alternative was the devastation currently being rained down on Iran, a country with far greater military capacity. With US forces deployed throughout the region and off its coast, a military confrontation would have meant annihilation, including the destruction of the oil industry. Rodríguez did what any responsible leader would do given the existing options; she made a tactical retreat in the face of overwhelming force.
Venezuela did not surrender
All the Chavista state institutions and the powerful universe of grassroots organizations that sustain the revolution remain intact. Yet US imperialism, by having a gun pointed to the government’s head, is in a position to exert substantial coercion leading to unpalatable decisions, such as Alex Saab’s deportation.
These accommodations reflect pressures that those of us on the outside can only imagine. How the solidarity movement should respond is a central question.
Former Chávez official Sergio Rodríguez Gelfenstein describes the current negotiations as an exercise in essential national self-preservation. He observes, “What is at stake is the survival of the State and the republic, which if lost, would make the discussion on any other topic banal.” As former Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza said, “Everything is now negotiated,” with Washington obliged to be in daily give-and-take with Caracas.
Legislative reform had long been on Maduro’s agenda. However, revisions to laws governing the exploitation of hydrocarbons and hard minerals involved offering generous conditions to international capital in order to attract much-needed foreign investment (which Cuba is also doing).
The new amnesty law, another planned initiative, is a key instrument promoting reconciliation and denying extremist elements arguments to incite violence. The law strictly excludes “anyone who has committed war crimes, human rights violations, homicide, drug trafficking, or treason.”
The government is in negotiations with the moderate opposition. Such successive rounds of dialogue were a recurring feature of the Maduro presidency.
Rodríguez has counseled prudence and strategic patience. Notably, the core Chavista leadership, the military, Socialist Party, and communal formations have remained united under tremendous pressure—pressure designed to fracture that unifying accord.
Long-Sought Gains Achieved
The US has reversed itself and in practice recognizes the Venezuelan government as legitimate. The Bolivarian project has not only persisted but forced its greatest adversary to come to some accommodation.
Not since 2019 had the US allowed transactions with Venezuela’s central bank and major state banks. US restrictions had previously cut Venezuela off from the global financial system, preventing access to dollar-denominated transactions and US financial channels. Oil sales to the US have resumed, with some revenues returning to the domestic economy. The US-dominated International Monetary Fund (IMF) is again engaged with Venezuela. Rodríguez has stated that Venezuela is not seeking IMF loans, but access to its own frozen funds.
As a Venezuelan activist friend said, “You gringos tell us how to make our revolution when our problem is you have failed to make yours.”
Although sanctions largely remain in place, special licenses and a temporary easing of economic restrictions for earthquake relief have provided some breathing room for Venezuela’s besieged economy while also facilitating oil flows to the US. The concessions are limited and reversible, leaving the broader structure of US economic warfare intact. Still, the arrangement is preferable to the total oil blockade imposed immediately before the January 3 assault.
Rodríguez has repeatedly demanded that Venezuela be free of sanctions, while formally seeking the release of Venezuelan assets abroad to address the devastation caused by the earthquakes. She has even appealed to King Charles III for the return of 31 tons of Venezuelan gold held by the Bank of England.
Changed Political Landscape
The balance of forces confronting today’s Venezuelan leadership is substantially less favorable than under Chávez, so judging its compromises by an idealized Chávez-era standard is mistaken.
Some internationals invoke Chávez to discredit the current leadership. Overlooked is that during Chávez’s presidency, Venezuela sold oil almost exclusively to the US, when dependency was significant. Ignoring the changed context, infantile leftist claims are made that Chávez never compromised and that “one does not negotiate with the enemy,” forgetting the famous advice from Fidel Castro during the 2002 coup: “Don't immolate yourself, Hugo.”
Chávez governed during a commodities boom that provided the Bolivarian project with resources for material benefits markedly unavailable today under sanctions. The geopolitical context has shifted significantly since Chávez’s time, especially under the present “Donroe Doctrine.” Not since Maduro’s victory in July 2024 has a left-leaning candidate won in Latin America. The last seven presidential elections have been swept by the right. Until this broader reactionary trajectory is reversed, further retreats are likely.
The purpose and cumulative impact of the illegal unilateral coercive measures have been to erode public support for the government. Years of comprehensive sanctions—despite the 2021-2025 economic recovery following an approximately 75% GDP contraction—have left Venezuela in a vulnerable position. Currently the Venezuelan economy is operating at roughly 30% of its pre-sanctions level.
