Caracas Chronicles

At this point we shouldn’t have to remind our readers that explaining what’s going on in Venezuela is not easy. One of the biggest challenges, particularly for those who have to explain this mess to folks abroad, is that it can’t be done with oneliners. Well, not everything. We do have the “Maduro stole the elections” one, which is quite powerful and has a bunch of evidence behind it, but even that story starts to fade with how events have been escalating in 2025. For everything else, there’s little that can’t be explained without having to resort to a five-paragraph explanation, an essay, charts, and journalistic investigations. 

Lately, we’ve seen many one liners that paint a partial picture that softens the view on Nicolás Maduro and where he has led Venezuela. We understand the urge to debunk Trump’s narratives and lies, but in many cases they have been resorting to over simplification and to old leftie tropes that overlook the urgency of the crisis and the dead end in which the country has landed. Here’s a look at some of those one liners. 

“Trump lies: Venezuela is irrelevant in drug trafficking”

It’s complicated. According to several reports like this one from the Council of Foreign Relations, it’s true that fentanyl enters the U.S. mostly by land from Mexico, and that Mexican cartels Sinaloa or Jalisco Nueva Generacion are the prominent players in a criminal industry that involves components from China. So, regarding fentanyl, Venezuela is not an important player, and it isn’t a relevant producer of cocaine either. There are no solid grounds to say that Maduro is directly commanding the gang Tren de Aragua or the Cartel de los Soles. On that, the Trump administration’s discourse is, to say the least, misleading. However, as we explained in this piece, the Venezuelan state evolved into a mafia: military and police officers of all ranks are involved in drug trafficking and other criminal industries, and the spoils of crime, that spread to all branches of the administration, are the cement of the alliance that sustains Maduro in power. 

Bottom line: the story that Trump tells about Maduro and Venezuelans as an enemy that poisons Americans with drugs is clumsy and weak, but that doesn’t mean that Maduro’s is a normal Latin American government with some rotten apples. Venezuela is actually ruled by a regime that is more a criminal network than a real government. All this can be seen in the most visible side of this story: there is no evidence or due process around the bombings announced by Trump and his “war secretary” Pete Hegseth; at the same time, it’s a fact that Venezuelan vessels are routinely used in drug and human trafficking routes. 

“The U.S. is violating Venezuela’s sovereignty”

If it’s true what OSINT accounts have reported, U.S. Air Force B-1 bombers entered Venezuelan airspace at least twice in the last two weeks. Those are the only incidents we might consider violations of Venezuela sovereign space. Trump denied it, and the Maduro regime, most likely to avoid the provocation, looked the other way and focused on insulting tiny Trinidad and Tobago for admitting a U.S. warship at its main port. We don’t have reliable information on the location of the “kinetic” strikes on boats, so we ignore if they took place in Venezuelan waters. 

Having said that, from a Venezuelan point of view and when it comes to our people’s lives, that is nothing compared to the loss of sovereignty the country has been experiencing since Hugo Chávez came to power. The Colombian guerrillas that, before him, had an isolated, clandestine presence in some areas around the border with Colombia, were given sanctuary and political protection. After the 2016 peace agreement in Colombia, those who didn’t demobilize merged into the illicit economies of Maduro’s rogue state and were given entire sectors to profit. Several guerrilla leaders have been captured or killed either by Colombian authorities or other guerrilla competitors in Venezuelan territory. The ELN used to be a Colombian guerrilla group. Now, the ELN controls villages and mines in Venezuela, under Maduro’s protection, and it’s now known as a binational actor. 

Chávez and Maduro delegated domestic intelligence in foreign allies and arranged partnerships that shared with them strategic assets like the oil industry. Cuban advisors were central in the take over of Venezuelan armed forces by the chavista movement and are still involved in the surveillance of police and military; Maduro wouldn’t be there without support from Havana, where he has traveled frequently for advice. Russia and Iran replaced the U.S. as the main military provider, with total opacity about the deals and extent of cooperation agreements besides what Maduro boasts about. Moscow and Tehran are critical partners to evade sanctions and counter Western narratives—and what remains of democratic values in this 21st century—in the global arena.

