Now that Donald Trump captured Nicolas Maduro, the leader of the revolutionary socialist government of Venezuela, one wonders what future awaits the South American country attacked by the United States on the night between 2 and 3 January.
In the statement released at his Mar-a-Lago residence, Trump said: “We will continue to govern the country until a safe, proper and judicious transition can be made.” Trump did not provide any other details and it is not at all clear how this transition phase will be managed. There are no American troops reported in Venezuela and no “governor” has been appointed to take charge of the country. The United States’ “partnership” with Venezuela will make the Venezuelan people “rich, independent and secure,” Trump said.
When asked who governs Venezuela, Trump responded vaguely, “a group,” adding, changing the subject, that the oil companies would pay to rebuild the infrastructure.
«By declaring that the United States will ‘rule’ Venezuela, the president raised a series of questions: Will the United States send an occupying military force? Will they install a compliant government for a number of years? Will they run the courts and decide who will extract the oil? All of this, of course, could involve the United States in the kind of ‘endless wars’ that Trump’s MAGA base has rejected,” he asks. David Sanger on the New York Times.
Venezuelan opposition leader and 2025 Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado he said in a statement that “the time for freedom has come” for Venezuela. Machado assures that Maduro will answer for his “atrocious” crimes and that the United States has “kept its promise to enforce the law” in the face of Maduro’s refusal to “accept a negotiated solution”. He also states that “we are ready to take power.”
Machado adds that “what was supposed to happen is happening” and that “we will bring order, we will free political prisoners, we will build an exceptional country and we will bring our children home.” According to Machado, Edmundo González, winner of the July 2024 presidential elections, “must immediately assume his constitutional mandate and be recognized as commander in chief” of the army. However, Trump did not comment on this.
Meanwhile, details are emerging on what happened in recent weeks between Washington and Caracas.
Before making his statements, Trump had spoken with Fox News revealing that he spoke with Maduro “a week ago”. In the conversation Trump told him: “you have to surrender, you have to capitulate”. Even the vice president JD Vance revealed that «the president offered several ways out, but he was very clear throughout the process: drug trafficking must stop and the stolen oil must be returned to the United States. Maduro is the last person to have discovered that President Trump is serious.”
Marco Rubiothe secretary of state, said that Nicolás Maduro could have left Venezuela and lived in another country, but “he wanted to be great.”
That there were ongoing negotiations between Mauro and the United States was revealed at the end of December by the Spanish newspaper ABCwhich had a front page headline about a possible “golden exile” of Maduro, perhaps in Spain. But evidently no agreement was reached, Maduro did not satisfy the White House’s demands and so the attack was decided.
“We were supposed to do this four days ago, but the weather wasn’t perfect,” Trump told the Fox News. “The weather must be perfect… all of a sudden it cleared up and we said let’s go ahead,” he said. Trump added that Maduro was “in a house that looked more like a fortress than a home with solid steel walls all around.”
In a 50-second phone call with the reporter from New York Times Tyler Pager, Trump praised “Great planning, great troops and great people. It was a brilliant operation.” Trump followed the operation from his residence in Mar-a-Lago, Florida and described it as a scene from a movie: «In reality, they simply broke in, entered places where it was not possible to enter, forced open steel doors that were there for that very purpose, and took them away in a matter of seconds. I had never seen anything like it.”
According to sources briefed on the operation, American special forces captured Maduro with the help of a CIA source within the Venezuelan government who had been monitoring his whereabouts in recent days. Maduro and his wife were taken to the USS Iwo Jima, one of the American warships patrolling the Caribbean, bound for the United States.
Maduro was indicted in New York on drug and weapons trafficking charges, Attorney General Pam Bondi said, adding that he “will face the full severity of American justice on American soil in American courts.”. A photo released on the Truth social network shows Maduro in handcuffs, a mask in front of his eyes, a cap and a bottle of water in his hand, heading towards his prison in the United States.