The Rodríguez government is trying to buy time to recover the economy, although the June 24 earthquakes dealt a terrible blow. According to the United Nations, direct physical damage is estimated at over $37 billion, representing over one-third of Venezuela’s gross domestic product.
Most Venezuelans want domestic peace and a return to prosperity, not a confrontation with the empire.
“Unity Is the Most Important Thing—Without It, Nothing Is Possible; With It, Everything Is Possible.”
Those were the words of Fidel Castro as he was organizing the Cuban Revolution in 1956. Most dangerous for the sister Bolivarian Revolution is the suggestion that the current leadership has betrayed the cause and that a truly leftist “third way” can be fostered to replace them. There have always been competing factions within the Bolivarian movement. But political choices must ultimately be resolved within Venezuela itself, without interference from internationals.
These “third way” analyses, rejecting both Caracas and Washington, typically fail to address what Venezuelans could realistically do at this historical juncture—long on what’s wrong but short on viable alternatives.
Venezuelans will determine their path without foreign interference, either right or left. Solidarity necessitates efforts to accompany and uplift, not dictate.
It was not so long ago that it was the likes of far-right María Corina Machado who highlighted “cracks and fissures within the Chavista ranks” and anticipated “the beginning of a social explosion” against the elected Venezuelan government. Now some solidarity activists are saying the same.
The “tragic essence” of left disunity in Bolivia should be a cautionary lesson of what could happen in Venezuela. The Chavista leadership is painfully aware of this, hence their vigorous effort to establish the broadest united front against US colonization. Rather than being traitors to the cause, the Rodríguezes and Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello represent the most militant Chavistas—fighters from the very inception of the revolution.
What Solidarity Requires
Constructive criticism and solidarity activism need not be counterposed. Dissident opinions are appropriate when contextualized and given as part of a collaborative effort to advance common goals—not as individualistic venting.
Some among the left have appointed themselves as guardians of the faith judging negatively from afar the very difficult and risky tactical retreat undertaken by the Bolivarian leadership, even though it prevented a suicidal military confrontation with US imperialism.
The international left’s angst and disappointment regarding Venezuela’s retreats is understandable. But the Global South is not about to fulfill the revolutionary aspirations of those living in the belly of the beast. That, it should be clear, is the task for people in the imperial core.
As a Venezuelan activist friend said, “You gringos tell us how to make our revolution when our problem is you have failed to make yours.”
Venezuelans will determine their path without foreign interference, either right or left. Solidarity necessitates efforts to accompany and uplift, not dictate. Internationals living in the US, Canada, and the UK need to place the primary focus on our own imperialists. All other contradictions are secondary.
The solidarity movement must unite in the broadest alliance around the defense of national sovereignty and the right to self-determination, strongly opposing the farcical New York trial of Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores, demanding the lifting of all sanctions, and calling for the return of stolen assets.
El pueblo unido jamás será vencido.
(A united people will never be defeated.
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Trump Admin Has Taken $13 Billion in Oil Wealth From Venezuela, But Congress Is 'In the Dark' About Where It Went
"The picture now coming into focus is that the intervention has been... little more than a pretext for extracting economic wealth that rightfully belongs to the people of Venezuela," said one economist.
Jul 23, 2026
Since President Donald Trump's operation in January to overthrow Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, the US has taken more than $13 billion in revenue from Venezuelan oil sales. But nobody, including Congress, is entirely sure where the money has gone.
The Financial Times, which reported the figure on Wednesday based on estimates of oil sales out of Venezuela since January, pointed out that the Trump administration has given vague and contradictory answers about who currently controls the revenues from the Latin American nation's largest export and source of wealth.
Trump said in the days after the US attack that Venezuela's oil wealth would be "controlled by me." At a rally on Wednesday, he boasted that the US "won in Venezuela" and had paid for the operation "many many times over" by "taking tremendous amounts of oil" from the country.
He added that "Venezuela is doing better than they've ever done before." But economic data from the country tells a very different story.
According to economist Francisco Rodríguez of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in the first quarter of this year, Venezuela had just 2.5% growth in its gross domestic product—its worst in five years. This is despite the fact that its oil exports grew by 25% during the first quarter.
