Venezuela

Mérida, March 23, 2026 (venezuelanalysis.com) – The Venezuelan government announced a 45-day electricity saving plan as extreme temperatures and regional outages impact Venezuela’s power grid. 

The announcement, made by Acting President Delcy Rodríguez on Saturday, comes on the heels of recurring blackouts, particularly in western states. 

“We are entering a period where solar radiation will impact our territory directly, intensifying heat and drought across the country,” Rodríguez stated during a televised cabinet meeting with officials responsible for the electricity and infrastructure portfolios.

She explained that the “perpendicular passage” of solar rays would significantly increase energy demand for cooling. Alongside drought forecasts, officials expect a greater strain on Venezuela’s electricity generation and transmission infrastructure.

As part of the contingency plan, the Ministry of Electric Energy is set to publish a protocol urging reduced air-conditioning use other rationing measures. In addition, the government has authorized the deployment of thermal drones to monitor high-temperature areas and prevent forest fires from compromising transmission lines.

In March 2025, the Nicolás Maduro administration implemented a similar electricity-savings plan and was compelled to reduce public sector work hours to half a day to ease demand. While the 2025 measures were temporary, the recurrence of shortages underscores the systemic vulnerabilities of the electric grid.

Last Friday, residents in Zulia, Táchira, Mérida, and Trujillo experienced widespread power outages lasting several hours. Local media outlets in the Andean region reported that some sectors are facing daily rationing of up to four hours. Nationwide electricity fluctuations were likewise registered on Monday, with parts of Caracas suffering temporary outages.

The origins of Venezuela’s electrical instability extend over a decade, culminating in the 2019 widespread nationwide blackouts that authorities blamed on “cyber-sabotage.” The alleged attacks compounded infrastructure hard-hit by years of economic sanctions, as well as underinvestment, inadequate maintenance, and the departure of skilled personnel.

Venezuela’s electric grid remains heavily dependent on the Simón Bolívar Hydroelectric Plant, also known as the Guri Dam, in southeastern Bolívar state, which provides approximately 80 percent of the nation’s power. 

However, the transmission lines stretching from the southeast to the western border are often unable to handle the load, with thermoelectric plants in the region unable to cover the additional demand. Current estimates indicate that while Venezuela has an installed generation capacity of approximately 34 gigawatts (GW), only around 12 to 14 GW are currently operational.

Sanctions and push for private investment

In her Saturday address, Rodríguez reiterated the damage caused by US-led unilateral coercive measures and called for their removal. The Venezuelan acting president argued that sanctions hampered the state’s capacity to procure essential technology and components from international suppliers.

“The blockade has impeded the full recovery of this essential service,” Rodríguez said. “Though we have recovered capacity through our own efforts, sanctions limit our response to a demand that grows alongside the economy.”

The Venezuelan government has also announced plans to scale back state control over the electricity sector in order to attract private investment. Earlier this month, authorities unveiled a “pilot plan” to promote foreign investment into the electric grid, following similar blueprints from the oil industry.

Under the proposed framework, the government aims to update the Organic Law of the Electricity System (LOSSE) to allow private companies to assume control of generation and distribution through joint ventures.

According to the Venezuelan Chamber of Construction (CVC), a preliminary investment of US $1.29 billion could lead to the reincorporation of over 6,300 MW to the grid in two phases. The CVC is specifically promoting a project with the Latin America Development Bank to stabilize 2,000 MW in the central industrial region.

The new electricity management model would allow private actors to take control of specific “industrial nodes,” ensuring a reliable supply for manufacturing while retaining a portion of the proceeds to cover maintenance costs.

However, the immediate focus for the Venezuelan executive remains on electricity rationing. Rodríguez concluded her address by calling for “national consciousness,” urging the public to see energy saving not just as a government mandate, but as a collective necessity to navigate the coming weeks of extreme heat and drought.

Edited by Ricardo Vaz in Caracas.

The “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine is a central feature of U.S. strategy designed to secure hegemony and limit Chinese and Russian influence in Latin America and the Caribbean. It does not, however, represent a decisive shift in Washington’s relations with the region. Although the corollary does not make this explicit in its formal statement, in practice it makes more evident what liberal rhetoric has long sought to mask: military and covert interventions aimed at preserving U.S. domination in the Western Hemisphere, undermining progressive movements and governments, and backing right-wing regimes. In this sense, it abandons even the pretense of respect for international law and human rights. In what follows we argue that the Trump Corollary constitutes not only an ideological and imperialist offensive against decolonial and multipolar currents in Latin America, but also a strategic project whose assault on Venezuela has broader geopolitical implications.

The ideological backdrop

Although Washington’s unrestrained militarism, which enjoys bipartisan support, is indeed cause for alarm, the erosion of even the pretense of commitment to liberal-democratic values, human rights, and international law did not begin with the Trump administration. The live-streamed Israeli genocide in Gaza, enabled and backed by the Biden administration, has made this difficult to deny. Moreover, it highlights how the U.S.-European axis has normalized impunity for systematic violence against non-combatants. This erosion of even its own professed liberal values has helped consolidate a political climate in which the Trump administration could intensify its offensives against Venezuela and Cuba and pursue a war of aggression against Iran.

This normalization of necropolitics can be better understood through the ideological logic used to justify it. We can make sense of this logic by distinguishing between two different tendencies within Western Eurocentric modernity. On the one hand is the myth of European supremacy, what Enrique Dussel calls the “developmentalist fallacy,” which has been used to justify colonization, with its racial hierarchy, since the invasion of Amerindia in 1492. On the other is a rational, emancipatory current rooted in ideas of community, equality, and liberty. As critical historians have shown, these emancipatory traditions did not originate solely in Europe; they were also present among some Indigenous peoples, such as the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, whose Great Law of Peace established participatory forms of government centuries before European contact. Historically, these ideals were never extended fully to colonized peoples, nor to people of color within the metropole. This contradiction persists. Washington’s recent rhetoric justifying attacks on Venezuela, Cuba, and Iran expresses the colonial, violent side of modernity while discarding its emancipatory, humanist dimensions.

Civilizational rhetoric and the objectives of the Trump Corollary

It is this myth of European supremacy, often expressed with religious fervor even when stripped of its humanist facade, that serves as the ideological justification for the offensives launched this year. This worldview was crystallized in a speech delivered by Secretary of State Marco Rubio at the 62nd Munich Security Conference on February 14, 2026. That speech anticipated the inauguration in Miami, on March 7, of Shield of the Americas, a new U.S. partnership with right-wing allies in Latin America and the Caribbean, to be led by former Secretary of DHS Kristi Noem. Rubio, in effect, called for a rejection of historical accountability, stating:

We do not want our allies to be shackled by guilt and shame. We want allies who are proud of their culture and of their heritage, who understand that we are heirs to the same great and noble civilization, and who, together with us, are willing and able to defend it. . . . The great Western empires had entered into terminal decline, accelerated by godless communist revolutions and by anti-colonial uprisings that would transform the world and drape the red hammer and sickle across vast swaths of the map in the years to come.

This rhetoric illustrates Rubio’s disdain for anti-colonial struggles that commenced not with the Cold War and communism, but at the very start of the European invasions of Amerindia. Indeed, the “guilt and shame” surrounding the subjugation and exploitation of Indigenous peoples was expressed as early as the sixteenth century, when Bartolomé de Las Casas documented and denounced the tortures inflicted upon them in the name of a European civilizing mission. The same civilizational appeal surfaced again at the Miami summit, where Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth called upon members of the Shield to defend their shared cultures and, in particular, “Western Christian civilization.” By casting anti-colonialism as an insidious force, Rubio’s rhetoric functions to blunt decolonial critiques of the Trump Corollary.

Despite Washington’s zeal for exporting Western ideals, decolonizing currents in Latin America’s political, economic, social, and cultural life have taken deep root. Since the 1960s, Marxism, along with liberation theology, liberation philosophy, and Indigenous struggles for self-governance, have helped articulate ethical and political critiques of colonial domination, racial hierarchy, and dependent forms of development from the perspective of the Global South. Indigenous cosmovisions and the philosophy of buen vivir have influenced constitutional and political life in the region and beyond. For example, the United Nations now recognizes the concept of the rights of nature as central to sustainable development. The recognition of the rights of Mother Earth has also been incorporated into the constitutions of both Bolivia and Ecuador, and the plurality of Indigenous and Afro-descendent nationalities is recognized in several Latin American constitutions.

The Trump Corollary emerges in direct opposition to these decolonial currents. It seeks to restore U.S. primacy over the hemisphere’s governance and resources by curtailing the region’s expanding commercial and diplomatic ties with China, Russia, and other non-Western partners. To advance this agenda, Washington has worked to destabilize or overthrow progressive governments while favoring right-wing administrations more aligned with its interests, in some cases through intimidation, electoral interference, or direct military intervention. Much like the Alliance for Progress, Operation Condor, and the invasion of Panama before it, this latest evolution of the Monroe Doctrine invokes the pretext of security to reassert Washington’s influence over hemispheric political and economic life while limiting the region’s turn toward greater autonomy. Yet that effort confronts a regional reality that Washington cannot easily reverse. Trade relations transcend political divisions in Latin America and the Caribbean. And in South America, China has become the principal trading partner for much of the subregion. This complicates Washington’s efforts to rein in Latin America’s turn toward multipolarity. China’s Third Policy Paper on Latin America and the Caribbean presents the region as an “essential force” in the move toward a multipolar world and economic globalization, and describes the bilateral relationship in terms of equality, mutual benefit, openness, and shared well-being. This stated approach stands in clear contrast to the Trump Corollary’s posture of coercion, Western supremacy, and geopolitical subordination. It is, in part, this regional turn toward multipolarity that the assault on Venezuela seeks to counter.

Venezuela: The central case

The violent reality of the Trump Corollary has been most clearly revealed in Venezuela. Washington’s campaign of deadly strikes against maritime vessels in the Caribbean, a series of extrajudicial killings that claimed the lives of more than 145 people, served as a prelude to the January 3 surprise aerial assault on Caracas, named Operation Absolute Resolve. The maritime victims included people from nations such as Colombia, Saint Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago, and Venezuela who were targeted without public evidence of narco-trafficking or due process. Operation Absolute Resolve itself claimed the lives of more than 120 people, including civilians and security forces, and culminated in the kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores. In Venezuela, the Trump Corollary deploys military force, coercive diplomacy, and control over strategic resources. It also deals a blow to the Bolivarian cause by making an example of a state that has stood as the leading force of regional independence and integration for more than two decades.

