In the early morning hours, of 3 January, a United States military operation spirited Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores out of Caracas following an assault that left dozens dead, including at least 32 Cubans that the Cuban government later said were members of the Cuban armed forces and intelligence agencies.
According to the Venezuelan government’s own tally sheets and conclusions of nongovernmental organizations such as the Carter Center, Maduro lost the July 2024 presidential election to former diplomat Edmundo González, who served as Venezuela’s ambassador to Argentina under the presidency of Hugo Chávez, who ruled Venezuela from 1999 until his death in 2013, at which point Maduro assumed the presidency. Rather than admit defeat, Maduro’s government simply declared victory and unleashed savage violence against those who dared oppose it. The United Nations Human Rights Council released a report in the aftermath of the elections that concluded that “violence used against opponents of the Venezuelan authorities has reached unprecedented levels [including] arrests, sexual abuse and torture.” Last July, Amnesty International released another report where it characterized the Maduro government’s “enforced disappearances” of critics “as part of a widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population, particularly those they consider dissidents, which amount to crimes against humanity.”
For years, Maduro had sat atop a Mafia-like octopus of organized crime as a kind of capo di tutti i capi of a narco-kleptocracy that consisted of not only Maduro himself but also Minister of Interior Diosdado Cabello, the Rodriguez siblings, Delcy Rodríguez, who assumed the presidency after Maduro’s ouster and her brother, Jorge Rodríguez, president of Venezuela’s National Assembly.In April 2023, testimony submitted to the International Criminal Court about the Venezuelan government’s atrocities outlined "Crimes of murder, imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty, torture, other inhumane acts, rape and/or other forms of sexual violence, enforced disappearance, forced displacement [and] persecution on political grounds [with the victims including] human rights defenders; social and environmental activists; humanitarian workers and volunteers; health professionals; judges, prosecutors, defence lawyers and other civil servants in the judiciary; university students, professors and supporting staff...Former police and military personnel…a large variety of civil servants; workers in both the public and private sector; retirees; journalists, media outlets, bloggers and social media users; land, farm and business owners."
Donald Trump - who recently freed the former President of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández from a 45 year prison sentence in the U.S. thanks to his role as one of the hemisphere’s most prolific drug traffickers - didn’t even attempt to conceal the mercenary and non-humanitarian nature of his seizure of Maduro, claiming the United States would “run” Venezuela until a “safe, proper and judicious transition” took place, claiming the U.S. “built Venezuela’s oil industry” and “the socialist regime stole it from us.” Trump was also brutally dismissive of both Edmundo González and opposition leader and Nobel Prize winner María Corina Machado, claiming the latter “she doesn’t have the respect within the country.” Thus, despite Maduro’s capture, Venezuela’s hydra-headed dictatorship continues in place. Videos from Venezuela confirm that colectivos - as the pro-government militia that have comprised one of the regime’s most fearsome tools of repression are known - have fanned out into the streets.
To discuss the aftermath of Maduro’s capture and what might possible be in store for Venezuela in the future, today we will speak with Juan Luis Rodríguez, a Venezuelan anthropologist and Associate Professor at Queens College in New York and Venezuelan-American journalist Germania Rodriguez Poleo.