He said this was likely "because the US didn’t transfer to the Venezuelan government the totality of its increased oil revenues."
While the executive order signed by Trump in January describes the proceeds from oil sales as nominally belonging to Venezuela, they are being held in accounts controlled by the US Treasury Department. It prohibits Venezuela from independently withdrawing from the accounts without approval from the secretary of state, Marco Rubio.
At a Congressional hearing this week, Michael Kozak, a senior State Department official, acknowledged that "it's their money, but they have to get our permission" to receive it.
While the State Department has claimed that “billions of dollars have been disbursed to the Venezuelan economy” and that “financial monitoring is under way to ensure funds benefit the Venezuelan people," the FT found little evidence that this is the case.
A website set up by the Venezuelan government to track exports from US-run oil sales shows just a single transfer of $300 million in March.
The administration has made explicitly clear that it is using the oil revenues as a tool to exert leverage over Venezuelan policy. In January, Vice President JD Vance said that the administration would allow Venezuela to sell oil as long as its policies "serve America's national interest."
A senior US official told The New Yorker that the administration has authorized about $6 billion to be disbursed to the government of Venezuela's interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, though there was no indication it had actually been transferred or spent.
Francisco Rodríguez said that even if it was, this "leaves an obvious question: where are the remaining $7 billion?"
He speculated that some of it might have been paid directly to joint venture partners, but noted that this would only account for a "fraction" of the difference and said there could be "other more complex explanations, beyond the possibility that the US is simply sitting on the money."
However, he said, "what is becoming increasingly clear is that the main reason Venezuela's economic recovery has been so sluggish is that, while the country is generating more oil revenue, it is not collecting on it."
In April, Kozak said the administration would provide quarterly reports on where the funds have gone. But Democrats on the Foreign Affairs Committee said they had not received them.
The lack of transparency has drawn concern from members of both parties in Congress, which Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) said has been “kept in the dark.”
“Trump’s invasion of Venezuela has been about oil, power, and graft from the very beginning, with billions of dollars in Venezuelan oil revenue being controlled by the Trump administration without transparency or safeguards,” Castro told the Financial Times.
Even María Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.)—who promoted a Trump-led regime change effort in Venezuela by saying it would be a "field day" for US oil companies—has called for the administration to publicize reports on where the money is going.
The question of what has happened to Venezuela's wealth is made more urgent by the twin earthquakes the country suffered in June, which killed about 5,000 people, injured 17,000, and left 18,000 homeless, according to government figures.
A World Bank report released Thursday estimated that reconstruction could cost close to $50 billion.
The earthquake has been met with calls for the US to lift its harsh sanctions on Venezuela, which have cost the country tens, if not hundreds, of billions of dollars in lost revenue since 2015 and which advocates have said are further hobbling the nation’s recovery.
Trump ratcheted up these sanctions in the months leading up to his operation to overthrow Maduro, and many have remained in place following the earthquake.
The US has provided more than $386 million in earthquake-related assistance to Venezuela. But it's just a fraction of the oil wealth it appears to be holding.
Francisco Rodríguez said the apparent hoarding of Venezuela’s oil wealth does further damage to Trump’s claim that his intervention was meant to benefit its people, as well as the US.
“The bottom line is that this arrangement is not proving advantageous to Venezuelans,” Rodríguez said. "The picture now coming into focus is that the intervention has been, as its critics have long accused such actions of being, little more than a pretext for extracting economic wealth that rightfully belongs to the people of Venezuela."
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'Unconscionable and Impeachable': Experts Appalled at Report of Marco Rubio Acting as Venezuela 'Viceroy'
"Trump has turned Venezuela into an effective US colony," said one critic.
Jul 11, 2026
Some critics of the Trump administration are reacting with horror to revelations that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been serving as the de facto ruler of Venezuela.
According to a Saturday report in The New York Times, Rubio for the last several months has been acting informally as the "viceroy" of Venezuela ever since its recognized president, Nicolás Maduro, was abducted by the American military in January and brought to the US to face charges related to "narco-terrorism."
The Times' sources revealed that Rubio "effectively controls Venezuela’s finances, the distribution of its natural resources, and its government" and "is deeply involved in the country’s day-to-day operations," while maintaining regular contact with acting Venezuelan President Delcy Rodríguez.