Rather than moving, in the short term, to dismantle Chavista institutions, as many Venezuelan opposition hard-liners in Miami and Madrid expected, the Trump administration in the aftermath of Operation Absolute Resolve instead has resorted to “deal-making” with Acting President Delcy Rodríguez. The recognition of interim president Delcy Rodríguez as “the sole Head of State” of Venezuela might be part of an effort by the Trump administration to strip President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores of the presidential immunity to which they are entitled. Despite Trump’s praise for a supposedly mutually beneficial relationship with the Chavista government, this is not a win-win situation. Acting President Rodríguez is attempting to balance Washington’s demands for unfettered access to the country’s natural resources with Venezuela’s own economic interests and the long-term survival of the Bolivarian Revolution. That coercive political context also affects the economic arrangements now taking shape in Venezuela.

As new economic agreements are being “negotiated,” major Venezuelan state assets previously frozen, seized, or placed beyond Caracas’s control remain unrecovered. Prior to Operation Absolute Resolve, the U.S. seized Venezuelan aircraft and targeted ships carrying Venezuelan oil that U.S. authorities said were involved in sanctions evasion. The most egregious case is that of Citgo, Venezuela’s most valuable foreign asset. Caracas has already lost real control over it, and U.S. courts are now overseeing proceedings that could permanently strip Venezuela of ownership to pay creditors.

More recently, a series of Trump administration officials have gone to Caracas to press for greater U.S. influence over Venezuela’s oil industry. They have also “negotiated” with the Chavista government to bring about legal reforms that will facilitate U.S. investment in the extraction of critical minerals and other natural resources. According to Venezuela Analysis (02/20/26), “The Trump administration is forcing all royalty, tax, and dividend payments from Venezuelan oil production [to] be paid into accounts managed by Washington.” For Venezuelan critics of U.S. intervention, these arrangements may result in a significant transfer of national wealth under pressure. Other observers argue that renewed investment could bring Venezuela badly needed revenues. In any case, there is no doubt that these economic arrangements are being carried out in a coercive context.

Regional extensions of the corollary

The offensive against Venezuela did not occur in isolation. It was soon followed by a strangling energy embargo on Cuba designed to provoke a humanitarian crisis to bring about “regime change.” After more than sixty-six years of U.S. embargo against Cuba, this latest escalation is intended not only to destabilize and isolate the island but also to shatter the morale of the forces of resistance throughout the region. At the same time, it has galvanized worldwide solidarity, despite the betrayals of governments that have succumbed to U.S. pressure to expel Cuban doctors and dismantle other forms of Cuban internationalist assistance. Meanwhile, the administration has been pressuring Mexico with the specter of unilateral military strikes against drug cartels, signaling a disregard for Mexico’s repeated insistence on its own sovereignty. In Colombia, Washington antagonized President Gustavo Petro with politically charged drug-trafficking allegations and threats of military intervention, a confrontational posture that later gave way to rapprochement after Petro met with Trump at the White House. In Honduras, the U.S. intervened to back the presidency of the right-wing candidate Nasry “Tito” Asfura who won the presidential election in December 2025 and took office on January 27.

The latest example of this interventionist regional posture was the U.S.-Ecuadorian military operation launched on March 3, which conducted bombings near the Colombian border in northeastern Ecuador, ostensibly aimed at narco-terrorists and illegal mining. In Ecuador, as in Peru, small-scale artisanal mining is often practiced within Indigenous communities living near mineral deposits and employs methods with a far lighter environmental impact than industrial-scale extraction. Whatever its stated purpose, the operation may have the effect of displacing artisanal mining and opening mineral-rich territory to large North American transnational corporations. In brief, by convening twelve compliant right-wing regional leaders in Miami, the Shield of the Americas summit serves to institutionalize Washington’s renewed drive toward regional hegemony. But the significance of this offensive is not only regional.

Geopolitical implications

The Trump Corollary has geopolitical importance because the recent offensive to consolidate U.S. hegemony in the Americas has served as a strategic prelude to the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran. The offensive in Venezuela not only stops Venezuelan crude from reaching Cuba, thereby sharpening the knife of the subsequent energy embargo, but also secures strategic leverage over the largest oil reserves in the world ahead of Iran’s restrictions on passage through the Strait of Hormuz. In this sense, Venezuela is not peripheral to the wider conflict, but central to it. This does not, however, mean that the Trump administration ever had a clear, coherent rationale for starting this war of aggression against Iran.

The ever-shifting rationale for the war was at first framed in terms of protecting demonstrators in Iran, then became an effort to overthrow the government, and has now dissolved into incoherence, with no consistent justification offered at all. In any case, the war may also carry broader geopolitical implications, insofar as prolonged disruption in Gulf oil exports would place pressure on China, whose energy needs depend heavily on Middle Eastern crude shipments. It is also beginning to generate visible political strains within NATO, as doubts about the direction of the war grow in Europe, with Spain as the clearest example. It has likewise raised concerns among some U.S. allies in the Gulf about the wisdom of continuing to host major U.S. bases.

Taken together, the shifting rationale for the war, the U.S.-Israeli callous disregard for civilian life and infrastructure, its mounting economic costs, and the danger that the conflict could spiral out of control and raise the specter of the possible deployment of nuclear weapons suggest that the decision to wage war on Iran was a profound miscalculation, one harmful not only to Iran and the wider region, but also to the people of the U.S. and the global economy. It also exhibits in stark relief the same colonial ideology that underlies the Trump Corollary. For these reasons, opposition to the war, as well as to the Trump Corollary, is growing both at home and abroad.

William Camacaro is a Venezuelan-American  National Co-Coordinator in the Alliance for Global Justice. He was a co-founder of the Bolivarian Circle of New York “Alberto Lovera” and Senior Analyst for the Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA). He holds a Master’s Degree of Fine Arts and a Master’s Degree in Latin American Literature from City University of New York. William has published in the Monthly Review, Counterpunch, COHA, the Afro-America Magazine, Ecology, Orinoco Tribune and other venues. He has organized delegations to Ecuador, Bolivia and Venezuela. He has been a long-time activist for social justice in the United States, such as organizing protests against police brutality in NYC, for the independence of Puerto Rico, and for the freedom of political prisoners. William has also been a leader in defense of progressive governments and social movements in Latin America.

Frederick B. Mills, Ph.D., is professor of philosophy and a member of the Philosophy of Liberation Association and the American Philosophical Association. He has received awards for excellence in teaching and international outreach from Bowie State University. Mills has published articles on philosophy of mind, ethics and public policy, Descartes, Spinoza, Kant, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Mario Bencastro, Enrique Dussel as well as political analysis on contemporary Latin American politics. He has contributed articles to Counterpunch, the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, and other independent media.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Venezuelanalysis editorial staff.

Source: Orinoco Tribune

Latin American leaders met at the 10th Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) Summit in Bogota on Saturday where Colombian President Gustavo Petro called for an immediate Middle East ceasefire to prevent a global economic crisis and ‘potential world war’.

Caracas, March 18, 2026 (venezuelanalysis.com) – Venezuela won the World Baseball Classic after defeating the United States 3–2 on Tuesday at LoanDepot Park in Miami. 

The Caribbean nation’s first major international baseball title was secured thanks to a decisive double by Eugenio Suárez that broke a tie in the top of the ninth inning.

“I have no words. Seeing Javier (Sanoja) score on my double in the ninth was the greatest moment of my life. We knew we could do it. Nobody believed in Venezuela, but now we are the champions. This is a celebration for the whole country,” Suárez told Fox Sports after the game.

The United States had tied the score at 2-2 in the eighth inning when Bryce Harper launched a two-run home run against Venezuelan reliever Andrés Machado.

Earlier in the game, a sacrifice fly from Maikel García in the third inning and a home run by Wilyer Abreu in the fifth—off rookie pitcher Nolan McLean—had given Venezuela a 2–0 lead before a crowd of 36,490 people that was heavily in favor of the South American team.

Sports journalist Jason Mackey said he had never witnessed such passionate fan support at a sporting event—not even at the Super Bowl. Venezuela’s victory also sparked spontaneous celebrations in several cities across the country, including the capital, with fireworks displays and caravans blaring horns along the main avenues.

Venezuela finished the tournament with six wins and one loss, the latter coming against the Dominican Republic during the group stage. Before reaching the championship, the Venezuelan squad defeated three-time tournament champion Japan 8–5 in the quarterfinals and Italy 4–2 in the semifinals. 

The tournament’s Most Valuable Player, Maikel García, emphasized that the team’s motivation centered on representing the country. “We didn’t play the final to represent Dominicans or Latinos. We did it for Venezuela. Maybe some people didn’t like that, but the jersey said Venezuela, not Latin America,” he said.

Meanwhile, the US team fielded the most star-studded roster in its history but fell short in its second consecutive final to extend its winless draught to nine years. The Americans had previously lost the 2023 final 3–2 to Japan.

Following the victory, Venezuela’s Acting President Delcy Rodríguez declared Wednesday a National Day of Jubilation, encouraging people to celebrate in public squares, parks, and sports fields. She also invited the public to attend a large concert titled “Venezuela Triunfa Unida” (“Venezuela Triumphs United”).

For his part, US President Donald Trump used the moment to again suggest that Venezuela could become a US state. “Statehood,” he wrote on his Truth Social account.

In the run-up to the final, Trump had posted a similar message: “Good things have been happening to Venezuela lately. I wonder what this magic is… the 51st state?”

Tuesday’s final happened in the wake of the US’ January 3 military strikes against Caracas and nearby areas that also saw special forces kidnap Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. In the two months since, the two countries have fast-tracked a rapprochement and reestablished diplomatic ties. Despite the strong political overtones surrounding the matchup, players and coaches largely avoided commenting on the state of relations between the two nations.

Edited by Ricardo Vaz in Caracas.

WASHINGTON — U.S. companies will be allowed to do business with Venezuela’s state-owned oil and gas company after the Treasury Department eased sanctions, with some limitations, on Wednesday as the Trump administration looks for ways to boost world oil supplies during the Iran war.

The Treasury issued a broad authorization allowing Petróleos de Venezuela S.A, or PDVSA, to directly sell Venezuelan oil to U.S. companies and on global markets, a massive shift after Washington for years had largely blocked dealings with Venezuela’s government and its oil sector.

Separately, the White House said President Trump would waive, for 60 days, Jones Act requirements for goods shipped between U.S. ports to be moved on U.S.-flagged vessels. The 1920s law, designed to protect the American shipbuilding sector, is often blamed for making gas more expensive.

