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Cilia Flores: A First Lady in a New York Cell
Cilia Flores is one of the most prominent political prisoners in the world, yet most women’s rights organizations have not said a word in her defense.
Mar 04, 2026
On International Working Women’s Day in 2025, Cilia Flores, the wife of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, read a poem she wrote highlighting the historic role played by Latin American women in the fight against imperialism:
We’re not flowers the wind can pluck,
we’re roots of rebel and loyal land,
we’re grandmothers, mothers, daughters, granddaughters;
we are woman.
Our blood pulses with the Manuelas,
Luisas, Josefas, Juanas, Cecilias,
Apacuanas, Bartolinas, Eulalias,
Martas, Anas Marías, Barbaritas
and so many others who legacy inspires,
commits, and strengthens us
to continue walking and traveling our path.
And in our hands and chests
a light is on that nobody will ever turn off:
love, peace and liberty.
—Cilia Flores, International Working Women’s Day 2025
One year later, she languishes in a cell in New York City, having been dragged out of her room and kidnapped by US forces on the January 3 attack on Venezuela. The first images after her abduction showed her face bruised. We later learned she had broken ribs, 23 stitches in her forehead, and deteriorating health inside US custody.
Flores is no ordinary first lady. She first rose to prominence in 1992 as a defense lawyer for a group of Venezuelan military officers who rose up against the government of Carlos Andrés Pérez, which had massacred thousands of people in the Caracazo of 1989–nationwide riots following the imposition of neoliberal austerity measures. Key among those officers was Hugo Chávez, the founder of the Bolivarian Revolution.
Out of solidarity with Cilia, with Venezuelan women in general, we must make it our cause to fight for her freedom.
In 1993, Cilia founded the Bolivarian Circle of Human Rights and aligned herself with Chávez’s revolutionary movement. In 2000, having helped Chávez win consecutive presidential elections, she was elected to the legislature. By 2006, she became the president of the National Assembly, the first woman in Venezuela’s history to occupy the post. Flores held important positions in the United Socialist Party of Venezuela and became the country’s solicitor general in 2012, a post she left to run Nicolás Maduro’s presidential campaign after President Chávez’s passing.
Cilia married Nicolás, her longtime partner, following the election. Feeling that the title of “first lady” could not capture her importance to the Bolivarian Revolution, her husband dubbed her the primera combatiente, or first combatant.
After working behind the scenes as a key adviser to President Maduro, she ran for election to the National Assembly and won in 2015, 2020, and 2025.
Today, she faces charges of conspiracy to import cocaine, along with possession of machine guns and destructive devices. The charges are absurd.
In the early 1990s, back when Venezuela was a key ally of the United States, over 50% of the world’s cocaine was trafficked through the country. By 2025, as Venezuela was considered an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to the United States, that number was down to 5%. President Donald Trump’s rhetoric of Venezuela flooding the US with cocaine, and his constant conflation of cocaine with fentanyl (which is neither trafficked through nor produced in Venezuela), has no basis in reality.
Now that the Trump administration controls Venezuela’s oil trade, the rhetoric on drugs has flipped. Following a visit to Venezuela, the head of US Southern Command touted a new counternarcotics cooperation agreement. Was the abduction of Nicolás and Cilia sufficient to end whatever alleged narcotics operation the Venezuelan government was accused of running? It’s more likely that such operations never existed in the first place. The allegations of drug trafficking served not only to discredit the Venezuelan government and its leaders but also paved the way for the January 3 attack.
Cilia Flores is one of the most prominent political prisoners in the world, yet most women’s rights organizations have not said a word in her defense. She is a sitting member of Venezuela’s National Assembly and played an instrumental role in the movement that greatly expanded democratic, economic, and social rights in the country.
Cilia stands with Palestine. In a November 2023 conference in Turkey, she said: “We are witnessing a genocide… We see the victims in Gaza. We see the death of children, women, the elderly, and civilians. We see civilian victims coming out of their destroyed homes, but unable to leave the city because they are in an open-air prison.”