Under current arrangements, the US Treasury Department takes in revenue from Venezuela's exports, including its petroleum, and then disperses the money back to the country through its private banks with strict conditions set by Rubio over what it can be spent on.
In explaining the system, the Times likened it to "parents handing out allowances to children," adding that it gives Rubio "immense leverage over... Rodríguez, who depends on the money to pay workers and prop up the national currency."
Elizabeth Saunders, professor of political science at Columbia University, described Rubio's power over Venezuela as "insane," as well as "derelict, unconscionable, and impeachable."
"The secretary of state's time is scarce, valuable, and not outsourcable," Saunders emphasized.
Orlando J. Pérez, professor of Political Science at the University of North Texas at Dallas, said the Times report made a mockery of Rubio's professed claims to want to bring democracy back to Venezuela.
"It appears Rubio has transformed from democracy promotion warrior," Pérez commented, "to transactional realpolitik operative!"
Kenneth Roth, former executive director at Human Rights Watch, wrote that US control over Venezuela appeared similar to the kind of imperial power wielded by European nations in the 19th Century.
"Trump has turned Venezuela into an effective US colony," said Roth, "with Marco Rubio as the viceroy and Washington controlling the country’s oil revenue and dictating major foreign and domestic policies. Democracy has been relegated to the distant future."
Bradley Simpson, historian at the University of Connecticut, also saw the current US arrangement with Venezuela as a return to overt imperialism.
"We are literally back in the Dollar Diplomacy days of the 1910s," Simpson wrote, "when the United States invaded countries and took over their financial systems and ran them as effective colonies. Flagrantly illegal, enormously corrupt. Where is the organization of American states or UN in denouncing this?"
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Advocates Renew Call for End to US Sanctions After Devastating Venezuela Earthquakes
"This is the time for cooperation, compassion, and respect for Venezuela’s sovereignty," said CodePink.
Jun 25, 2026
Human rights groups on Thursday implored the United States and allied countries to lift all sanctions against Venezuela—which experts say have already killed tens of thousands of people—as the beleaguered South American country reels from Wednesday's devastating earthquakes.
At least 188 people are dead and over 1,500 others injured, with those figures almost certain to rise, following a 7.2-magnitude temblor centered in San Felipe, Yaracuy—about 100 miles west of Caracas—and a 7.5-magnitude quake that struck less than a minute later, also in centered in Yaracuy.
US President Donald Trump, who authorized the illegal invasion of Venezuela and abduction of President Nicolás Maduro earlier this year, wrote on social media after the earthquakes that his administration “stands ready, willing, and able to help."
“We will be there for our new and great friends," Trump claimed.
Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro's vice president and acting president since his ouster, thanked the Trump administration for "offering support and solidarity to the people of Venezuela in the face of this tragedy that has plunged us into mourning."
However, US sanctions—first imposed during then-President George W. Bush's second term while Hugo Chávez was leading Venezuela and ramped up under the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations—remain in place, complicating relief efforts after one of the country's worst-ever natural disasters.
While the Trump administration has issued narrow exemptions from sanctions to companies looking to profit from Venezuela's crisis and copious natural resources, primarily oil, these waivers have not delivered broad relief to the people who need it most.
"Today’s catastrophe makes clear what we have long argued: When a country is deliberately weakened through economic warfare, its ability to prepare for, respond to, and recover from disasters is also weakened," the US-based peace group CodePink said in a statement. "The United States has a responsibility to help address the humanitarian consequences of the policies it has imposed."
🇻🇪 CODEPINK extends our deepest condolences to the people of Venezuela following the devastating earthquakes that have taken hundreds of lives, injured thousands, and left entire communities in urgent need of assistance.Our full statement: buff.ly/QzYcQ3p
[image or embed]
— CODEPINK (@codepink.bsky.social) June 25, 2026 at 2:22 PM
CodePink continued:
Too often, we’ve seen the US and other Western countries exploit natural disasters like this in order to deepen foreign control. In Haiti, the US and its allies have repeatedly pushed militarization and politically conditioned aid instead of genuine recovery led by the country itself. In this moment, the world must refuse to allow Venezuela to be forced down the same path.
We also call on the administration to immediately lift all US sanctions on Venezuela and release Venezuelan funds under US jurisdiction so they can be used for emergency relief, reconstruction, and recovery.
"This is the time for cooperation, compassion, and respect for Venezuela’s sovereignty," CodePink added. "We urge the international community to support relief efforts and stand with the Venezuelan people as they rebuild their homes, their communities, and their future."
The Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), a Washington, DC-based think tank, said Thursday that "while the Trump administration has issued a series of general licenses to allow foreign businesses and banks to operate in Venezuela in spite of US sanctions, the continued existence of these sanctions significantly discourages international economic and financial actors from expanding operations there."
CEPR co-director Mark Weisbrot said that “we must remember that Venezuela suffered the worst depression in the history of the world, without a war, due to illegal US economic sanctions."
"This deadly destruction was not a mistake, but an expected result that would happen to any country that was cut off by sanctions from the international financial system, and also from the vast majority of its foreign exchange earnings from exports," he continued.
According to a 2019 CEPR report, as many as 40,000 Venezuelans died due to sanctions during the previous two years. The sanctions ostensibly targeted Maduro's government, but made it much more difficult for millions of people to obtain food, medicine, and other necessities.
“Tens of thousands, and more likely hundreds of thousands, of Venezuelans died as a result of those sanctions," Weisbrot said Thursday. "The United States is therefore obligated to help prevent further loss of life in Venezuela."
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Alex Saab and the Fragility of the Venezuela Solidarity Movement
It’s difficult not to see the renewed imprisonment of Alex Saab as a disappointing capitulation to US coercion after so many of us fought for his freedom, but we cannot forget the task at hand.
May 24, 2026
The recent deportation of Alex Saab from Caracas to the US on May 18, 2026 has generated shock, confusion, anger, and intense debate across sectors of the international solidarity movement and many Venezuelans themselves.
Alex Saab, a Colombian businessman who became closely associated with the Venezuelan government during the years of heavy US sanctions, is seen by many Venezuelans as someone who helped the country bypass sanctions, obtain fuel and food, open financial channels, and resist economic collapse under blockade conditions.
The US accuses Saab of corruption and money laundering connected to Venezuelan state contracts, but for many people in Venezuela and across the international left, Saab came to represent something larger than an individual businessman: the broader struggle over sanctions, sovereignty, and Venezuela’s ability to survive under extraordinary economic and geopolitical pressure.
The Venezuelan revolution did not survive the last decade of US economic warfare without contradictions. It survived through improvisation, exhaustion, loyalty, fear, sanctions, migration, stubbornness, and an almost unbearable national fatigue that few outside the country truly understand.
Reducing every painful decision to betrayal while ignoring the enormous machinery of coercion surrounding Venezuela risks reproducing the very fragmentation that external aggression was designed to create in the first place.
The United States did not merely sanction Venezuela. It attempted to break it. It froze national assets, it openly pursued regime change, backed parallel governments, economically strangled the country, and ultimately launched a military operation to kidnap President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores from Venezuelan soil.
To understand why Saab became such a powerful figure, one must first understand what Venezuela became under sanctions: a country forced into survival mode.
And now, after the deportation of Saab to the United States and the growing accusations against Delcy Rodríguez, I watch many people speak with the confidence of hindsight. As if everything had always been obvious. As if Venezuelans navigating one of the most aggressive campaigns of economic warfare, destabilization, and military coercion in modern Latin American history had the luxury of moral purity.
As a Venezuelan American, I am struggling too to understand and process this moment. I stood there too. I called for Alex Saab’s freedom when he was detained in Cape Verde during the height of the Trump administration’s maximum pressure campaign against Venezuela. At the time, the reality that existed for many of us was that Saab was a Venezuelan diplomat helping the country navigate sanctions.
Recently, Venezuelan National Assembly President Jorge Rodríguez publicly stated that Alex Saab has maintained relationships with US agencies since 2019. These revelations, combined with Saab’s deportation, have generated painful questions for many people who spent years defending him publicly.
What did we actually know?
What kinds of compromises were going on inside a country trying to survive under siege?
These are painful questions. And at this moment, there are still far more questions than answers.
Maybe painful compromises were made.
Maybe Saab was never what many believed him to be.
Maybe serious betrayals occurred.
Maybe the deportation was justified.
Maybe realities existed behind closed doors that ordinary Venezuelans never had access to. Or maybe decisions were made inside an impossible reality where preventing wider war, deeper collapse, and even greater harm for ordinary Venezuelans became more urgent.
Because since the kidnapping of Maduro, Venezuela has not been operating in an atmosphere of freedom. It is operating under threat.