The moves highlight the increased pressure that the Republican administration is under to ease soaring oil prices as the United States, along with Israel, wages a war with Iran without a foreseeable end date. Global oil prices have since spiked as Iran halted traffic through the narrow Strait of Hormuz, where one-fifth of the world’s oil typically passes through from the Persian Gulf to customers worldwide.

The Treasury’s license is designed to incentivize new investment in Venezuela’s energy sector and is intended to benefit both the U.S and Venezuela, while increasing the global oil supply, a Treasury official told the Associated Press. The official was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Since the ouster and arrest of Nicolás Maduro as Venezuela’s president during a U.S. military operation in January, Trump has said the U.S. would effectively “run” Venezuela and sell its oil.

The U.S. license provides targeted relief from sanctions, but does not lift the penalties altogether. The license allows companies that existed before Jan. 29, 2025, to buy Venezuelan oil and engage in transactions that would normally be banned under American sanctions, reopening trade for a major oil producer to global markets.

There are some limits.

Payments cannot go directly to sanctioned Venezuelan entities such as PDVSA, but must be sent instead to a special U.S.-controlled account. In other words, the U.S. will allow the oil trade but will control the cash flow.

Additionally, deals involving Russia, Iran, North Korea, Cuba and some Chinese entities will not be allowed. Transactions involving Venezuelan debt or bonds will not be allowed.

The license is expected to give a massive boost to Venezuela’s oil-dependent economy and help encourage companies that have been apprehensive to invest. The decision is part of the Trump administration’s phased-in plan to turn around Venezuela. But critics of the acting Venezuelan government argue that the move rewards Venezuela’s leadership — all loyal to Maduro and the ruling party — while repression, corruption and human rights abuses continue.

Many public sector workers survive on roughly $160 per month, while the average private sector employee earned about $237 last year, when the annual inflation rate soared to 475%, according to Venezuela’s central bank, and sent the cost of food beyond what many can afford.

Venezuela sits atop the world’s largest oil reserves and used them to power what was once Latin America’s strongest economy. But corruption, mismanagement and U.S. economic sanctions saw production steadily decline from the 3.5 million barrels per day pumped in 1999, when Maduro’s mentor, Hugo Chávez, took power, to less than 400,000 barrels per day in 2020.

A year earlier, the Treasury Department under the first Trump administration locked Venezuela out of world oil markets when it sanctioned PDVSA as part of a policy punishing Maduro’s government for corrupt, anti-democratic and criminal activities. That forced the government to sell its remaining oil output at a discount — about 40% below market prices — to buyers such as China and in other Asian markets. Venezuela even started accepting payments in Russian rubles, bartered goods or cryptocurrency.

The new license does not allow payments in gold or cryptocurrency, including the petro, which was a crypto token issued by the Venezuelan government in 2018.

Meantime, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the Jones Act waiver would help “mitigate the short-term disruptions to the oil market” during the Iran war and would “allow vital resources like oil, natural gas, fertilizer, and coal to flow freely to U.S. ports.”

Hussein and Cano write for the Associated Press. Cano reported from Caracas, Venezuela. AP writer Seung Min Kim contributed to this report.

Venezuela upset the star-studded host nation to win a politically charged showdown in Miami.

Venezuela scored a stunning 3-2 upset over tournament hosts United States to capture the World Baseball Classic for the first time on Tuesday in a tense final played out against a backdrop of political tensions.

Eugenio Suarez drove in the winning run in the top of the ninth inning to seal a victory for Venezuela over an American lineup that had been hyped as a baseball “dream team”.

Trailing for most of the game, the Team USA looked to have hauled themselves back into the contest when Bryce Harper blasted a game-tying two-run homer in the eighth inning.

But Harper’s salvo proved to be in vain as Venezuela regained the lead in the ninth inning, punishing a shaky performance from USA reliever Garrett Whitlock to clinch victory.

“What can I say, it’s amazing,” Venezuela hero Suarez said. “Nobody believed in Venezuela, but now we win the championship today. This is a celebration for all the Venezuelan country.”

Suarez’s winning double settled a final that had got under way in a raucous atmosphere at Miami’s LoanDepot Park, with a large contingent of Venezuela fans in a sold-out crowd of 36,190 booing the USA lineup during pre-game introductions.

US President Donald Trump, whose government captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in a military raid in January, had stoked tensions with a social media post on Monday, congratulating Venezuela for reaching the final while simultaneously suggesting the country could become the US’s “51st state”.

Trump again returned to the theme moments after Tuesday’s defeat, declaring in a post on his Truth Social platform: “STATEHOOD!!! President DJT.”

Venezuela’s interim leader, Delcy Rodriguez, who replaced the ousted Maduro, declared a “national day of jubilation” on Wednesday.

“This triumph is the victory of the passion, talent and unity that define us as Venezuelans,” Rodriguez wrote on X.

“An achievement that will remain forever in the heart of our country. ¡VIVA VENEZUELA!”

Venezuela dominate

Venezuela, whose players had been instructed by team management to avoid commenting on politics throughout the tournament, dominated the vaunted Team USA lineup for long periods, with starting pitcher Eduardo Rodriguez stifling the American batters led by New York Yankees home run king Aaron Judge.

The South Americans took the lead in the top of the third as USA starter Nolan McLean struggled for command from the mound.

Salvador Perez singled to get on base before Atlanta Braves star Ronald Acuna Jr drew a walk.

A wild pitch from McLean left Venezuela with runners on second and third base, and on the next pitch, Kansas City Royals slugger Maikel Garcia’s sacrifice fly allowed Perez to score.

With the USA bats continuing to flail against Rodriguez, the Venezuelans doubled their lead in the top of the fifth inning.

McLean delivered a four-seam fastball into the centre of the strike zone, and Boston Red Sox left-fielder Wilyer Abreu duly pounced, crushing a 414-foot (126-metre) solo home run to centre field for a 2-0 lead.

Venezuela appeared to be closing in on victory, but were jolted by Harper’s 432-foot (132-metre) home run to centre field off reliever Andres Machado in the eighth.

But the USA rally was short-lived, and Venezuela grabbed the lead again in the ninth when Luis Arraez drew a lead-off walk from Whitlock before Suarez’s blast to left centre field gave Venezuela the winning run.

Closer Daniel Palencia removed Kyle Schwarber, Gunnar Henderson and Roman Anthony in quick succession to seal Venezuela’s triumph.

MIAMI — Venezuela won the World Baseball Classic for the first time, rebounding from a blown eighth-inning lead to beat the United States 3-2 Tuesday night on Eugenio Suárez’s tiebreaking double in the ninth.

Maikel Garcia’s third-inning sacrifice fly and Wilyer Abreu’s fifth-inning homer off rookie Nolan McLean built a 2-0 lead before a roaring pro-Latin America crowd. Meanwhile, left-hander Eduardo Rodríguez and lights-out relievers limited the Americans to two hits through the seventh.

Bobby Witt Jr. walked with two outs in the eighth and Bryce Harper drove the second straight changeup from Andrés Machado over the center-field fence for a two-run homer that tied it. Harper slowly trotted around the bases and took time at third to salute coach Dino Ebel.

Luis Arraez walked against Garrett Whitlock starting the ninth. Pinch-runner Javier Sanoja stole second just ahead of catcher Will Smith’s throw and came home when Suárez doubled to the left-center gap. Suárez spread his arms wide and pointed to the sky at second base while teammates streamed from the dugout to greet Sanoja at the plate.

Daniel Palencia struck out two in a perfect bottom half to finish a three-hitter and get his third save of the WBC, striking out Roman Anthony to end the game. Venezuelans ran onto the infield to celebrate as the Americans stared while leaning on their dugout railing.

“Nobody believed in Venezuela but now we win the championship,” Suárez said. “This is a celebration for all the Venezuelan country.”

Despite a heralded roster of stars led by Aaron Judge, Harper and Paul Skenes, the U.S. lost its second straight final of baseball’s premier international event and remained without a title since 2017.

Venezuela celebrates its victory.

(Lynne Sladky / Associated Press)

Judge was 0 for 4 with three strikeouts in the championship game and hit .222 with five RBIs in the tournament, while Harper batted .214 with three RBIs and Alex Bregman .143 with four RBIs. The U.S. scored nine runs in the three knockout-round games while batting .188.

Ahead of a matchup with political overtones, players and coaches avoided discussing the government turmoil between the nations, heightened when the U.S. military captured Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro in January. The sellout crowd of 36,190 at LoanDepot Park was heavily pro-Venezuela, with some booing American players during the introductions.

Venezuela became the second Latin American nation to win the WBC, after the Dominican Republic in 2013. The U.S. took the title in 2017 and lost the 2023 final to three-time champion Japan on this same field.

While the U.S., Japan and the Dominican Republic got much of the attention ahead of the sixth edition of the 20-nation event, Venezuela’s success was not that surprising. Sixty-three players born in Venezuela appeared on Major League Baseball opening-day rosters last year, second-most from outside the U.S. behind the Dominican Republic’s 100.

Venezuela went ahead in the third inning against McLean, getting the start because Tarik Skubal and the Detroit Tigers decided the two-time Cy Young Award winner would make only a first-round appearance.

Salvador Perez sliced a first-pitch single and Ronald Acuña Jr. walked with one out. The runners advanced when McLean bounced a curveball, and Garcia followed with a sac fly to center.

Abreu doubled the lead when he drove a fastball 414 feet to center. His helmet fell off when he rounded second and he hopped in excitement as he neared the plate, where he was greeted by a line of teammates.

Rodriguez gave up one hit in 4 1/3 innings before Venezuela turned to its bullpen.

U.S. players had arrived at LoanDepot Park in game-worn U.S. Olympic hockey jerseys coordinated by outfielder Pete Crow-Armstrong and Jack Hughes, who scored the gold medal-winning goal against Canada last month.

In a darkened ballpark filled by fans wearing wristbands with festive blinking lights, Judge and Arraez led the teams down the foul lines for the introductions while carrying their nation’s flags.

Caracas, March 17, 2026 (venezuelanalysis.com) – The Trump administration has opposed a motion from Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores for the dismissal of US criminal charges on the grounds of the US Treasury blocking their legal defense funds.

In a court filing, US Justice Department prosecutors argued that “the defendants and their former regime” have been sanctioned by the US government for several years and that regulations from the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) “expressly prohibit” that funds from a “sanctioned entity” be used to pay a “sanctioned person’s” legal expenses.

“OFAC’s denial of that request does not mean the [US] government violated the defendants’ due process rights. The motions to dismiss should be denied,” the statement read.

