For nearly three decades, the red-shirted zealots of Caracas had one holy scripture: “United, we will win!” It was a loud, fist-pumping lie that kept Hugo Chávez’s heirs in power. They shouted it at rallies. They plastered it on state TV. But slogans don’t stop handcuffs.
The illusion shattered in January. That was when a brazen U.S. military operation snatched President Nicolás Maduro right out of his palace. Now, acting President Delcy Rodríguez runs the show. She is playing a very different game. The old guard is furious.
Rodríguez is quietly dismantling the temple. She has purged ministers, rewritten oil laws to please foreign capitalists, and freed political prisoners. Most shocking to the old-school ideologues, she is playing nice with Washington. The Great Satan is suddenly a business partner.
The betrayal stings. In May, the government deported Alex Saab, a key Maduro fixer, straight to the Americans. Then came the ultimate insult: two U.S. Marine Corps Osprey aircraft landing at the embassy in Caracas for a joint training exercise.
The backlash was instant, if impotent. Mario Silva, a state TV propagandist recently kicked off the air, went rogue on a livestream. He claimed Rodríguez is taking orders directly from the U.S. Embassy. “Nobody is safe,” he warned. He is probably right.
A few dozen protesters gathered in Caracas to curse the “Yankee drill.” It was a pathetic turnout for a city that used to mobilize millions. Elías Jaua, Chávez’s former vice president, called the spectacle humiliating. He laments the normalization of what he calls a colonial administration. But lamenting doesn’t pay the bills.
The oil is the real prize. The Trump administration now oversees Venezuelan oil sales, doling out revenues in a phased plan to rebuild the shattered nation. It is a bitter pill for a movement that promised sovereign glory.
The revolution was already dead. Andrés Izarra, a former minister now living in exile, laughs at the idea of ideological purity. To him, Chavismo died with Chávez in 2013. What followed was a scramble for loot. The current infighting isn’t about Marx; it’s about survival. It is about money.
The cracks are showing on live television. On a recent broadcast of Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello’s show, a Colombian leftist stood up and publicly mocked the government’s pathetic efforts to free Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. Cabello looked frozen.
Meanwhile, the paranoia grows. Lawmaker Iris Varela openly wonders who held the knife. She told a podcaster that an insider must have helped the Americans grab Maduro on January 3. “Every Christ has a Judas,” she muttered. In Caracas, the disciples are already looking for the silver.