Cilia brought feminism to the Bolivarian Revolution. On International Working Women’s Day in 2023, she helped launch a social mission aimed at protecting women from the worst of the economic war. At the time, she said: “Venezuelan women have shown they are the vanguard. Women make up more than half the population, but we are also mothers of the other half, so we form a whole. And in this war that Venezuela has endured, we achieved victory and are standing firm thanks to the participation of Venezuelan women, who did not just stay home taking care of children, building their families, but also took to the streets to defend the nation. Our women are patriots... and in the next scenario, whatever it may be, we will be victorious because women will be at the forefront of any battle."
Little did she know that the next scenario would be a prison cell in the United States. Out of solidarity with Cilia, with Venezuelan women in general, we must make it our cause to fight for her freedom.
Recalling her beautiful poem above, today our blood pulses with Cilia.
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The Propaganda Assault: A Tale of Two Venezuela(n)s
The US propaganda assault shapes how Venezuelans make sense of their experiences in and—for those who left—out of Venezuela, generating more support for the illegal kidnapping of President Maduro among those living abroad.
Feb 23, 2026
After the Trump administration illegally kidnapped the legitimate president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, on January 3, 2026, we saw two distinct and divergent responses from Venezuelans. On the one hand, the Venezuelan diaspora, especially in the United States, celebrated President Maduro’s kidnapping and bombing of their birth country. They congregated in small gatherings the weekend of the abduction, including in Miami. These celebrations, alongside videos online, were widely disseminated in corporate and social media for a US-based (and broader Western) audience, all broadcasting the same message: Venezuelans support President Maduro’s abduction.
On the other hand, inside Venezuela, for weeks after the illegal abduction, citizens engaged in (almost) daily and massive demonstrations to condemn the attack that killed and wounded over 100 people. These protests have not been shared by US corporate media and have been suppressed in US-aligned social media; thus, a US audience is not privy to the substantial support for Chavismo and President Maduro.
The US propaganda assault plays a large part in generating these two opposing reactions regarding President Maduro’s abduction among Venezuelans, outside (celebration), especially among the US-based diaspora, compared with inside (condemnation) Venezuela. The US propaganda assault refers to the US’(or its aligned entities’) deployment of its vast ideological apparatus (White House communications, corporate media, academia, social media, NGOs, and international organizations) to impose narratives about Venezuela, especially its economic and political conditions, that undermine the Bolivarian Revolution to justify US intervention.
The US propaganda assault shapes how Venezuelans make sense of their experiences in and—for those who left—out of Venezuela, generating more support for the illegal kidnapping of President Maduro among those living abroad compared with those living inside Venezuela, where the propaganda assault faces reality and a stronger counteroffensive, undermining its effectiveness.
The Venezuelan Diaspora
In general, Venezuelans in the United States are more likely to support the illegal kidnapping of President Maduro because of their adherence and susceptibility to US-deployed narratives about the Bolivarian Revolution, often linked to their socioeconomic background in Venezuela.
Venezuelans in the United States, as a group, “have higher rates of educational attainment than either native- or overall foreign-born populations” and they are, on average, more educated than their compatriots in Venezuela. Because education is a common marker of socioeconomic status, the Venezuelan diaspora tends to be more socioeconomically advantaged than compatriots who stayed in Venezuela. Moreover, some members of Venezuela’s upper class and elites migrated to the US after Hugo Chavez came to power in 1999, as they are the most vociferous opponents to his political project, a socialism of the 21st century. Thus, middle- and upper-class (and elite) segments of Venezuelan society are overrepresented in the Venezuelan diaspora in the United States. These individuals led comfortable lives in Venezuela until US economic attacks induced economic deterioration and emigration; they carry all of the disappointment, anger, hurt, and resentment associated with economic difficulties—or reduced advantaged among the upper-class and elites—and subsequent displacement.
The neoliberal imperial worldview is a crucial part of the propaganda assault against the Bolivarian Revolution, as it dictates the parameters, including premises and assumptions, that structure debates about Venezuela, including the legitimate role of the US in its affairs.