Last month, Maduro and Flores’ legal teams urged Judge Alvin Hellerstein to throw out the cases over the US government’s interference with their “ability to retain counsel.” Defense attorney for the Venezuelan president, Barry Pollack, argued that Washington’s actions violated Maduro’s Sixth Amendment rights.

In a sworn statement handed to the court, Maduro declared that under Venezuelan law he is “entitled” to have his legal expenses covered by Caracas and confirmed that Pollack is his “counsel of choice.”

Pollack further added that, on January 9, OFAC issued permission for the Venezuelan government to cover Maduro and Flores’ legal fees, only to withdraw it hours later. The high-profile attorney has announced plans to invoke Maduro’s immunity as a sitting president as part of his legal strategy.

US prosecutors have claimed that the defendants are allowed to use “personal funds” to pay their attorneys’ fees. However, both Maduro and Flores, as well as multiple immediate relatives, are under OFAC sanctions, making it illegal for US persons and entities to engage in financial transactions with them.

The Venezuelan Communications Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Venezuelan officials, including Acting President Delcy Rodríguez, have yet to weigh in on the Trump administration’s efforts to hamper Maduro and Flores’ defense efforts.

President Maduro and his wife, who is also a National Assembly deputy, were kidnapped by US Special forces on January 3 amid a bombing campaign against Caracas and nearby areas. Rodríguez, as sitting vice president, assumed the presidency on an acting basis after the Venezuelan Supreme Court decreed that Maduro’s abduction constituted a “temporary absence.”

Maduro was indicted on charges of “narcoterrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy, possession of machineguns and destructive devices, and conspiracy to possess machineguns and destructive devices against the United States.” Flores faces the latter three counts. Both pleaded not guilty in their arraignment hearing on January 5. The next hearing is scheduled for March 26.

Despite reiterated “narcoterrorism” accusations, US officials have not presented evidence tying Maduro and other high-ranking officials to narcotics activities. Specialized reports have likewise found Venezuela to play a marginal role in global drug trafficking.

Following the January 3 attacks and presidential kidnapping, Rodríguez has fast-tracked a diplomatic rapprochement with the Trump administration. The acting president has hosted several US officials in Caracas while promoting a pro-business overhaul of the country’s oil and mining laws aimed at courting  Western corporations.

Caracas and Washington reestablished diplomatic ties on March 5 following a seven-year hiatus, with the White House formally recognizing Rodríguez as Venezuela’s “sole leader” last week. 

Since January 3, Venezuelan government supporters have staged multiple demonstrations to condemn the US attacks and demand the immediate release of the Venezuelan president and first lady. 

US-based solidarity movements have also organized rallies in support of Maduro and Flores, including outside the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn where they are detained.

Edited by Lucas Koerner in Fusagasugá, Colombia.

Mérida, March 16, 2026 (venezuelanalysis.com) – Venezuelan and Colombian high-level delegations met at the Miraflores Palace in Caracas on Friday, March 13, to advance a strategic roadmap for binational integration. 

The summit, which focused on bilateral trade, energy, and security, culminated in the announcement of Venezuela’s first-ever export of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) to its western neighbor.

Acting President Delcy Rodríguez led the Venezuelan delegation in the talks, overseeing a satellite broadcast of the first trucks from state oil company PDVSA carrying butane gas across the Simón Bolívar International Bridge from Táchira to Norte de Santander.

“This is the first step… the first LPG export from Venezuela to Colombia,” Rodríguez stated to reporters, characterizing the shipment as a symbol of the “Bolivarian spirit” of integration.

Beyond the immediate truck shipments, officials announced plans to revitalize the Antonio Ricaurte transnational gas pipeline. The project aims to facilitate the direct export of Venezuelan natural gas to Colombian markets, a move described by both governments as essential for regional energy security. 

However, Colombian President Gustavo Petro noted via social media that full interconnection remains contingent on the lifting of US sanctions given the need for infrastructure repair works. For her part, Rodríguez reiterated calls for the Trump administration to remove unilateral coercive measures against the Caribbean nation.

“Unilateral coercive measures against the Venezuelan people affect the peoples of Latin America,” she said.

The 225-kilometer Ricaurte pipeline was completed in 2007 and was initially used for Colombian gas shipments to Venezuela. Plans to reverse the flow beginning in 2016 were hampered by US sanctions.

The Caracas summit also saw delegations review the recovery of commercial ties since the reopening of the border in 2022. According to figures shared during the meeting, binational trade has grown from US $220 million in 2020 to over $1.135 billion at the close of 2024.

To sustain this momentum, officials announced that the Administrative Commission of the Trade Agreement will be formally installed on March 18. The agency’s agenda will focus on achieving “zero tariffs” for specific goods and promoting binational tourism. 

The Colombian delegation also emphasized the importance of the Monómeros petrochemical company, noting that its operation at full capacity is vital for Colombia’s food security. The agrochemical producer was placed under the control of the US-backed Venezuelan opposition by former Colombian President Iván Duque. The company was plagued by corruption scandals before being returned to the Venezuelan government’s control in 2022.

Monómeros, a major supplier of fertilizer for Colombian potato, coffee and palm oil producers, remains restricted by US sanctions, with Venezuelan plans to sell the company to the Colombian state contingent on US Treasury approval.

The two countries’ delegations likewise addressed joint security concerns during the Friday talks, activating an immediate coordination mechanism for sharing military and police intelligence. 

The stated objective is to dismantle drug trafficking networks and counter irregular armed groups operating along the 2,200-kilometer border region. Petro described the goal as a the creation of a “Binational Zone of Peace,” emphasizing the importance of integrated military efforts to protect the territory.

The Caracas summit took place following the suspension of a planned meeting between Rodríguez and Petro at the Atanasio Girardot Bridge on Friday due to “force majeure.” Colombian outlets reported security concerns but offered no specifics.

Despite the setback, the Venezuelan government reaffirmed that the presidential invitation remains open and that the working groups at Miraflores had secured the “roadmap” for the coming months. 

Colombian Foreign Minister Rosa Villavicencio, who led the Petro government’s delegation, praised the Caracas summit as a “great success” and vowed that “no one can split the Colombian and Venezuelan peoples” due to their shared history.

In the wake of the meeting with Colombian counterparts, Rodríguez announced the appointment of Admiral Orlando Maniglia as the new Venezuelan Ambassador to Colombia. Maniglia, who previously served as Minister of Defense and Ambassador to Germany, will replace Carlos Eduardo Martínez.

The two countries’ integration agenda will continue with the meeting of a bilateral commission on April 23 and 24 in Maracaibo, Zulia state. The upcoming summit will focus on migration, citizen rights, and the facilitation of free circulation across the border.

Edited by Ricardo Vaz in Caracas.

Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani expressed regret Monday for his “shortcomings” following Japan’s early exit from the World Baseball Classic.

It is unclear what those shortcomings might have been. Over four games during this year’s tournament, Ohtani led Japan with a .462 batting average, three home runs and seven RBI in 13 at-bats.

Those stats are even better than the ones he posted as the MVP of the last WBC. Over seven games in 2023, Ohtani hit .435 with one home run and eight home runs in 23 at-bats to lead Japan to its third WBC championship.

Overall, however, Japan finished with a .284 batting average, down from a .299 average three years ago. Ohtani did account for his team’s final out of the 2026 tournament — an infield popup to seal an 8-5 quarterfinal loss to Venezuela on Saturday — and took to Instagram two days later.

“Thank you to all the fans for your support. Your cheers pushed us forward every day,” Ohtani wrote in Japanese. “We didn’t achieve the results we hoped for, and I deeply regret my own shortcomings.”

The two-way superstar did not pitch in this year’s WBC, after famously striking out then-Angels teammate Mike Trout of the United States for the final out of the 2023 championship game and going 2-0 with one save and a 1.86 ERA in that tournament.

Ohtani had his second Tommy John surgery in September 2023 and did not pitch again until last June with the Dodgers. Manager Dave Roberts revealed in January that Ohtani had decided not to pitch in the WBC.

Caracas, March 13, 2026 (venezuelanalysis.com) – Venezuelan Acting President Delcy Rodríguez welcomed on Wednesday the formal recognition granted by the United States government to her administration as the South American country’s “sole” and legitimate authority.

Rodríguez argued that Washington’s decision goes beyond any individual figure or government. 

“It is not recognition of a person or a government; it is recognition of a country so that it is able to recover its life,” she said during a televised broadcast, referring to the impact of wide-reaching US unilateral coercive measures imposed since 2015.

The Venezuelan leader affirmed that the diplomatic move could help advance “national unity” and contribute to the “normalization” of the country’s political, economic, and social life. “What matters to me is that this can bring a process of reordering and normalization,” she added.

The recognition was communicated by Manhattan US Attorney Jay Clayton in a “statement of interest” addressed to federal Judge Sarah Netburn. Clayton is likewise heading the prosecution in the US Justice Department’s case against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

Maduro was kidnapped by US special forces alongside First Lady Cilia Flores on January 3 during a military operation. The pair has pleaded not guilty to charges including drug trafficking conspiracy and will face a hearing on March 26. US officials have not provided evidence tying Venezuelan high-ranking officials to narcotics activities, while specialized reports have consistently found Venezuela to play a marginal role in global drug trafficking.

Clayton’s missive referenced a letter from State Department official Michael Kozak which identified Rodríguez as Venezuela’s “sole Head of State.” Kozak’s letter expressed the Trump administration’s argument that the recognition will help advance US interests in the Caribbean nation.

Trump publicly acknowledged Washington’s recognition of the Venezuelan government for the first time during the Shield of the Americas Summit on March 7. The White House argued that its stance would contribute to Venezuelan stability and economic recovery, as well as create the conditions for “a peaceful transition toward a democratically elected government.”

Caracas and Washington reestablished diplomatic ties on March 5 and have taken steps to reopen their respective embassies and consulates. The Maduro government severed ties with the first Trump administration in 2019 when the latter recognized then–National Assembly president Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s “interim president.”

Kozak reiterated in his letter that since January 23, 2019, the US has not recognized Maduro as Venezuela’s head of state and that this position had not changed. 

“Maduro is an accused narco-terrorist awaiting trial in a US federal court for his crimes,” the document read. The Venezuelan president’s defense team is expected to argue that Maduro should be entitled to immunity from prosecution as a sitting head of state.

Washington’s formal recognition of the acting government in Caracas could also have implications for Venezuelan assets abroad. Since 2019, several bank accounts and US-based Venezuelan refiner CITGO have been frozen or under the control of the US-backed opposition.

The White House’s move will also pave the way for renegotiations surrounding Venezuela’s sizable sovereign debt, with creditors eager for a potential windfall after buying defaulted bonds at very depressed prices.