So, next time you worry about Trump messing around with Venezuela’s airspace, please think about Venezuelan civilians being interrogated by Cuban spies in black sites or places like El Helicoide, or living under the surveillance of Colombian guerrilleros, or being bossed around by Iranian engineers and Russian military consultants. That is not an interpretation of OSINT tweets, but a flesh-and-bones reality. 

While many discuss the abstraction that is the possible return of the Monroe Doctrine, chavismo and its allies are, in practice, the actual occupation army. 

“U.S. sanctions destroyed the Venezuelan economy”

Once again: The collapse of the Venezuelan economy started in 2013, when Chávez died and was succeeded by Maduro. Scarcity was followed by hyperinflation in 2017. The mass exodus goes back to 2014. Sanctions from the U.S. and other countries on state-owned companies started in 2019, five years after. There is a debate about the impact that sanctions caused in the economy, but there is no grounds to say that those measures ravaged Venezuela. With sanctions in place, the economy underwent a minor recovery from 2019 to 2023.

It’s mismanagement, corruption and ideology that destroyed the economy. Saying otherwise is reproducing the propaganda of those responsible. To the perplexity of the Venezuelan public, that sort of disinformation helps them deflect blame that falls on none other than 25 years of chavista decision-making.   

“The U.S. just wants Venezuela’s natural resources”

Yes and no. 

Venezuela holds the world’s biggest oil reserves, around 300 billion barrels. Another thing is how much of that oil will be eventually exploited and used, and how much the U.S., which is energy self-sufficient, needs it, having many other close and reliable sources that are actually producing, like Canada. You may have heard that what was once a mighty oil industry is all but dismantled, and just recently have approached a third of what was its normal output of 3 million barrels a day… thanks to the only company that has been currently drilling a significant amount of oil in Venezuela: US-owned Chevron.  

If you wonder whether the naval deployment in the Caribbean is about taking over those oil fields, think again. The New York Times revealed that Maduro offered all he can to appease Trump and keep Chevron operating in Venezuela, paying royalties. María Corina Machado, on her part, has been pitching a post-chavista Venezuela as a sort of Dubai where American investors will be more than welcome. 

No, Trump doesn’t need to invade Venezuela, or even topple Maduro, to exploit Venezuelan oil. Maduro would be happy to give him access to it and to get along with him, he is quite public about it. In fact, the current military tension is affecting a business that was going well thanks to the Chevron lobby represented by Trump’s special envoy Richard Grenell, who made a deal with Maduro after he stole the elections in 2024. And there’s still a possibility that such understanding, through oil tankers rather than warships might resuscitate, because we can’t be sure about Trump’s intentions on Maduro. 

And do remember that the best client for Venezuelan crude is the U.S., not only because it’s a client that pays at full price but because most of the oil industry was built with U.S. companies as their main partner. The approach from the international press overlooks a century-old experience that Venezuela has in the business. 

“Venezuelans should solve their differences by themselves”

Yes, we should. Actually, we have tried several times. After Chávez rode the popularity wave to redesign all institutions and restart his presidency with a longer term in 2000, we started to protest about crime and expropriations. In 2002, we marched to demand his departure and chavismo fired bullets at us. The subsequent coup attempt against Chávez led to fake negotiations and to a general strike, promoted by the opposition, that left the country poorer and Chávez more powerful. We tried a recall referendum, and María Corina’s Súmate NGO organized a signature collection process, but the electoral board delayed it for a year until Chávez had the numbers to win it. Chavismo’s grip on the institutions turned Maduro into a de facto president while Chávez was dying and helped him win, in the severely tilted boardgame that was the 2013 election. We protested again in 2014—Maria Corina was among the three names promoting the unrest—and chavismo shot us again, killing dozens of young people in daylight.

The opposition won a two thirds majority in the National Assembly in December 2015, and chavismo created a parallel parliament that left the legally constituted parliament powerless, as they tend to do with any mayor or governor from the opposition that is elected by the people. By suggestion of negotiators from the Vatican and Norway, we tried a second recall referendum against Maduro that was blocked by the electoral authority (CNE). Months later, a mass rebellion in 2017 that ended with around 150 dead and hundreds of Venezuelans rotting in jail. When the opposition-led National Assembly invoked the Constitution to appoint its speaker, Juan Guaidó, as interim president in 2019 since the country did not have a democratically elected head of state, Maduro remained in power. Repression, censorship and abuse increased.