Venezuelans with middle- and upper-class backgrounds—and especially elites—tend to adhere most closely to a US-centric, neoliberal, and imperial worldview, a prevalent perspective among more advantaged individuals all over Latin America. Two dimensions of this worldview are imperative. First, the state should be subordinated to capital. Secondly, the US’ unruly “rules-based order”—with its related economic, political, and cultural dimensions—should have hegemony over the world, especially the Western Hemisphere. According to this worldview, US neoliberal imperial hegemony is morally superior to other arrangements; thus, US intervention in foreign nation-states to maintain its hegemony is justified. More advantaged, usually light-skinned sectors of Latin America, including in Venezuela, see themselves as part of a US-aligned cosmopolitan milieu, whose perspective they enforce, often violently, in their countries of birth.
US Propaganda for a Receptive Venezuelan Diaspora
The New York Times, the most powerful and effective mouthpiece of the US empire’s propaganda, recently acknowledged that US economic and financial attacks “crushed the Venezuelan economy and led to a humanitarian crisis.” As the US destroyed the Venezuelan economy and created a humanitarian crisis, it deployed (and continues to deploy) a propaganda assault that minimizes or outright obscures the role that US attacks have played in the economic devastation and political troubles in Venezuela. The propaganda assault shifts blame away from the US government onto Chavismo’s leadership, suggesting that the economic duress in Venezuela was primarily—or even exclusively—a result of “mismanagement and corruption” endemic to socialism, in general, and Chavismo, in particular, led by its “narco-trafficker” leader, Nicolás Maduro.
For instance, the claim that Maduro is a narco-trafficker who heads the nonexistent Cartel de los Soles was taken as fact in the most recent Rubio hearings about Venezuela, even though the US government itself has jettisoned this accusation from the “legal” proceedings against President Maduo, a tacit admission that it is false. The fact that corporate media knew about the military attacks ahead of time and refused to publish or sound the alarm is perhaps the best evidence that they are a complicit player in the assault against Venezuela.
The neoliberal imperial worldview is a crucial part of the propaganda assault against the Bolivarian Revolution, as it dictates the parameters, including premises and assumptions, that structure debates about Venezuela, including the legitimate role of the US in its affairs. For instance, at the referenced Rubio hearings, questioning from most senators relied on the premise that the US has the right to intervene in Venezuela’s internal affairs and kidnap its sitting president, a blatant violation of international law. Stunningly, though not surprisingly, some congressmen reprimanded Secretary of State Marco Rubio for not going further and targeting other high-profile Chavista leaders and installing opposition figure María Corina Machado as president, demands only conceivable under a neoliberal imperial worldview. The parameters of the debate that the US propaganda assault delimits is found in most debates about Venezuela, regardless of its interlocutors.
Moreover, when the Bolivarian Revolution defends itself against US attacks, including limiting US influence through opposition proxies, it is labeled “authoritarian.” For example, the US propaganda assault paints US-funded guarimberos as “political prisoners.” These criminals destroyed public and private property, including schools, and killed Venezuelans and targeted Chavistas, including by burning them alive in an attempt to dislodge the Bolivarian Revolution from power. When the Chavista government jailed these “political prisoners,” the US propaganda assault accused the Bolivarian Revolution of authoritarianism, noting that these actions are proof that President Maduro (and Chavez before him) is a dictator. The US propaganda assault does not acknowledge the heinous crimes these guarimberos committed. Due to Chavismo’s alleged authoritarianism, a neoliberal imperial worldview demands that the United States has a duty to intervene in order to “liberate” the allegedly “oppressed” people to clear the way for foreign capital with its subservient “democracy,” a “common sense” solution to its hardships.
The more privileged segment of the Venezuelan society diaspora, who strongly adhere to a neoliberal imperial worldview, is exposed to nothing but anti-Chavismo narratives in the United States. Notably, the US propaganda assault politicizes some members of the diaspora to such a degree that the “MAGAzolano” emerges as a political actor: Venezuelans who ardently support Trump, even though Trump is attacking their country, killing their compatriots with illegal military incursions, and making life unbearable for Venezuelan immigrants through oppressive immigration enforcement and the deportation regime in the US. Although the MAGAzolano is often found among more privileged Venezuelans—who tend to be light-skinned descendants of European immigrants who consider themselves white—they are not limited to this group.