While Clayton’s address identified Rodríguez as the only person “able to take action on behalf of Venezuela,” US authorities have not clarified whether the Venezuelan government will retake control of its US-based assets.

In addition, the Justice Department attorney declined to take a position regarding “which counsel is authorized to represent certain Venezuelan state-owned entities.” On Thursday, Judge Netburn requested further clarification from the administration regarding the representation of Venezuelan interests before US courts before March 26.

In her Wednesday address, Rodríguez went on to acknowledge “daily exchanges” with US counterparts and expressed “gratefulness” for the reestablishment of trade relations. The acting president stated that Venezuela has imported medical equipment and medicines from US companies in recent weeks.

Since early 2026, the Trump administration taken direct control of revenues generated by Venezuelan oil exports, depositing funds into accounts held by the US Treasury. Around a quarter of an initial US $2 billion crude sale agreement has reportedly been returned to Caracas.

Recently issued US licenses allowing transactions in the Venezuelan oil and mining sectors likewise mandate that proceeds be deposited in Treasury-run accounts.

US officials have claimed that Venezuelan authorities need to submit a “budget request” to access the country’s funds and will only be allowed to import goods and services from US manufacturers.

Edited and with additional reporting by Ricardo Vaz in Caracas.

A United Nations fact-finding mission has concluded that “there are no indicators of structural reforms or change” to improve the human rights situation in Venezuela, despite the removal of its leader in January.

On Thursday, a member of the fact-finding mission, Maria Eloisa Quintero, delivered remarks (PDF) to the UN Human Rights Council questioning whether Venezuela’s leadership would face accountability for its record of human rights abuses.

She also pointed to ongoing abuses under the government of interim President Delcy Rodriguez, who was sworn into office on January 5.

“Civic and democratic space remains severely restricted. Civil society organizations, the few remaining independent media outlets, and political actors continue to face attacks, harassment or intimidation,” Quintero wrote in her statement.

“The prospects for full guarantees necessary for free and democratic elections remain remote.”

All told, the fact-finding mission found that at least 87 people have been detained since January.

Fourteen of them were journalists who were temporarily taken into custody while covering Rodriguez’s inauguration, and another 27 were reportedly arrested for celebrating the fall of Rodriguez’s predecessor, Nicolas Maduro.

The fact-finding mission revealed that at least 15 of the recent arrests involved children.

A violation of international law

Its report was one of the first international assessments of human rights under Rodriguez’s nascent presidency.

She took office after the United States launched a military operation in the early morning hours of January 3 to abduct Venezuela’s then-President Maduro. Previously, Rodriguez had served as Maduro’s vice president.

Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores currently remain imprisoned in New York, where they face charges of drug trafficking and weapons possession.

The US has backed Rodriguez’s ascent to the presidency. Both her government and that of US President Donald Trump have said there is no immediate plan to hold a new election in Venezuela, citing the need for stability.

Quintero emphasised that it was the view of the fact-finding mission that the US operation “violated international law”, echoing the legal consensus.

“While the Mission has reasonable grounds to believe that Nicolas Maduro is responsible for crimes against humanity committed against the civilian population, this does not justify an unlawful military intervention,” Quintero wrote.

Her remarks also pointed out that, while Maduro may be gone, the rest of his government remains.

That government has faced repeated accusations that it perpetrated violence against members of Venezuela’s political opposition and others deemed critical of the country’s socialist leadership.

“The legal instruments that have long served as a basis for political persecution remain fully in force,” Quintero said.

“State institutions that played a key role in the repression — and which have been identified in previous Mission reports — have not been reviewed or reformed.”

Human rights groups have collected thousands of reports of arbitrary detention, as well as torture and extrajudicial killings, under Maduro, who served as president from 2013 until January.

Members of Venezuela’s opposition have also called for the removal of the existing government, which they say fraudulently claimed victory in the 2024 presidential race, despite vote tallies indicating otherwise.

Limits to ‘positive’ steps

At first, Quintero said the fact-finding mission found that developments under Rodriguez “initially appeared encouraging”.

She pointed to “positive” steps like the release of political prisoners and passage of an amnesty law that would lift criminal penalties for dissidents facing certain criminal charges.

But the benefits of those steps, she said, were mitigated by irregularities. The amnesty law was narrow in scope — only addressing certain accusations, made within a specific time range — and the bill never received a full, public reading.

Meanwhile, the government has claimed to release more political prisoners than has actually been verified by local human rights groups.

Quintero added that the fact-finding mission also found that 30 officials from Venezuela’s Scientific, Criminal and Forensic Investigations Corps (CICPC) — part of the national police agency — were detained for failing to produce false evidence about the US’s attack on January 3.

Their family members, she indicated, also faced government retaliation. The fact-finding mission called for more changes to be made to address the continued human rights abuses.

“A far deeper and more enduring transformation is required so that the population can trust that the long years of repression and violence have truly come to an end,” Quintero wrote.

Instead, she warned that the existing “machinery” of repression is simply “mutating” to adapt to the new reality in Venezuela, post-Maduro.

March 12 (UPI) — The International Criminal Court Office of the Prosecutor announced Thursday that the United States did not commit crimes against humanity with its sanctions against Venezuela.

The investigation, called Venezuela II by the court, was referred to the court by Venezuela’s government in 2020, alleging that sanctions against the country had caused suffering and hardship.

The referral from now-deposed President Nicolas Maduro alleges the suffering of Venezuelans from “the application of unlawful coercive measures adopted unilaterally by the government of the United States of America against Venezuela, at least since the year 2014.”

Venezuela alleged that “murder, extermination, deportation, persecution and other inhumane acts constituting crimes against humanity” were committed, the OTP said.

The ICC prosecutor determined that the “evidential requirements of causation and intent are not met.”

The evidence “must provide a reasonable basis to believe that sanctions by the United States of America led to murder, displacement or other alleged crimes,” the OTP said.

The decision is unrelated to the January 2026 events in Venezuela, the prosecutor noted.

In January, the United States invaded Venezuela, arrested Maduro and his wife and took them to Manhattan, where they await trial on drug trafficking charges.

The ICC prosecutor said it is still investigating “Venezuela I,” a case that doesn’t involve the United States.

WASHINGTON — Cuba’s top diplomat in Washington says Havana is prepared to enter diplomatic talks with the United States, reiterating the country’s willingness to engage even as tensions escalate with President Trump asserting that the island nation’s government could soon collapse.

“We are ready to engage with the U.S. on the issues that are important for the bilateral relation, and to talk about those in which we have differences,” Ambassador Lianys Torres Rivera, who leads Cuba’s mission in Washington, told The Times on Wednesday.

Any dialogue would need to respect Cuba’s sovereignty and its “right to self-determination,” the ambassador said.

“We are sure that it is possible to find a solution,” she said.

Her comments in a wide-ranging interview come at a particularly volatile moment for Cuba, which is under mounting economic pressure after the Trump administration imposed an oil blockade that has choked off the island’s energy supplies.

The measures have deepened a humanitarian crisis and prompted Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel to call for an “urgent” overhaul to the country’s economic model.

The situation in Cuba worsened after U.S. forces removed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January, allowing Washington to later cut off oil shipments from Venezuela to its longtime ally. The Trump administration later pressured other suppliers, including Mexico, to reduce deliveries.

“We are doing our best, and we are being very creative, but it has a serious impact,” Torres Rivera said of the blockade. “It is a collective punishment against the Cuban people.”

The White House this week framed Cuba’s worsening economic and humanitarian conditions as a potential opening to pressure Havana into negotiations.

“The country is obviously in a very weak place, economically speaking, the people are crying out for help, and the president believes and knows the Cuban regime wants a deal,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a news briefing Tuesday.

Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Florida) told the Miami Herald on Wednesday that the Trump administration had been having secret, high-level conversations with several people in former President Raul Castro’s inner circle, a similar approach that was taken in Venezuela before Maduro’s capture. (The operation to seize Maduro killed 32 Cuban officers stationed in the country.)

Cuban President Miguel Díaz -Canel, fourth from right, holds up a Cuban flag during a rally in Havana on Jan. 16, 2026, to protest the killing of Cuban officers during the U.S. operation that captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

(Ramon Espinosa / Associated Press)

Another report by the USA Today this week said the Trump administration was close to announcing an economic deal with Cuba that would ease travel restrictions, among other things. A representative with the Cuban government declined to comment on the report.

The White House has not specified what a deal may look like. But Trump has said the United States is interested in a “friendly takeover” and has suggested that the move would allow Cubans to visit the island, a place that many Cuban exiles have worried about returning to while the current regime is in place.

“It is just a question of time before a lot of unbelievable people are going back to Cuba,” Trump said at an event last week.

Several news outlets have reported that the Justice Department is examining possible federal charges against officials within Cuba’s government, a move that could prompt a change in the island’s government.

Torres Rivera said she is aware of the reports but said the “judicial accusations” are an “instrument of political coercion without any legitimacy.”

“It is not something we are losing sleep over,” she said.

As for the potential negotiations, Torres Rivera did not provide specifics but talked about restoring diplomatic ties somewhat to how they existed during the Obama administration.

“We are neighbors,” she said. “We have common challenges, common threats, and we can speak about all that, and we can speak on the basis of respect for each other’s sovereignty and each other’s right of self-determination. We are ready for that.”

President Trump has approached diplomacy with Cuba with a harsher tone.

“As we achieve a historic transformation in Venezuela, we’re also looking forward to the great change that will soon be coming to Cuba,” Trump said Saturday, one week after U.S. and Israeli forces attacked Iran and killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

He added: “Cuba’s at the end of the line. They’re very much at the end of the line. They have no money. They have no oil. They have a bad philosophy. They have a bad regime that has been bad for a very long time.”

Trump said that he has put Secretary of State Marco Rubio in charge of leading the talks with Cuba and that he believes a “deal would be made very easily with Cuba.”

Torres Rivera did not offer an opinion on Rubio being tapped to lead the negotiations. Rubio is the son of Cuban immigrants who came to Florida three years before Castro’s brother, revolutionary Fidel Castro, rose to power in 1959. She reiterated that Cuba is “ready to engage” in talks regardless of who is leading them.

“We are not talking about persons, we are talking about the government and we are ready to engage with the U.S. to talk about the very important issues that we have in bilateral relations,” she said.

A new report has expressed alarm at what it describes as backsliding press freedoms across the Americas, with the United States seeing the steepest decline.

The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) released its latest press freedom index on Tuesday, ranking last year as the lowest point for freedom of expression since the report began in 2020.