And it is easy to demand uncompromising heroism from a country under attack when you are not the one responsible for preventing millions of people from falling into even greater catastrophe.
People who defended Saab for years are now confronting the possibility that parts of the story may have been hidden from them. Others are immediately translating uncertainty into accusations of betrayal against Delcy Rodríguez and the entire Bolivarian process.
But I think there is something dangerous about how quickly so many people are rushing toward absolute conclusions while fragments of information, accusations, leaks, and political narratives are still colliding in real time.
Maybe there will come a moment for deeper criticism of Delcy Rodríguez and others within the Bolivarian process. Maybe new information will eventually clarify realities that today remain obscured by contradiction, secrecy, pressure, and war.
But I think there is a certain political myopia in discussing Venezuela's internal contradictions while removing the broader reality of US pressure and coercion from the story entirely.
Because regardless of what may eventually be revealed about Alex Saab, the larger reality remains unchanged: Venezuela was subjected to years of sanctions, destabilization, economic strangulation, coup attempts, international isolation, and eventually direct military intervention.
The aggressor has not disappeared from the story.
And reducing every painful decision to betrayal while ignoring the enormous machinery of coercion surrounding Venezuela risks reproducing the very fragmentation that external aggression was designed to create in the first place.
It’s difficult not to see the renewed imprisonment of Alex Saab as a disappointing capitulation to US coercion after so many of us fought for his freedom, but we cannot forget the task at hand. If we are serious about ending US aggression toward Venezuela, we cannot allow our solidarity with the Venezuelan people to be deterred. They have shown us how to sustain a revolution amid contradictions, and that is what we must do.
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Trump Says He's 'Seriously Considering Making Venezuela the 51st US State' as He Brags of Stealing Its Oil Wealth
"Trump's true priority, ahead of absolutely everything else, is to go down in history in big letters," said one journalist. "Remaking everything, no matter in which direction or with what consequences."
May 11, 2026
President Donald Trump said on Monday that he is considering trying to annex Venezuela and make it a US state in an imperialist effort to seize more of its oil wealth.
It's one of nearly half a dozen nations or territories Trump has threatened to use US military might to illegally conquer and add to the US during his term, including Greenland, Canada, Cuba, and Panama.
According to Fox News correspondent John Roberts, Trump said in a phone call that he was “seriously considering making Venezuela the 51st US state,” citing the Latin American nation's possession of tens of trillions of dollars worth of oil.
“They were miserable. Now they’re happy. It’s being well run,” Trump recently told Full Measure's Sharyl Attkisson. “The oil that’s coming out is enormous, the biggest in many years. And the Big Oil companies are going in with the biggest, most beautiful rigs you’ve ever seen.”
One poll from the Venezuelan firm Meganálisis in March found that while the public was initially happy to be rid of their autocratic president, Nicolás Maduro—who was abducted by US forces in January—the majority now feel that Trump's action had little to do with democracy or the well-being of the Venezuelan people and more to do with handing control of the country's nationalized oil reserves to American companies, which Trump stated as his primary objective after ousting Maduro.
Trump left Maduro's vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, in place as Venezuela's interim leader with the promise that she'd act as a pliant collaborator with the US, whom she allowed to declare control over Venezuela's oil resources "indefinitely" amid market transitions.
The environmental activist group Global Witness has estimated that over the next 10 years, as much as $150 billion in oil revenue that was expected to go to the Venezuelan treasury, which could have funded projects to develop the impoverished country, instead may flow into the coffers of foreign companies.
Trump has spoken about the idea of Venezuela becoming the 51st state before, including after the country defeated Italy in the World Baseball Classic in March, when he posted on Truth Social: “STATEHOOD, #51, ANYONE?”
Last month, during a discussion about his desire to "take" Iran's oil, Trump described his takeover of Venezuela as something akin to the resource-hungry imperial conquests of centuries past.
"I'm a businessman first," he told reporters during a press briefing. "We've taken hundreds of millions of barrels [of oil], hundreds of millions... and paid for that war many, many times over. You know the old days, 'to the winner belong the spoils.' And I said, 'Why don't we use that?' We haven't had that in this country probably in 100 years." He then went on to lament the US-led efforts to "rebuild" Germany after World War II.