Economic difficulties and subsequent emigration, refracted through a US propaganda assault, including a neoliberal imperial worldview, feeds and deepens these middle-class, upper-class, and elite Venezuelans’ disappointment, anger, hurt, and resentment about their situation, thereby hardening their views against Chavismo, including blaming Maduro for their personal difficulties. Consequently, these Venezuelans in the diaspora celebrate the military attack that led to Maduro’s illegal abduction.
Chavismo finds most support among working-class Venezuelans. For this reason, working-class Venezuelans are the primary target of the US propaganda assault. For instance, when Chavistas appear in corporate media, Chavismo is presented as a failed boogeyman. One corporate media report, which featured a Chavismo-supporting family who lost a son to the US military attack, describes the socialist Bolivarian Revolution as “faded” and “handicapped by corruption cronyism, and incompetence and”—wait for it, at the end of the list—“US-led sanctions.” Notably, the story articulates the lofty aims of the Bolivarian revolution that Chavez started but only to highlight its failures.
Due to the absence of forceful and consistent counternarratives in corporate-owned legacy and social media against US propaganda, arguments against Chavismo—largely unopposed— gain ground. Consequently, support for Chavismo weakens among this segment of the population in the US. Moreover, the propaganda assault is coupled with incentives to sing an anti-Maduro tune in the US, especially in co-ethnic communities like Miami, a hotbed of anti-socialist sentiment. In these locales, employment and other opportunities may vanish if one articulates support for the Bolivarian revolution. Furthermore, legalization incentives decrease articulating support for President Maduro, as a pathway to legalization might be more likely if one argues political persecution by the Chavista government. Thus, the US propaganda assault and material incentives undermine support for Chavismo, even among its followers. At the very least, every anti-Chavismo story in the press—in the absence of counternarratives—sows doubt, leading these working-class individuals who support the Bolivarian Revolution in the diaspora to ask: Is it true?
The Limits of the US Propaganda Assault Inside Venezuela
Condemnation for President Maduro’s illegal kidnapping is stronger and more visible inside Venezuela, largely because Chavismo is the strongest political movement inside the country, because these Venezuelans had to deal with bombs landing on their heads, and because the US propaganda assault encounters reality and a stronger narrative counteroffensive.
Chavismo is the strongest social movement in Venezuela. Since Chavez came to power, Chavismo has won most of the over 30 elections Venezuela has held at different levels of governance. They control all of the levers of power and enjoy the most mobilized base compared to other political movements, including the fractured political right. Notably Chavismo has empowered communes, which strengthen support for Chavismo on the ground. For instance, in November 2025, a national election took place so that communes could vote to prioritize projects whose support is provided by the federal government. The PSUV (Socialist Party) is the largest and most organized political organization in the country. Central to the US propaganda assault is to refuse to acknowledge, attempt to obscure, or outright deny this fact. While US propaganda buries this fact from a US-based (and Western) audience, including the Venezuelan diaspora, it cannot disguise it from Venezuelans inside the country, who see—with their own eyes—Chavismo mobilized on the streets, thereby undermining the US propaganda assault’s effectiveness.
The fact that the Bolivarian Revolution did not crumble after the kidnapping of its president, as many other societies have done after a US strike, reveals the Bolivarian Revolution’s strength.
Notably, the military attack against Venezuela generated a “rally-behind-the-flag” effect. The aggression against Venezuela affected all of its citizens, regardless of political ideology, leading Chavistas and non-Chavistas alike to condemn the intervention. For instance, bombs landed on La Boyera, a historically stronghold for the opposition, destroying homes and harming individuals. The attack also destroyed a medical warehouse that stored supplies for dialysis patients in La Guaira and damaged a research center in Miranda state. (In a show of solidarity, the Brazilian government donated medical supplies to help these patients.) Venezuelans of all political stripes are dealing with the psychological and emotional toll of Trump’s attack.