Researchers found that the Americas have experienced a “dramatic deterioration” in unrestricted speech, according to the report.

“This is one of the worst years for journalism in the region, marked by murders, arbitrary arrests, exile, and rampant impunity in countries such as Mexico, Honduras, Ecuador, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Colombia, Cuba, and Venezuela,” the report said.

It added that enhanced restrictions on free speech have occurred in countries of various ideological persuasions, whether right-wing or left-wing.

The US, however, was singled out as an area of “alarming decline”. In a ranking of 23 countries across the hemisphere, the US dropped from fourth place to 11th, indicating that journalists operate with increased restrictions.

Changes under President Donald Trump, who returned to office last year, were cited as a primary factor.

“Even though journalistic practice in the United States remains protected by the Constitution and laws, last year’s events saw the erosion of safeguards,” the report explained.

Trump, it said, had contributed to the “stigmatisation of critical journalism”. The report also pointed to developments like cuts to public media funding and the closure of Voice of America, a government-funded broadcaster, as detriments to the free press.

In total, the report tallied 170 attacks against journalists in the US last year, and it cited interactions with federal immigration agents as an area of concern.

The report also noted that Nicaragua and Venezuela continue to rank as “without freedom of expression”.

In Venezuela’s case, for instance, it cited the closure of more than 400 radio stations and the detention of 25 journalists in the wake of the controversial 2024 presidential election.

On a scale of 100, the report ranked press freedom in the country at 7.02. It remains in last place on the report’s list of 23 countries.

El Salvador also dropped in the index’s latest evaluation, now in 21st position on the press freedom list, just ahead of Nicaragua and Venezuela.

In an accompanying statement, Sergio Arauz, the president of the Association of Journalists of El Salvador (APES), denounced what he called the “escalating repression” under the government of President Nayib Bukele.

Arauz noted that 50 Salvadoran journalists had been pushed into exile in the last year amid a campaign of harassment by the government.

“There are no possibilities of practicing journalism fully without facing consequences when there is an Executive branch with virtually unlimited powers and no effective legal oversight,” said Arauz.

Since 2022, Bukele and his government have placed the country under a state of emergency that suspended key civil liberties and granted wide latitude to state security forces, in the name of addressing crime.

Tuesday’s report pointed to the state of emergency as a factor in undermining free speech, and also cited El Salvador’s new Foreign Agents Law, which gives the government the power to dissolve organisations that receive funding from abroad.

El Salvador is one of eight nations categorised in the index as “high restriction”, along with Ecuador, Bolivia, Honduras, Peru, Mexico, Haiti and Cuba.

The Dominican Republic, Chile, Canada and Brazil were ranked among the highest for protecting press freedoms.

On our recent delegation to Venezuela, one quote echoed again and again — a warning written nearly two centuries ago by Simón Bolívar in 1829:

“The United States appears destined by Providence to plague America with misery in the name of liberty.”

For many Venezuelans, that line no longer feels like history. It feels like the present.

The January 3 U.S. military operation that seized President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores marked a dramatic escalation in a conflict that Venezuelans describe not as sudden but as cumulative — the culmination of decades of pressure, sanctions, and attempts at isolation. “We still haven’t totally processed what happened on January 3,” sanctions expert William Castillo told us. “But it was the culmination of over 25 years of aggression and 11 years of resisting devastating sanctions. A 20-year-old today has lived half his life in a blockaded country.”

Carlos Ron, former deputy foreign minister and now with the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research, described the buildup to the invasion as the result of a carefully constructed narrative. “First there was the dangerous rhetoric describing Venezuelans in the United States as criminals,” he said. “Then endless references to the Tren de Aragua gang. Then the boat strikes blowing up alleged smugglers. Then the oil tanker seizures and naval blockade. The pressure wasn’t working, so they escalated to the January 3 invasion and kidnapping of President Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, and the deaths of over 100 people.”

While in the United States the events of January 3 have largely been forgotten, replaced by a devastating war with Iran, in Venezuela the reminders are everywhere. Huge banners draped from apartment buildings demand: “Bring them home.” Weekly protests call for their release.

In the Tiuna neighborhood of Caracas, we met Mileidy Chirinos, who lives in an apartment complex overlooking the site where Maduro was captured. From her rooftop, she told us about that dreadful night, when the sky lit up with explosions so loud her building shook and everyone ran outside screaming.

“Have your children ever woken up terrified to the sound of bombs?” she asked.

We shook our heads.

“Ours have,” she said. “And they are U.S. bombs. Now we understand what Palestinians in Gaza feel every day.”

She told us psychologists now visit weekly to help residents cope with the trauma.

Within days of the U.S. invasion, the National Assembly swore in Vice President Delcy Rodríguez as acting president. President Trump publicly praised Rodríguez for “doing a good job,” emphasizing his strong relationship with her. But from the beginning, she has been negotiating with the United States with a gun to her head. She was told that any refusal to compromise would result not in the kidnapping of her and her team, but death and the continued bombing of Venezuela.

The presence of U.S. power looms large. Nuclear submarines still patrol offshore. Thousands of troops remain positioned nearby. Every statement and decision made by the government is scrutinized. And on February 2, despite Trump’s praise for Delcy Rodríguez, he renewed the 2015 executive order declaring Venezuela an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to U.S. national security.

The visits from the heads of the CIA and Southern Command have undoubtedly been difficult for the government to swallow. Delcy’s revolutionary father was tortured to death in 1976 by a Venezuelan government that worked closely with the CIA. The U.S. Southern Command coordinated the January 3 attack.

But the government is not without leverage.

“The United States thought the state was weak, that it didn’t have popular support, that the military was divided,” said Tania Díaz of the ruling PSUV party. “January 3rd could have triggered looting, military defections, or widespread destabilization. None of that happened.”

The United States has overwhelming military dominance, but it was also aware that millions of Venezuelans signed up to be part of the people’s militia. This militia, along with the army that remained loyal to the government, gave Washington pause about launching a prolonged war and attempting to replace Delcy Rodríguez with opposition leader María Corina Machado. 

While Machado enjoys enthusiastic support among Venezuelan exiles in Miami and the Trump administration recognized her movement as the winner of the 2024 election, the picture inside Venezuela is very different.  The opposition remains deeply divided and Trump realized there was no viable faction ready to assume power.

Besides, as William Castillo put it bluntly: “Trump does not care about elections or human rights or political prisoners. He cares about three other things: oil, oil, and oil.” To that, we can add gold, where the U.S. just pushed Venezuela to provide direct access to gold exports and investment opportunities in the country’s gold and mineral sector, 

Certainly, under the circumstances, the Venezuelan leadership has had little choice but to grant the United States significant influence over its oil exports. But while Trump boasts that this is the fruit of his “spectacular assault,” Maduro had long been open to cooperation with U.S. oil companies.

“Maduro was well aware that Venezuela needed investment in its oil facilities,” Castillo told us, “but the lack of investment is because of U.S. sanctions, not because of Maduro. Venezuela never stopped selling to the U.S.; it is the U.S. that stopped buying. And it also stopped selling spare parts needed to repair the infrastructure. So the U.S. started the fire that decimated our oil industry and now acts as if it’s the firefighter coming to the rescue.”

In any case, the easing of oil sanctions — the only sanctions that have been partially lifted — is already bringing an infusion of much-needed dollars, and the government has been able to use these funds to support social programs.

But in Venezuela the conflict is not seen as simply about oil. Blanca Eekhout, head of the Simon Bolivar Institute, says U.S. actions represent a brazen return to the 1823 Monroe Doctrine. The doctrine originally warned European powers not to interfere in the Western Hemisphere, but over time it became a justification for repeated U.S. interventions across the region. 

“We have gone back 200 years,” she said. “All rules of sovereignty have been violated. But while the Trump administration thinks it can control the hemisphere by force, it can’t.”

The historical contradiction is stark. In 1823, the young United States declared Latin America its sphere of influence. A year earlier, Bolívar envisioned a powerful, sovereign Latin America capable of charting its own destiny. That tension still echoes through the present.

Bolívar’s dream is also being battered by the resurgence of the right across the region. The left in Latin America is far weaker than during the days of Hugo Chávez. Bolivia’s Evo Morales and Ecuador’s Rafael Correa have been replaced by conservative leaders. Cuba remains under a suffocating U.S. siege. Progressive regional institutions like CELAC and ALBA have faded, and the vision of Latin American unity that once seemed within reach now feels far more fragile.

In Caracas, the situation is tangled, contradictory, and volatile. But amid the uncertainty, one thing felt clear: the Venezuelan left is not collapsing. It is recalibrating.

As Blanca told us before we left:

“They thought we would fall apart. But we are still here.”

And in the background, Bolívar’s warning continues to drift through the air — like a storm that never quite passes.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Venezuelanalysis editorial staff.

Medea Benjamin is the cofounder of CODEPINK for Peace, and the author of several books, including Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran. 

Source: Code Pink

The US president repeats claims that Cuba is ready to negotiate as it faces a spiralling energy and economic crisis.

United States President Donald Trump has signalled that his administration is still pursuing a government overthrow in Cuba even as the US-Israeli war on Iran enters its second week.

Trump said on Monday that the US Department of State is still focused on Cuba, where plans by the White House may or may not include “a friendly takeover” of the island, according to the Reuters news agency.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio is “dealing” with Cuba, the president told reporters in Florida.

“He’s dealing [with it], and it may be a friendly takeover, it may not be a friendly takeover. Wouldn’t really matter because they’re really down to … as they say, fumes. They have no energy, they have no money,” Trump said.

“They are going to make either a deal or we’ll do it just as easy, anyway,” he said.

Cuba has been grappling with an energy crisis since January, when US forces abducted Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and halted fuel exports from Caracas to Havana, cutting the country off from one of its few allies and a key source of oil for the Cuban economy.

White House officials have suggested that Cuba is facing an economic collapse and that its government is ready to negotiate with Washington.

Trump has said on multiple occasions that Cuba’s government is ready to “fall” and that its leaders want to “make a deal” with Washington, according to NBC News.

Cuba has denied reports of high-level talks, according to Reuters, but it has not “outright” denied US media reports of “informal talks” between Raul Guillermo Rodriguez Castro, the grandson of former Cuban President Raul Castro, and US officials.

Cuba has been in the crosshairs of the US for decades, but Trump is the first US president since the Cold War to openly discuss and pursue a government change in Havana.

Trump’s attacks on Venezuela and Cuba are in line with his revival of the “Monroe Doctrine”, a 19th-century policy that states the Western Hemisphere should be solely under the sway of the US and no other foreign power.

