Donald Trump’s electoral victory for a second, nonconsecutive term was seen by Venezuelans—inside and outside the United States—as the last opportunity to achieve a political transition in Venezuela. Once again, the hope of millions of Venezuelans to return to democracy was placed in the hands of the U.S. president. However, Trump had other plans.
Winning the Hispanic vote in South Florida is no longer a priority for the Republican Party. In the 2024 electoral campaign, after having been used as a proxy for the Cuban-American bloc in 2020, Venezuelans became the target of continuous attacks within the context of Trump’s anti-immigration campaign message. In a state that is a safe bet for the Republican Party, the criminalization of Venezuelan immigrants—far from provoking rejection among Cuban and Venezuelan diasporas—found broad support.
Among the first measures of the new Trump administration was the issuance of a series of executive orders to curb irregular immigration. One of the migrant communities most affected by this decision was the Venezuelan one, with the designation of the Tren de Aragua as a terrorist organization, since nationality alone became sufficient to criminalize Venezuelans in the United States.
In this context, one of the most controversial episodes in the political struggle for Venezuelan democracy took place. The Venezuelan opposition leadership, following the electoral fraud of 2024, bet on a U.S. military intervention as the only means to depose Nicolás Maduro after the failed electoral contest. Despite the illegitimacy of Maduro’s political regime, the overwhelming support for the opposition candidate, Edmundo González, was not enough to force Maduro to acknowledge his defeat.
In this scenario, the leader of the opposition movement, María Corina Machado, not only endorsed the official narrative that criminalizes Venezuelans in the United States—by insisting on Nicolás Maduro’s alleged role as leader of the Tren de Aragua—but also validated falsehoods such as the manipulation of Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential election, in a futile attempt to secure the Trump administration’s support for her calls for intervention in Venezuela.
Although the prospect of a military intervention seemed far from imminent, the beginning of a series of attacks on small vessels—first in the Caribbean and later in the Pacific—changed perceptions about the White House’s real intentions. The strategy pointed to the fight against drug trafficking, under the argument of the de facto leader of Venezuela’s responsibility for drug trafficking. Even though fentanyl was mentioned—a substance for which Venezuela is not a transit country—the Trump administration insisted that this was an anti-drug effort, with the backing of María Corina Machado, who has repeatedly accused Nicolás Maduro of being involved in the drug business.
After 28 attacks on vessels, with more than 110 fatalities, President Trump escalated the threat against the Maduro regime by seizing oil tankers transporting Venezuelan crude. Even as the White House rejected the notion of an interest in regime change, reality pointed precisely to an aggressive strategy aimed at forcing Maduro out of power through financial strangulation—an approach publicly supported by the dominant sectors of the opposition.
Following an initial incursion into Venezuelan territory—something Trump had hinted at on repeated occasions—the opposition leadership expressed optimism about the country’s democratic future. The capture of Nicolás Maduro, along with Cilia Flores, in the early hours of January 3 initially caused surprise and then gave way to a fleeting euphoria, given the uncertainty surrounding the country’s immediate future.
In her lobbying for a more aggressive policy toward the Maduro regime, María Corina Machado insisted on the government’s weakness and on the alleged support of 80% of the Armed Forces for a democratic exit. However, just days after the military extraction operation in Venezuela, it appears that it was not only Maduro who was decapitated. The Trump administration’s decision to discard the opposition—specifically Machado—has been devastating for the aspirations of a democratic transition in the country.
The arguments put forward by Secretary of State Marco Rubio indicate that opposition weakness is not limited to a lack of influence within the military sector. Rubio emphasized that the absence of opposition leadership within Venezuela did not guarantee an orderly transition under Machado’s leadership, despite her indisputable prominence. For Rubio, the problem is that U.S. interests are oriented toward achieving stability in the country, and the lack of opposition cohesion poses a risk to those plans.
However, beyond the pragmatism underpinning the official justification, the decision to momentarily accept Delcy Rodríguez to oversee the transition reflects the stance described in the Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. This is about geopolitical interests, but above all, an explicit demonstration of who wields power in the region. Beyond questions about the legality of the military operation to remove Maduro and Flores from the country—on which there is debate among legal experts in the United States—there is the fact that this was the very action the Venezuelan opposition had been clamoring for in order to recover the country.
The preliminary outcome could not be more disappointing, especially for Machado, who has been sidelined—rather undiplomatically—from her long-awaited moment in the spotlight. President Trump’s decision to accept Rodríguez’s transitional role—something that might seem ideologically contradictory—should instead be viewed as the convenience of relying on a political operator with proven technical skills. Rodríguez gained recognition, even beyond the socialist sector, for her handling of the economic crisis through liberalization policies following the imposition of oil sanctions.
In a scenario in which President Trump has made it clear that his interest lies in the oil business, it makes sense that the priority would be to reach an understanding with someone like Rodríguez, who has managed Venezuela’s oil industry. This becomes even more relevant in light of Trump’s threats against Cuba, especially given that his Secretary of State has built a career promising the fall of the Havana regime. If speculation about the exhaustion of the relationship between Venezuela and Cuba is confirmed—pointing to Rodríguez’s dissatisfaction with the regime—the burden is compounded by Venezuela’s oil supply to the island, which is unsustainable under the current economic circumstances.
When all the pieces on the board are put together, one could interpret that Maduro’s removal—not the fall of Chavismo—was the initial objective of a broader strategy whose ultimate purpose is the implosion of the Havana regime. For years, it has been argued that to overthrow Castroism it was necessary to fracture the Chavista regime. Following Maduro’s removal and the near-total maritime and oil blockade, Cuba finds itself financially suffocated, facing uncertainty over Venezuela’s trajectory and mistrust from the Venezuelan de facto government after the failures of the Cuban security team tasked with protecting Maduro.
Whether the goal was merely to remove Maduro or whether Cuba’s collapse was always part of the calculation, at the time of this analysis, what is clear is that both the head of the political regime and the opposition leadership have been decapitated. What now follows is a political realignment that does not respond to the democratic aspirations of the Venezuelan people, but rather conforms to what is expressed in the Trump Corollary regarding the region’s geopolitical stability.
Autor
Adjunct Professor of Political Science at Valencia College (Orlando, Florida). PhD in Social Sciences from the University of Carabobo (Venezuela). Chair of the Latinx Studies Section of LASA.