Among Venezuelans inside Venezuela, there is no confusion as to who bombed them and who defended them, heightening patriotism in defense of their sovereignty. Because Chavismo is in charge of the government, it emerged as the unequivocal defender of Venezuela sovereignty, generating sympathy (or quelling animosity), if not support, among some detractors. Maria Corina Machado’s gifting of her Nobel “peace” medal to Trump as a sign of gratitude for bombing Venezuela highlighted a contrast between those who support (extreme right-wing opposition) and those who reject (Chavismo) the US military attacks, defining the latter as the protector of the Venezuelan people. Importantly, the rally-behind-the-flag effect reveals why the propaganda assault was launched first, as it undermines and diffuses patriotic cohesion by concealing the US as the unequivocal aggressor. It is not surprising that some non-Chavistas have joined the demonstrations condemning the illegal attack. Having experienced the attack firsthand, they are not eager to stand in a town square and celebrate bombs raining down on them and the killing of their compatriots and neighbors.
Inside Venezuela, Chavismo supporters offer counternarratives to the US propaganda assault. Social media, state-sponsored media, and the pulpit of the presidency—among other avenues—are deployed to help people understand the US assault and what the Bolivarian Revolution is doing about it. For example, these outlets point out that the US attacked to steal their natural resources, not for democracy or any other excuse. Importantly, they debunk a range of narratives that attempt to divide and, therefore, weaken Chavismo (see below). They highlight how the extreme right-wing opposition has called for US military intervention and how they have celebrated the bombing of their compatriots; in doing so, they highlight how unpatriotic these right-wing sectors are and how little they care for the Venezuelan population. Importantly, they highlight the importance of socialist principles to understand and resist this attack, and how a deepening of socialism is the only answer to US pressure.
The US Propaganda Assault Doubles Down
After the military aggression, the US propaganda assault against the Bolivarian Revolution has jumped into hyperdrive to generate division and weaken Chavismo in an effort to dislodge the socialist project from controlling the Venezuelan government. The US propaganda assault continues to try to break Chavismo, targeting Delcy Rodriguez, the vice president who is now in charge in President Maduro’s absence, Jorge Rodriguez, the head of the assembly (and Delcy’s brother), and, most importantly, Diosdado Cabello, the interior minister. These narratives include:
- “Chavistas did not fight back against the US attack; they are weak.”
- “The ‘capture’ was an exacting, clean, and without resistance.”
- “The abduction is legal.”
- “Traitors collaborated with the US; Chavismo is ready to collapse from within.”
- “Delcy and her brother betrayed Maduro; Chavismo is fractured.”
- “Delcy is an opportunist ready to give up her Chavista roots for power.”
- “Delcy has expensive taste; she is a hypocrite and not committed to the Bolivarian revolution.”
- “Diosdado Cabello is the real motor behind Chavismo; Delcy must be weary of him.”
- “Diosdado Cabello betrayed Maduro.”
- “Diosdado is a narco-terrorist.”
- “Chavista leadership has abandoned the Bolivarian revolution.”
- “Trump runs the United States.”
- “Delcy is subservient to Trump and CIA.”
- “Chavista leaders have millions in offshore banks; they are not real socialists.”
One of these narratives—“Delcy is a narco-trafficker”—is a rehashing of US accusations against Maduro. The Bolivarian Revolution’s resistance to these nefarious narratives is also working overtime, undermining the attacks’ effectiveness, providing almost instantaneous rebuttals. Many of these US propaganda narratives have been thoroughly debunked. But new ones emerge, and old ones are recycled, almost on a daily basis. As Vijay Prashad notes, “Every single Western corporate newspaper has run a story on how the Venezuelan leadership made a deal with US to hand over Maduro.” The evidence? Boogeyman “anonymous sources,” who almost always turn out to be US intelligence campaigns that feed corporate media the narrative the US wants to impose. The corporate media, for their part, does little to investigate and corroborate the anonymous sources’ claim; they just print them without proof or verification, acting as a propaganda arm of the US government. Note that as the Chavismo leadership negotiates with the US, the latter is engaged in a ferocious propaganda assault to undermine the Bolivarian government.