Trump first raised the notion of a “friendly takeover” of Cuba in February.

At the inaugural “Shield of the Americas” summit in South Florida, United States President Donald Trump announced the creation of what he calls the Americas Counter-Cartel Coalition: a group of a dozen politically aligned countries committed to fighting drug trafficking.

But as he signed a declaration to cement that commitment, Trump signalled that it came with the expectation that cartels would not be confronted with law enforcement action, but instead military might.

“ The only way to defeat these enemies is by unleashing the power of our military. So we have to use our military. You have to use your military,” Trump told the audience of Latin American leaders.

“You have some great police, but they threaten your police. They scare your police. You’re going to use your military.”

Saturday’s summit was the latest step in a larger foreign policy pivot under Trump.

Since taking office for a second term, Trump has distanced himself from some of the US’s traditional allies in Europe, instead forging tighter partnerships with right-wing governments around the world.

The attendance at the Shield of the Americas summit reflected that shift. Right-wing leaders, including Argentina’s Javier Milei, El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele and Ecuador’s Daniel Noboa, were among the guest list.

But notably absent was top-level leadership from Mexico, the US’s biggest trading partner, and Brazil, the largest country in the region by economy and population.

Both Mexico and Brazil are led by left-wing presidents who have resisted some of Trump’s more hardline policies.

The growing rift between the US and some of its longtime partners was a feature in the brief remarks delivered by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who praised attendees for their cooperation.

“They’re more than allies. They’re friends,” Rubio said of the leaders present.

“At a time when we have learned that oftentimes an ally, when you need them, maybe may not be there for you, these are countries that have been there for us.”

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, meanwhile, reiterated his view that criminal networks and cartels pose an existential crisis for the entire Western Hemisphere, which he described as sharing the same cultural and religious roots.

“ We share a hemisphere and geography. We share cultures, Western Christian civilisation. We share these things together. We have to have the courage to defend it,” Hegseth said.

A military-first approach

Latin America is one of several areas where Trump has launched military operations since returning to office in January 2025.

His rationale for authorising deadly operations in the region has centred primarily on the illicit drug trade.

Trump has repeatedly argued that Latin American criminal networks pose an imminent threat to national security, through the trafficking of people and drugs across US borders.

Experts in international law have pointed out that drug trafficking is considered a criminal offence — and it is not accepted as justification for acts of military aggression.

But the Trump administration has nevertheless launched lethal military strikes against alleged drug traffickers in Latin America.

Since September, for instance, the Trump administration has conducted at least 44 aerial strikes on maritime vessels in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean, killing nearly 150 people.

The victims’ identities have never been publicly confirmed, nor has evidence been publicly released to justify the deadly strikes.

Some families in Colombia and Trinidad and Tobago have stepped forward to claim the dead as their loved ones, out on a fishing expedition or travelling between islands for informal work.

In Saturday’s remarks, Trump justified the attacks by arguing that cartels and other criminal networks had grown more powerful than local militaries — and therefore necessitated a lethal response.

“Many of the cartels have developed sophisticated military operations. Highly sophisticated, in some cases. They say they’re more powerful than the military in the country,” Trump said.

“Can’t have that. These brutal criminal organisations pose an unacceptable threat to national security. And they provide a dangerous gateway for foreign adversaries in our region.”

He then compared cartels to a disease: “They’re cancer, and we don’t want it spreading.”

A ‘nasty’ operation in Venezuela

In late December and early January, Trump also initiated attacks on Venezuelan soil, again defending his actions as necessary to stop drug traffickers.

The first attack targeted a port Trump linked to the gang Tren de Aragua. The second, on January 3, was a broader offensive that culminated in the abduction and imprisonment of Venezuela’s then-leader, President Nicolas Maduro.

On Saturday, Trump reflected on that military operation, which he characterised as an unmitigated success.

Maduro is currently awaiting trial on drug-trafficking charges in New York, though a declassified intelligence report last May cast doubt on Trump’s allegations that the Venezuelan leader directed drug-trafficking operations through groups like Tren de Aragua.

“America’s armed forces also ended the reign of one of the biggest cartel kingpins of all, with Operation Absolute Resolve to bring outlaw dictator Nicolas Maduro to justice in a precision raid,” Trump told Saturday’s summit.

He then described the military operation as “nasty”, though he underscored that no US lives were lost.

The early-morning raid, however, killed at least 80 people in Venezuela, including 32 Cuban military officers, dozens of Venezuelan security forces, and several civilians.

“We went right into the heart. We took them out, and it was nasty. It was about 18 minutes of pure violence, and we took them out,” Trump said of the operation.

Trump has since held up Venezuela as a model for regime change around the world, particularly as it leads a war with Israel against Iran.

Maduro’s successor, interim President Delcy Rodriguez, has so far complied with many of Trump’s demands, including for reforms to the country’s nationalised oil and mining sectors.

Just this week, the two countries re-established diplomatic relations for the first time since 2019, under Trump’s first term as president.

In Saturday’s remarks, however, Trump reiterated that his positive relationship with Rodriguez hinged on her cooperation with his priorities.

“She’s doing a great job because she’s working with us. If she wasn’t working with us, I would not say she’s doing a great job,” he said.

“In fact, if she wasn’t working with us, I’d say she’s doing a very poor job. Unacceptable.”

‘We’ll use missiles’

Trump did, however, express consternation with other presidents in the Latin American region, accusing them of allowing cartels to run amok.

“Leaders in this region have allowed large swaths of territory, the Western Hemisphere, to come under the direct control” of the cartels, Trump said.

“Transnational gangs have taken over, and they’ve run areas of your country. We’re not going to let that happen.”

He even delivered an ominous warning to the summit’s attendees: “Some of you are in danger. I mean, you’re actually in danger. It’s hard to believe.”

Many of the leaders in attendance, including El Salvador’s Bukele, have launched their own harsh crackdowns on gangs in their countries, employing “mano dura” or “iron fist” tactics.

Those campaigns, however, have elicited concerns from human rights groups, who have noted that presidents like Bukele used emergency declarations to suspend civil liberties and imprison hundreds of people, often without a fair trial.

Still, Trump dismissed alternative approaches in Saturday’s speech. Though he did not mention Colombia by name, he was critical of efforts to negotiate for the disarmament of cartels and rebel groups, as Colombian President Gustavo Petro has sought to do.

Instead, he offered to deploy military might throughout the region.

“We’ll use missiles. If you want us to use a missile, they’re extremely accurate — pew! — right into the living room, and that’s the end of that cartel person,” Trump said.

“A lot of countries don’t want to do that. They say, ‘Oh, sure. I’d rather not have that. I’d rather not have it. I believe they could be spoken to.’ I don’t think so.”

A call to ‘eradicate’ Mexico’s cartels

One country he did single out, though, was Mexico. Trump suggested that it had fallen behind other countries in the region in its efforts to combat crime.

“We must recognise the epicentre of cartel violence is Mexico,” he said.

“The Mexican cartels are fueling and orchestrating much of the bloodshed and chaos in this hemisphere, and the United States government will do whatever’s necessary to defend our national security.”

Since the start of his second term, Trump has pressured Mexico to step up its security efforts, threatening tariffs and even the possibility of military action if it does not comply.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has responded by increasing military deployments throughout the country.

In February 2025, for instance, she announced 10,000 soldiers would be sent to the US-Mexico border. For the upcoming FIFA World Cup, her officials have said nearly 100,000 security personnel will be patrolling the streets.

Just last month, her government also launched a military operation in Jalisco to capture and kill the cartel leader Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, nicknamed “El Mencho”. She has also facilitated the transfer of cartel suspects to the US for trial.

But Trump reemphasised on Saturday his belief that Sheinbaum had not gone far enough, though he called her a “very good person” and a “beautiful woman” with a “beautiful voice”.

“I said, ‘Let me eradicate the cartels,’” Trump said, relaying one of his conversations with Sheinbaum.

“We have to eradicate them. We have to knock the hell out of them because they’re getting worse. They’re taking over their country. The cartels are running Mexico. We can’t have that. Too close to us, too close to you.”

‘Last moments of life’ in Cuba

Trump also used his podium to continue his threats against Cuba’s communist government.

Since the January 3 attack on Venezuela, Trump has increased his “maximum pressure” campaign against the Caribbean island, which has been under a full US trade embargo since the 1960s.

His administration severed the flow of oil and funds from Venezuela to Cuba, and in late January, Trump announced he would impose steep economic penalties on any country that provides the island with oil, a critical resource for the country’s electrical grid.

Already, the country has been struck with widespread blackouts, and the United Nations has warned Cuba is inching closer to humanitarian “collapse”.

But Trump framed the circumstances as progress towards the ultimate goal of regime change in Cuba.

“As we achieve a historic transformation in Venezuela, we’re also looking forward to the great change that will soon be coming to Cuba,” he told Saturday’s summit.

“Cuba’s at the end of the line. They’re very much at the end of the line. They have no money, they have no oil. They have a bad philosophy. They have a bad regime that’s been bad for a long time.”

He added that he thinks changing Cuba’s government will be “easy” and that a deal could be struck for the transition of power.

“Cuba’s in its last moments of life as it was. It’ll have a great new life, but it’s in its last moments of life the way it is,” Trump said.

But while Trump’s remarks largely focused on governments not represented at the summit, he warned that there could be consequences even for the right-wing leaders in attendance.

Trump’s “Shield of the Americas” coalition comes as he seeks to bring the whole of Latin America in line with US priorities. It’s a policy he has dubbed the “Donroe Doctrine”, a riff on the 19th-century Monroe Doctrine, which claimed the Western Hemisphere as the US’s sphere of influence.

To Trump, that means ousting rival powers like China as they seek to forge relationships and economic ties with Latin America. Trump has even mused about retaking the Panama Canal, based on his allegation that the Chinese have too much control in the area.

“As these situations in Venezuela and Cuba should make clear, under our new doctrine — and this is a doctrine — we will not allow hostile foreign influence to gain a foothold in this hemisphere,” Trump said.

He then made a pointed remark to Panama’s president, Jose Raul Mulino, who was in the audience.

“That includes the Panama Canal, which we talked about. We’re not going to allow it.”

Caracas, March 6, 2026 (venezuelanalysis.com) – The Venezuelan and US governments announced the restoration of diplomatic relations after a seven-year hiatus.

Caracas and Washington issued near-simultaneous press releases on Thursday night, though they did not specify a date for the reopening of the respective embassies and consulates.

In its statement, the Venezuelan government headed by Acting President Delcy Rodríguez expressed “trust” that the renewed ties would lead to a “mutually beneficial” relationship.