While the US has lifted personal sanctions on Rodríguez and some sanctions on the Venezuelan oil and banking sectors, most of the sanctions that have contributed to the country's economic collapse remain in place. "Full unrestricted access to global capital markets has not been restored," explained Roger D. Harris from the Task Force on the Americas and the US Peace Council in Common Dreams last week.
Actually adding Venezuela as a US state would require approval from both Congress and Venezuela itself—and Trump does not appear to have the latter.
Issuing a rare rebuke of the US on Monday, Rodríguez responded that becoming the 51st state "would never have been considered" by Venezuela.
"If there is one thing we Venezuelan men and women have, it is that we love our independence process, we love our heroes and heroines of independence," the interim leader said.
Though wars of conquest are expressly forbidden under international law, it's not clear what leverage Rodríguez would have to resist if Trump attempted to make good on his goal of expanding US territory.
Argemino Barro, a Spanish political journalist and author, said the possibility that he's serious can't be dismissed.
"Yes, of course, we can dismiss it as provocation or delusion, say that it's impracticable for XYZ reasons, etc. But this kind of comment is a window into the mindset of a man who fabricates his own reality, and not only that, but imposes it on others," Barro said. "Trump wants to build the world's largest triumphal arch right in the middle of Washington, overshadowing the Lincoln Memorial; he wants his face on coins and passports; his name appears on institutions, one airport. Annexing Venezuela, in his mind, fits 100%."
"I think Trump's true priority, ahead of absolutely everything else, is to go down in history in big letters. To enter the league of Alexander the Great, Jesus Christ, and Genghis Khan," he added. "Remaking everything, no matter in which direction or with what consequences."
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Venezuela Buys Time to Rebuild While Under Siege
The current fraught détente with Washington is a window of opportunity to recover an economy operating at roughly 30% of its pre-sanctions level.
May 03, 2026
Although progressives are rightly concerned about US-coerced compromises and concessions, it is equally important to understand the resilience and continuing successes of Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution. Focusing only on the half-empty aspect of the proverbial glass obscures the strength of the resistance and conceals the vulnerabilities of the imperial juggernaut.
On a delegation to Venezuela, the constant refrain from both high-ranking government officials and grassroots Chavistas—supporters of the movement led by former President Hugo Chávez—was that they were urgently “buying time.”
A quarter-century of US hybrid war on Venezuela, especially the unilateral coercive measures (sanctions), has had a corrosive effect. The current fraught détente with Washington is a window of opportunity to recover an economy operating at roughly 30% of its pre-sanctions level.
President Maduro’s kidnapping
The kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores by US special forces on January 3 was “the one scenario we didn’t expect,” according to former Venezuelan Deputy Foreign minister Carlos Ron.
The kidnapping was a military success for the US. But politically Washington had no viable alternative to the Chavistas retaining power.
Abducting a lawful head of state—an egregious violation of international law—is not, however, unprecedented. In 2004, the US flew Haiti’s Jean-Bertrand Aristide to the Central African Republic in what Washington claimed was a voluntary decision, but which Aristide called a kidnapping. In 1990, following a bloody invasion, the US extradited Panama’s Manuel Noriega.
Leading up to January 3, Washington had incrementally tightened its stranglehold over Venezuela. Initial sanctions imposed in 2015 evolved from targeted measures to broad sectoral restrictions, especially on oil and finance. “Secondary sanctions” followed, penalizing non-US actors engaged with Venezuela. By December an outright military “total and complete blockade” piratically seized oil tankers.
US President Donald Trump also designated the so-called Cartel de los Soles as a terrorist organization, allegedly headed by Maduro. A $25-million bounty on Maduro under former US President Joe Biden was doubled in August. The following month, the US commenced extrajudicial murders of alleged drug runners in small boats in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific. By October, Trump suspended all communication with the Maduro government.
Resilience and Continuity
Despite post-kidnapping concessions, it is instructive to consider what hasn’t happened. The political leadership did not splinter, and the country did not descend into chaos. The US-directed fate of Libya in 2011 was not to be repeated in Venezuela.
Venezuela maintained constitutional continuity. Shortly after the strike, then Vice President Delcy Rodríguez was sworn in as acting president. Other top leaders—National Assembly President Jorge Rodríguez, Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello, and Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López—remained in place and unified. The civic-military unity held fast.