Finally, Venezuelans abroad try to silence support for Maduro by arguing that those who did not experience the economic hardships that they experienced do not have a right to speak. As a rebuttal, those inside the country argue that Venezuelans who left during the most difficult times as a result of the US financial attacks did not experience the subsequent economic upward swing that Chavismo engineered, despite US-imposed crippling sanctions. Venezuela has experienced continued economic growth from 2020-2025, which is one of the primary reasons the United States used the military to encircle and attack it; the Bolivarian Revolution was outmaneuvering US economic sanctions. Those who stayed in Venezuela experienced, firsthand, economic recovery, however slow, a reality that cannot be denied to those who experienced it.
A Note on the Imperial Left: The Reach of the US Propaganda Assault
US propaganda assault deploys narratives to undermine the Bolivarian Revolution that face few counternarratives in the United States, including among self-professed “progressives,” “leftists,” or “democratic socialists.” One of the most despicable arguments that emerges out of this group, which I refer to as the “imperial left,” is the ever self-serving “both-sideism” claim. It states that both of the following claims are true: Maduro—and Chavismo more generally—is “corrupt” and “authoritarian” and “mismanaged” the economy and the US carried out an illegal attack and abduction against Venezuela and its leader. These imperial leftists reject both Chavismo and the United States’ actions, thereby projecting a seemingly “neutral,” “objective,” and “unbiased” perspective.
Although “both-sideism” appears as a “neutral,” “unbiased,” and “objective” stance, it is actually in alignment with US aggression against the Bolivarian Revolution. This narrative creates a moral equivalence between the victim (Venezuela and its Bolivarian revolution) and its aggressor (the United States) that renders them both objectionable, which undermines support for Chavismo and, consequently, demobilizes anti-imperial resistance inside the US and strengthens Venezuelan diaspora support for the illegal kidnapping of President Maduro. Notably, for this “equivalence” to work, imperial leftists accept narratives deployed by the US government, including that Chavismo’s mismanagement, corruption, and authoritarianism is primarily responsible for Venezuela’s economic duress, ignoring actual evidence.
In doing so, “both-sideism” legitimizes US government claims and, consequently, its purported reasoning for intervention. For the imperial left, self-defense under imperial aggression is dictatorship; concessions forced under imperial attacks exemplify lack of revolutionary commitment; and neutralization of US proxies reveals authoritarianism. If not a perfect socialist utopia, the imperial left is more than happy to join right-wing forces against revolutionary governments working toward socialism, including in Latin America. All they accomplish is undermining solidarity and resistance against imperial aggression.
Will the Real Venezuelan Please Stand Up!
By highlighting Venezuelans abroad who celebrated the January 3 military attack against their birth country, the US propaganda assault seeks to impose the narrative that all Venezuelans support the illegal kidnapping of President Maduro. To do so, it obscures Venezuelans inside and outside the country who disagree. Even outside of Venezuelan, however, opposition to the illegal kidnapping of President Maduro is alive and well—and ignored by US corporate media. For instance, in a demonstration in Paris, France a Venezuelan migrant raised her voice and spoke thus:
I lived in Venezuela until 2017 and had to leave—not because I wanted to, but because of the economic sanctions the US imposes against my country for the fact that Venezuela dared to nationalize its resources, including oil. But corporate media will not tell you this; its propaganda—along with the far-right extremist elements of the Venezuelan opposition—want you to believe that Venezuela is a failure. But this is not true. Venezuela is a country that, despite imperialist sanctions, endures. When are we going to believe Yanquí propaganda? It’s time to stop legitimizing narratives that justify invasions. History is on our side.
Although ignored, voices like these ring out all over the world, despite having a difficult time finding a public platform for dissemination. Inside Venezuela, these voices are loud and find themselves in every nook and cranny of the national territory, which make them hard to ignore or obscure.
US violence against Venezuelans is intentionally obscured by the US propaganda assault, but it inevitably becomes apparent, often in the midst of dire circumstances, especially in the United States. At the end of one of Maduro kidnapping celebrations, for instance, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents showed up and detained some Venezuelans. One of those individuals captured articulates the reality that the propaganda assault conceals. He says: “We were only celebrating Maduro’s capture. And they brought us here [to an ICE detention center]. It's unjust. Now that I am in this condition, I don’t know who the bad guy is. I thought Maduro was the dictator, but it is Donald Trump who has jailed us.”