“The Bolivarian government reaffirms its disposition to advance to a new stage of constructive dialogue, based on mutual respect and cooperation,” the communiqué read.

For its part, the US State Department declared that the diplomatic reengagement would “facilitate our joint efforts to promote stability, support economic recovery, and advance political reconciliation in Venezuela.”

“Our engagement is focused on helping the Venezuelan people move forward through a phased process that creates the conditions for a peaceful transition to a democratically elected government,” the statement read.

The US and Venezuela engaged in a fast diplomatic rapprochement following the January 3 US military strikes and kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores. Maduro and Flores have pleaded not guilty to charges including drug trafficking conspiracy, and their next hearing is scheduled for March 26. Despite repeated “narcoterrorism” accusations, US officials have not presented evidence of the involvement of Venezuelan high-ranking officials in narcotics activities, while specialized reports have consistently found the Caribbean nation to play a marginal role in global drug trafficking.

In the past two months, several senior White House officials have been hosted by Acting President Rodríguez, including CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Energy Secretary Chris Wright, and most recently Interior Secretary Doug Burgum. US Southern Command chief Francis Donovan likewise met with Venezuelan leaders, while Chargé d’Affaires Laura Dogu has been in the country since early February. 

Dogu has been slated to take over as ambassador, while Félix Plasencia is set to become Venezuela’s top diplomat in the US.

Despite the January 3 bombings and presidential kidnapping, Rodríguez and other officials have defended the diplomatic engagement with Washington. The rapprochement has also seen Venezuelan authorities vow to “adapt legislation” to attract US corporate investment. 

The National Assembly enacted a pro-business overhaul of the Hydrocarbon Law in late January, with the US Treasury subsequently issuing licenses allowing an expanded presence from Western energy conglomerates while imposing control over export revenues.

The Maduro government severed ties with Washington in 2019 after the first Trump administration recognized the self-proclaimed “interim government” led by Juan Guaidó as the country’s legitimate authority.

The recognition saw Guaidó and other opposition leaders take control of Venezuelan assets abroad, including US-based refiner CITGO, with their management facing accusations of widespread malfeasance and corruption. 

After Guaidó was driven out by other US-backed factions in January 2023, the Biden administration transferred the recognition to the former opposition-majority National Assembly whose term had run out in 2021. Despite being abroad and exercising no activity, the former deputies have continued to collect salaries drawn from frozen Venezuelan state assets.

US authorities have not clarified whether the Venezuelan government will regain access to US-based bank accounts and other assets, since several state entities, including oil company PDVSA and the Central Bank, remain under Treasury sanctions.

The formal recognition of the acting Rodríguez administration is expected to pave the way for debt renegotiation. With sanctions barring the country from maintaining its debt service, liabilities ballooned to an estimated US $170 billion.

Edited by Lucas Koerner in Fusagasugá, Colombia.

The licence follows a push from US President Donald Trump to open Venezuela’s resource sector to international investment.

The United States government has authorised a limited licence for the export of Venezuelan gold, following a high-level meeting to expand mining in the country.

On Friday, a notice appeared on the US Department of the Treasury’s website announcing the licence.

It allows Venezuela’s state-run mining company Minerven and its subsidiaries to export, transport and sell Venezuelan gold to the US, within the parameters set out under US law.

Under the licence, however, no Venezuelan gold will be permitted to be exchanged with Cuba, North Korea, Iran or Russia.

The licence also requires payments to sanctioned individuals to flow through Treasury accounts known as Foreign Government Deposit Funds, the same system that has been used to store the proceeds from Venezuelan oil sales.

Minerven and other state-owned industries have faced US sanctions for years, as a penalty for the push to nationalise Venezuela’s resources under former President Hugo Chavez.

But the US has been pushing for inroads into Venezuela’s oil and mining sectors since January 3, when it launched an operation to abduct and imprison the country’s then-president, Nicolas Maduro.

The January 3 military operation has been condemned as a violation of international law, and critics argue that US President Donald Trump has since sought to exploit Venezuela’s natural resources for his country’s gain.

Trump and his allies maintain that Venezuela’s oil resources were stolen from the US, citing the expropriation of assets from US businesses in 2007.

But international law guarantees that countries have permanent sovereignty over their own natural resources, which cannot be exploited by foreign powers without consent.

So far, the government of interim Venezuelan President Delcy Rodriguez has complied with Trump’s requests to surrender oil to the US and open the country’s oil and mining sectors to foreign investment.

Just this week, Rodriguez agreed to send a mining reform law to the country’s National Assembly, following a two-day visit from Trump’s Interior Secretary Doug Burgum.

And in late January, Rodriguez signed into law a separate reform that allowed for the expansion of private investment from abroad in Venezuela’s oil sector and lowered taxes on the industry.

Venezuela’s economy has struggled under tightening US sanctions and government mismanagement, forcing millions of citizens from the South American country to flee its borders over the last decade.

Proponents of the reforms say outside investment can help revive Venezuela’s ailing economy and fund upgrades to its outdated mining infrastructure.

On Friday, Venezuela’s central bank released its first inflation statistics since November 2024, showing that inflation skyrocketed to 475 percent in 2025, when the US placed an embargo on Venezuelan oil exports.

Gold production from Venezuela in 2025 amounted to nearly 9.5 tonnes, according to the government, and the country sits on some of the largest oil deposits in the world.

Caracas, March 5, 2026 (venezuelanalysis.com) – Venezuelan Acting President Delcy Rodríguez met Wednesday with US Interior Secretary Doug Burgum at the Miraflores Presidential Palace in Caracas to discuss a bilateral agenda focused on energy and mining.

Senior officials from both countries also attended a closed-door meeting, including US Chargé d’Affaires Laura Dogu and Venezuelan Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello. Rodríguez and Burgum later gave a joint press conference.

“We welcomed Burgum to address important aspects related to metallic, non-metallic, strategic and non-strategic minerals,” the acting president told reporters. “We want the Venezuelan people to see the advantage of having good relations with the world and with the United States.”

Rodríguez said that her economic team will soon present a proposal to the National Assembly to “expand” Venezuela’s Mining Law, urging lawmakers to reform it “swiftly” in order to showcase “investment and development opportunities in the mining sector” to both domestic and international business groups.

Venezuela’s current mining legislation was approved in 1999. Rodríguez noted that the government intends to replicate the “win-win formula” of the recent hydrocarbon reform approved on January 29, which introduced wide-reaching benefits for foreign capital in the oil sector.

Under the overhauled legislation, private operators get expanded control over operations, with limited parliamentary oversight and a reduced tax burden.

Rodríguez also thanked US President Donald Trump for a social media post praising the Venezuelan acting president for “doing a great job.” The Venezuelan leader highlighted the US government’s “kind disposition” to work on a “mutually beneficial” cooperation agenda.

For his part, Burgum said that Venezuela is “an extraordinarily rich nation” in oil, gas, and critical minerals, adding that the opportunities for collaboration between the two countries “have no limits.” He serves as chair of the US National Energy Dominance Council as well.

According to the senior White House official, who holds the natural resources portfolio, the potential cooperation could deliver something “truly remarkable” for both the Venezuelan and American people. Burgum’s delegation included representatives from over 20 US and Canadian mining companies, some of them with a past presence in Venezuela.

“These companies are ready to begin,” he said. “I know that [Acting President] Rodríguez, like President Trump, wants to cut bureaucratic red tape so this capital investment can start flowing.”

Among the companies represented in the visit were US firms Peabody Energy—the world’s largest private coal company—Hartree Partners, Orion CMC, Paulson & Co., and Caterpillar Inc., along with Canada’s Lundin Mining Corp and Singapore-based commodities trader Trafigura.

Canadian miner Gold Reserve also announced plans to return to the Caribbean nation and disclosed a 30-day US Treasury license to negotiate with Caracas.

According to Axios, US officials additionally negotiated a multimillion-dollar agreement with Venezuela’s state mining company Minerven to sell up to one metric ton of gold to the US market, currently valued at roughly $165 million.

The deal would require Minerven to supply between 650 and 1,000 kilograms of doré gold bars—a crude alloy of gold and silver with 50 to 90 percent purity—to Trafigura, which would transport the metal to US refineries. The transaction details were not disclosed, including whether Trafigura will deposit payment in US-run accounts in an arrangement similar to the one the Trump administration has imposed for Venezuelan oil exports.

Burgum is the fourth senior US official to visit Venezuela since the January 3 US military strikes and kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, National Assembly deputy Cilia Flores.

Earlier visits included US Southern Command chief Francis Donovan, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, and US Energy Secretary Chris Wright.

Venezuela possesses vast unexplored and proven mineral reserves, including significant gold, iron, bauxite, diamonds, nickel, and copper deposits. Coltan reserves have likewise been touted in recent years.

According to the International Center for Productive Investment (CIIP)—an agency attached to the Venezuelan vice presidency—the country holds the eighth-largest iron reserves in the world, estimated at 14.7 billion metric tons, as well as more than 321 million tons of bauxite, the raw material used to produce aluminum.

Regarding gold, the CIIP estimates that Venezuela may hold between 2,200 and 8,000 metric tons, which would place the country among the largest gold reserves globally. 

Analysts have also highlighted the possibility of finding rare earth deposits in the South American country. The 17 elements have diverse applications in cutting-edge technology and advanced weapons systems. Washington is currently highly dependent on rare earth imports from China.

Edited by Ricardo Vaz in Caracas.

March 5 (UPI) — The United States and Venezuela will re-establish diplomatic and consular relations just over two months after former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was deposed from power.

The U.S. Department of State made the announcement on Thursday evening after high-ranking U.S. officials met with their counterparts in Venezuela to negotiate greater access to oil, critical minerals and gold.

“This step will facilitate our joint efforts to promote stability, support economic recovery and advance political reconciliation in Venezuela,” the State Department said in a statement.

“Our engagement is focused on helping the Venezuelan people move forward through a phased process that creates the conditions for a peaceful transition to a democratically elected government,” officials said in the statement.

U.S. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum met with interim Venezuelan President Delcy Rodriguez, who was installed as the country’s leader after the U.S. military captured Maduro and brought him to the United States to face charges that include narco-trafficking.

Burgum and Rodriguez were discussing oil and critical mineral opportunities, in addition to finalizing an American-brokered deal with a Singapore-based company to mine and buy $100 million in gold, The New York Times reported.

Rodriguez said after Burgum’s two-day visit that her government has “full willingness to build a joint work agenda based on respect and mutual benefits,” specifically with regard to energy and other business cooperation, Axios reported.