More international negotiation attempts, by the Biden administration, Qatar, Brazil and the Caribbean community promoted a commitment to a fair contest in 2024: well, chavismo banned Maria Corina from competing, even though she was chosen as the opposition candidate by almost 3 million voters, and simply stole the election. By then, a quarter of the population had left the country, in many cases to deal with xenophobia and mistreatment abroad, but some people in Venezuela took to the streets to call out the blatant electoral fraud. What did chavismo do? You guessed: they shot them, killing two dozen in two days, and arresting more than 2,000.

Some are lecturing us about the need for a Chile-style transition rather than an American invasion. Well, the Venezuelan military might have forced Maduro to step aside, as the Chilean army did with Augusto Pinochet when he lost the plebiscite in 1989; they had the opportunity when the opposition won the National Assembly in 2015, when Maduro became illegitimate in 2019, and when Maduro stole the election in 2024. They chose to keep Maduro in power, and with it, the illicit economy they prey upon.

Suggesting more “dialogue” or “negotiations” at this stage is not just naive, it’s blind to the country’s recent history.

“Venezuela is preparing for war”

In Venezuela, militias are not fighters on a technical basis, like you saw in Black Hawk Down; those millions Maduro is saying will repel the marines are at the grassroots of chavismo, a group mostly composed of senior citizens who miss Chávez and, most of all, are trying to survive. There are no mass demonstrations about defending the land. This is not a nation in arms, like the Brits in WW2 or the Vietnamese digging tunnels. People in Venezuela actually can’t talk about the situation and their main worry is the constant shrinking of their purchasing power. Days go on with repression getting worse and the U.S. dollar getting more expensive.

Venezuelan armed forces, save the occasional skirmish with rival guerrillas or gangs, are only experienced in killing unarmed protesters and low-income Venezuelans. With FANB’s dismal operational arrest, they are just unable to put up a fight. The U.S. seems to expect, in fact, that they betray Maduro before the Americans have to shoot the first missile against Venezuelan military targets. 

“A U.S. invasion would ignite a civil war in Venezuela, just like Iraq or Afghanistan”

Beyond chronic social conflict related to historical inequality, like you would see in any Latin American country—and now in richer ones like France or the United States—, and the persistence of violent crime linked to institutional weakness, culture and geography (many gold mines in remote places, many beaches to export Colombian cocaine), Venezuela is not an unstable territory that destabilizes a region and attracts proxy wars. It lacks the regional tensions present in Colombia or Bolivia, nor the separatist movements of Canada or Spain. It is free of the religious rivalries that fuel conflict in Africa or the Middle East. And despite racial discrimination does exist with its country-specific layers and expressions, skin color is not a source of violence, as it can be in the United States. The last time Venezuelans killed each other for ethnic reasons was in the 1810s and early 1820s. 

Comparisons with the violence that spread in Iraq, Somalia or Afghanistan after the U.S. intervened, or the fall of rulers like Saddam Hussein or Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi are simply out of place here. Chávez and Maduro are not rulers creating a delicate equilibrium between factions that were fighting each other for centuries and turn to war again if they die or are ousted. They are not like Tito in former Yugoslavia, or Gorbachev trying to hold together rival nations that were originally separated. Venezuela remains largely the same territory it was before and after the independence wars, two centuries ago. 

No, Maduro is not a guarantee for peace, as he claims. On the contrary, it’s precisely his government that has caused problems in the hemisphere, via mass migration, the export of crime and the meddling in foreign affairs. And no, a U.S. armed intervention won’t cause a civil war or would trap the U.S. in another eternal, unwinnable conflict, even if the irregular actors like Colombian guerrillas and some factions of chavista loyalists continue fighting and sabotaging a transition.

Putting Venezuela, which had a 40-year-old democracy with civilian presidents and a secular government, in the same category of “Third-World-unsolvable-mess” that covers countries with entirely different histories and ethnic makeups, is as colonialist as Trump speaking of shithole countries.