Chavismo is Alive and Continues Fighting
The analyst Diego Sequera describes the successful US military aggression that led to the kidnapping of President Maduro as a “sugar-high victory,” suggesting it is momentary and fleeting. Right now, the Trump administration and the extreme right-wing opposition is overcome with glee, expecting the abduction to signal the beginning of the end of Chavismo. However, events subsequent to the abduction call for a different interpretation. Chavismo endures. In the aftermath of the attacks, Venezuelan institutions held their ground, with Chavismo controlling all levers of power. Organizational capacity is strong. For instance, buildings destroyed by the attack were rapidly renovated, highlighting how the Bolivarian Revolution’s primary goals are to serve all Venezuelans. Moreover, due to the limited sanction relief, economic growth under the leadership of Delcy Rodriguez may generate more sympathy for Chavismo among skeptics and deepen commitment for the Bolivarian Revolution among its supporters. As it stands, approval for Rodriguez is high.
The US propaganda assault will continue to try splinter Venezuelan society, including sowing divisions between those who live inside and outside the country. This propaganda assault obscures the fact the military attack was a violation of Venezuelan sovereignty, not just aggression against the Bolivarian Revolution, a point the Bolivarian Revolution makes over and over again. Chavismo is absorbing the attack as a singular moment of vulnerability; it is re-grouping, re-organizing, and now re-energized, as it has done time and time again after each illegal, immoral, unjust US attack over its history. The fact that the Bolivarian Revolution did not crumble after the kidnapping of its president, as many other societies have done after a US strike, reveals the Bolivarian Revolution’s strength.
The time ahead is full of uncertainty, sometimes necessitating temporary changes and strategic deceleration or concessions—as Chavez once said in a previous moment of political vulnerability—“por ahora” (for now). But the process continues. As the movement’s chant reminds us, “Chavez Vive! La Lucha Sigue!” For Chavistas, the Bolivarian Revolution está en marcha (marches on). There is never a final defeat or a final victory. Just temporary battles won or lost on the path toward a different world. Chavismo is now a structural feature of Venezuelan society, part of its DNA. Whatever happens in the coming days, something is assured: Chavismo is here to stay—working, building, organizing to unite Venezuelans, which the US propaganda assault has divided, and building, slowly, toward its next leap forward.
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Trump Is Just the Latest Strongman to Think He Can Control Venezuela
Again and again, external actors arrive convinced that this time, through capital, force, or expertise, they have finally grasped what Venezuela is and what it needs. The confidence never lasts.
Jan 11, 2026
When US forces carried out a large-scale military operation in Caracas on January 3, 2026—capturing President Nicolás Maduro and transporting him to New York to face US indictments—Washington framed the moment as resolution. President Donald Trump declared Venezuela’s long crisis effectively over, announcing that the United States would “run” the country for a period of time and openly discussing the reinstallation of US oil interests. The language was casual, almost improvisational, as if Venezuela were an unruly subsidiary finally brought to heel.
What the operation revealed, however, was not strategic clarity but a familiar blindness. Once again, US power moved decisively while understanding lagged far behind. Leadership was removed, headlines were captured, yet the deeper structures shaping Venezuelan life—its history of extraction, its social networks, its hard-earned skepticism toward imposed authority—remained untouched. The episode fit neatly into a long pattern: Outsiders mistaking control for comprehension.
For more than five centuries, Venezuela has attracted this kind of attention. It has been treated as a resource cache, a geopolitical puzzle, a cautionary tale, or a problem to be solved. Rarely has it been approached as a society with its own internal logic. Again and again, external actors arrive convinced that this time, through capital, force, or expertise, they have finally grasped what Venezuela is and what it needs. The confidence never lasts.
The misreading begins early. When Alonso de Ojeda and Amerigo Vespucci reached the northern coast in 1499 and named it Veneziola, they imposed a European metaphor on a place already dense with meaning. Indigenous societies—the Timoto-Cuica in the Andes, Carib and Arawak peoples along the coast—had built complex agricultural systems, trade routes, and ecological knowledge. Spanish conquest dismantled much of this world, extracting pearls, gold, and cacao while concentrating power in Caracas, a city whose monumental architecture masked the fragility beneath it.