Under intense US pressure, high-ranking militants have been replaced. Padrino, who was swapped for Gustavo González López, another committed Chavista, remains influential in his new cabinet position heading the critical agricultural ministry. In this whack-a-mole scenario, the major exception to the government’s strategy of yielding in form to US pressure but maintaining a Chavista essence is the new Vice Foreign Minister for North America and Europe, Oliver Blanco, who is from the opposition.
Another triumph is that a highly divided population did not erupt into civil conflict. Instead, the attack produced a rally-around-the-flag effect, with some moderate opposition figures showing a new openness to the ruling party.
Nor was Noble Prize winner and far-rightist María Corina Machado imposed as president. She had signaled that if she took power there would be a retaliatory bloodbath against Chavistas. Meanwhile, the US effectively abandoned the bogus claim that Maduro headed the Cartel de los Soles.
Diplomatic Thaw and Economic Openings
On March 7, Washington formally recognized the Venezuelan government led by Rodríguez, marking a reversal of its policy since 2019. Trump even informally referred to her as “president-elect,” though the return of Maduro from US imprisonment as the rightful chief remains Venezuela’s national priority. On April 27, the US modified sanctions to allow the Venezuelan government to pay Maduro’s defense lawyers.
Financial easing is proceeding. In the late 1990s-early 2000s, the US bought more than half of Venezuela’s oil exports. Oil sales have again resumed under a highly restructured and controlled system, while the US has also taken steps to shield Venezuelan state assets from creditor seizure. The Rodríguez government is in the process of regaining control of Citgo Petroleum, the “crown jewel” of Venezuela's foreign assets, which the US had seized.
What has been achieved is not a lifting of sanctions, but a controlled reentry into international finance under US licensing and oversight.
Washington has authorized transactions with Venezuela’s central bank and major state banks, reversing the 2019 measures that had effectively cut them off from the global financial system. This policy change allows dollar-denominated transactions and access to US financial channels.
For the first time in years, Venezuela’s core financial institutions can operate in international banking channels. What makes this significant is that it allows oil revenues from US transactions to enter the domestic economy. That in turn helps stabilize liquidity, reducing the need for monetary expansion that had fueled inflation.
On April 16, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) resumed engagement with Venezuela. Previously, the US-dominated IMF had cut Venezuela off from its $5-million “special drawing rights” (SDR). Rodríguez said she will only access its rightful SDR account to be used for social programs and not apply for loans.
Still, the core US sanctions framework remains in place, with most transactions subject to case-by-case authorization. Full unrestricted access to global capital markets has not been restored. What has been achieved is not a lifting of sanctions, but a controlled reentry into international finance under US licensing and oversight.
Prospects
Gross Domestic Product (GDP) continues its consecutive 20-quarter expansion. New and long-considered legislative reforms for hydrocarbons and minerals encourage needed foreign investment vital for economic recovery. Although the changes involved some bitter pills, the rationale is that it is better to compromise than to keep these resources in the ground where they generate no income.
Rodríguez lauded a new amnesty law, creating a “new historical moment… of national reunification.” The long-polarized Venezuelan people yearn for domestic tranquility, according to Jesús Rodríguez-Espinoza, editor of the Caracas-based Orinoco Tribune.
Venezuela has so far escaped the severity of the economic strangulation that Cuba is now suffering or the military pummeling on the scale of Iran. The US-Israeli war in the Middle East may even be creating a temporary opening for Venezuela, as Trump needs the prospect of freely available Venezuelan oil to help calm jittery oil markets.
Trump may have also calculated that engagement with the Chavistas offered greater strategic benefits than assassination or a large-scale invasion, while using the kidnapping to placate domestic hawks pushing for full regime change. Significantly for US imperial objectives, Venezuela’s connections with other counter-hegemonic countries were curtailed.
Washington’s strategy since January 3 has focused on Venezuela’s stabilization and economic recovery. Their deferred third phase, “political transition,” is another word for regime change. Rodríguez has made clear that “free and fair” elections can be held only if the blackmail of US sanctions is removed. Thousands marched in a national “Pilgrimage for a Venezuela Without Sanctions and Peace.”
The kidnapping was a military success for the US. But politically Washington had no viable alternative to the Chavistas retaining power, given their strength, according to former Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Areaza. The only other option for the invader was to face a Vietnam-style guerilla war. The Bolivarian Revolution has persisted and is still fighting. On balance, the glass is decisively more than half full.
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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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