After Maduro, a storm's brewing in Venezuela

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Hi Diogenes,

The dramatic removal of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and his wife sent shockwaves through global politics.

What makes this moment especially striking is not just the unprecedented nature of the military action but the Trump administration's stated aim of taking control of Venezuela's vast oil reserves.

In an interview with our editor-in-chief, professor of Latin American politics Laura Tedesco breaks down what's at stake as oil, geopolitics and regime change collide.

FEATURED STORY

After Maduro, there is a storm brewing in Venezuela

Aman Sethi

If successive presidents of the United States once claimed to spread freedom and defend democracy to justify propping up dictators, bombing faraway lands and invading countries, the current administration has made no such excuses.

Last week, US security forces abducted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife from a compound in Caracas and presented both in a Manhattan courtroom on charges of drug smuggling.

Yet in subsequent interviews with several US news outlets, US President Donald Trump made clear that the reason for this unprecedented, and likely illegal, military action was to commandeer Venezuela's vast oil reserves.

While decades of international realpolitik have invariably involved removing an adversary and installing a friendly, internationally accepted opposition leader in their place, the Trump administration has sidelined Venezuela's beleaguered opposition of María Corina Machado (who just won the Nobel Peace Prize that Trump has long coveted) and Edmundo González Urrutia, and installed Maduro's deputy, Delcy Rodríguez, as acting president.

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Laura Tedesco is a long-time openDemocracy contributor and a professor of Latin American politics and international relations at St. Louis University Madrid. She spoke to openDemocracy soon after US secretary of state Marco Rubio presented a three-part plan to seize Venezuelan oil. A plan that US opposition leaders say amounts to theft.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity. (You can also listen to this interview as a podcast on Spotify, Apple, or your desktop.)

Aman Sethi: In all the scenario-planning around Venezuela in the months since the US military build-up in the Caribbean, is it fair to say no one saw this particular scenario, where the US has essentially removed President Maduro, but left the regime completely intact to the extent of appointing his deputy, Delcy Rodríguez, as the new leader?

Laura Tedesco: I think this was a big surprise. When we were watching [the news] on TV, we were all thinking that afterwards [the US] will bring María Corina Machado and Edmundo Gonzalez to the government, but that would also be a little bit naive.

Naive in the sense that [the opposition] are extremely alone. I think we were all surprised, taken by surprise.

Was Rodríguez someone that those tracking were like, "This person is definitely on my radar?"

I don't think that academics familiar with the Venezuelan regime were expecting her to be chosen to replace Maduro, really. She's part of the regime.

When Hugo Chávez [Maduro's predecessor] arrived in government, he created not really a political party, but a social movement at the city-level and in the small town-level that is very, very loyal to the regime.

They work for the regime, they distribute food and other things to the people. And they are, you know, they are in charge of the small towns. They do a lot of social work. But they are also the intelligence.

So these are people who know a lot about the social structure of Venezuela. And so in this sense, they were very useful. When you establish such an authoritarian regime, you know that you are controlling every aspect of everyday life. So Rodríguez was taken from here.

So, as I understand it, when Hugo Chávez took power in 1999, he essentially built a kind of parallel social structure that is national and works at a very grassroots level.

Exactly, yes.

So if we were to give Trump the benefit of doubt for a minute, it suggests that if you were going to engineer some version of leadership change in Venezuela – even if it is patently illegal – actually trying to install an opposition regime would be almost like a recipe for civil war?

Yes. The one who is in power needs to control the armed forces. And if you call Edmundo [González Urrutia] or María Corina Machado, how are you going to control the armed forces? How are you going to control all the Cubans? Who will work with the armed forces or in hospitals? Who knows the Venezuelan state? Delcy Rodríguez knows.

And I'm sure she's willing to help because I'm sure either they're going to give her a big economic prize, or they're going to tell her that she won't end up in jail. And so she's going to collaborate. She doesn't have any other option, really.

So far, you have repeatedly said it all depends on the army. What role do the armed forces play in Venezuelan politics and society?

The Army is the main pillar of the regime. Chávez was from the army and he had all the support of the army. Maduro was not from the armed forces, but he also had their support.

This was a military dictatorship. Like the one in Cuba. Right. And after the invasion from Trump on 3 January, I was surprised and even angry, you know, that he decided to put, uh, Delcy Rodríguez, but then you, you start to understand he couldn't move away everyone from the regime and install Edmundo Gonzalez or María Corina Machado, that was impossible.

So they have to now work with the armed forces. And, uh, when, when I say we have to work with the armed forces, we have to give them something because they have the weapons and the armed forces is the only institution that has the infrastructure in every corner of the country.

So you have to work with them.

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The other figures that you've mentioned, which I find fascinating, are the Cubans. Who are the Cubans in Venezuela, and how did they get there?

Chávez had a very strong and deep relationship with the Cuban regime.

Chávez and Venezuela had been helping the Cuban regime. Cuba has always been very well known – especially in the 1960s and 1970s – for their doctors. So when Chávez arrived to power, one of the deals was that there would be Cuban doctors going to Venezuela.

So you have doctors, you have nurses from Cuba, but then you have a lot of military intelligence helping the Venezuelan government, in exchange, Venezuela gives oil to Cuba, but also they pay for these people, for the doctors, the nurses and the military advisors.

On 3 January [when Maduro was kidnapped], 32 military Cubans were killed in Venezuela. So they were doing something there.

In our conversation so far, we've talked about this idea of this almost totalizing regime. This regime is everywhere, it's got its people everywhere. It's running everything.

But we also know that Trump apparently had a deal in place with Rodríguez before removing Maduro, so there have obviously been fractures in the regime as well.

So where do you actually see fractures emerging going forward?

After the elections in 2024, there was a lot of anger because the regime was not delivering as it used to, on social goods, health or security.

Caracas especially, has become a very insecure city. I think that they must have quite a lot of discontent in the lower ranks of the armed forces. And Maduro was not Chávez. Maduro didn't have the charisma that Chávez had.

If you listen to one of Chávez's speeches, like it or dislike it, the guy was very charismatic; he was very clever. Maduro was not clever, was not charismatic.

The US is essentially investing in the current regime. I'm imagining a nightmare scenario, where you essentially have popular discontent that boils over, becomes violent, and the Venezuelan regime shoots a bunch of people and now suddenly you have the US again, like history repeating itself, giving more and more money to a Latin American dictatorship to suppress its population. How plausible is this?

Oh, this is a very likely scenario, unfortunately.

Oh dear.

Because we really don't know how Delcy Rodríguez is going to govern, to what extent she has the support of the armed forces. We don't know if there will be a partition in the armed forces.That could make it much more difficult.

It is early days and everybody is like, "we are looking at what's going on."

But in six months, Venezuelans will be expecting something, something different. And maybe they are out in the streets, and maybe they're asking for María Corina [Machado] and we don't know whether María Corina is going to be better.

Trump also has to be extremely careful because I think he doesn't really understand what's going on within the poor areas of Caracas and what is going on within the interior of the country.

We have a shock, and now this is like a period of calm, but a storm can start anytime.