Venezuela has been misread repeatedly. Not because it is unknowable, but because powerful outsiders rarely bother to know it on its own terms.
Colonial Venezuela was never cohesive. Authority flowed downward; legitimacy never followed. The German Welser banking house, granted control of the territory in the 16th century, pursued gold through enslavement and violence. Later, the Guipuzcoan Company monopolized trade, choking local economic life. Periodic uprisings were crushed rather than resolved. The lesson repeated itself quietly but insistently: Wealth could be extracted, order imposed temporarily, but social trust could not be engineered from afar.
Independence did not resolve these tensions. 19th century unfolded through fragmentation, regionalism, and civil war. Simón Bolívar understood Venezuela better than most foreign admirers or critics since, yet even he struggled to translate military success into durable political unity. The Federal War left the country devastated and more unequal, reinforcing a pattern in which power was centralized while social cohesion remained elusive. European creditors and early oil prospectors took note, circling patiently.
Oil altered Venezuela’s position in the world but not its underlying dynamics. In the early 20th century, Juan Vicente Gómez offered foreign companies stability and access in exchange for political backing. Later, Marcos Pérez Jiménez presented a gleaming vision of modernization—highways, towers, civic monuments—that impressed visiting dignitaries. The spectacle worked. Venezuela appeared governable, even exemplary. Yet outside the frame, inequality hardened and participation narrowed. Development was visible; legitimacy was thin.
By the time the bolívar collapsed on Black Friday in 1983, the illusion was difficult to sustain. An economy tethered to oil rents proved dangerously exposed to global shocks, while political institutions remained distant from everyday life. The Caracazo riots of 1989 were not a sudden breakdown but a release, an eruption from a society that had absorbed decades of exclusion. International observers described chaos. Venezuelans recognized continuity.
Hugo Chávez entered this landscape not as a rupture but as a condensation of long-simmering forces. His rise drew on popular frustration with a system that had promised stability and delivered precarity. The brief 2002 coup against him, quietly welcomed in Washington, collapsed almost immediately, undone by mass mobilization. Power changed hands; legitimacy reasserted itself. Chávez’s social programs produced real gains while deepening reliance on oil, leaving unresolved the same vulnerability that had defined Venezuelan political economy for a century.
After Chávez’s death, Nicolás Maduro governed a system already under strain. Falling oil prices, hyperinflation, protest cycles, mass migration, and partial dollarization followed. External pressure mounted, sanctions, recognition battles, diplomatic theater, often treating Venezuela less as a society than as a message. Leadership was personalized; history flattened.
The capture of Maduro followed this script. It was decisive, dramatic, and legible to a US political culture that favors clear villains and clean endings. What it did not do was engage the complexity of Venezuelan life: the informal economies that keep neighborhoods fed, the communal networks that substitute for absent institutions, the cultural memory shaped by centuries of extraction and resistance. These dynamics do not disappear when a president boards a plane.
Venezuelan resilience rarely makes headlines because it lacks spectacle. It is found in Indigenous land stewardship, Afro-Venezuelan cultural traditions, cooperative food systems, remittance networks, and everyday improvisation. Migration, so often framed solely as collapse, has also become a form of continuity, extending social ties across borders rather than severing them.
Oil still looms over everything. The 1970s boom, including Saudi-Venezuelan cooperation, promised autonomy through abundance and delivered deeper dependence instead. Resource wealth invited intervention and centralization while postponing harder questions about participation and governance. The pattern has proven remarkably durable.
Venezuela’s history does not yield easily to slogans or interventions. It resists tidy moral arcs and quick fixes. Again and again, external actors—most recently the Trump administration—have approached the country as if force, markets, or managerial confidence could substitute for understanding. Each time, they discover too late that Venezuela is not an abstraction but a living society shaped by long memory and adaptive survival.
Venezuela has been misread repeatedly. Not because it is unknowable, but because powerful outsiders rarely bother to know it on its own terms. And so the cycle continues: decisive action, confident declarations, and, beneath them all, a society that endures—complex, unfinished, and stubbornly beyond control.Keep ReadingShow Less
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