It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Pope Leo XIV condemns 'logic of extractivism' in Angola visit Pope Leo XIV denounced the “social and environmental disasters” linked to a “logic of extractivism” on Saturday, the first day of his visit to Angola, a country marked by decades of exploitation of its vast resources.
Pope Leo XIV challenged Angola’s leaders to break the "cycle of interests” that have plundered and exploited Africa for centuries, as he arrived in the southern African country on Saturday with a message of encouragement for its long-suffering people.
Leo's arrival in Angola, the oil-and-mineral rich former Portuguese colony, marked the third leg of his four-nation African voyage. En route from Cameroon, he spoke again of the ongoing back-and-forth with US President Donald Trump over the Iran war.
Leo, history’s first US-born pope, said that it was “not in my interest at all” to debate Trump, but that he would continue preaching the Gospel message of peace, justice and brotherhood in Africa.
Pope vs Trump: Has the week of tension weakened the US president?
In Angola, Leo met with President Joao Lourenco and delivered his first speech to Angolan government authorities, in which he referred repeatedly to Angola’s tortured history of colonial plunder and civil war.
“I desire to meet you in the spirit born of peace and to affirm that your people possess treasures that cannot be bought or stolen,” he said. "There dwells within you a joy that not even the most adverse circumstances have been able to extinguish.”
Angola, which has a population of around 38 million, gained independence from Portugal in 1975. But it still bears the scars of a devastating civil war that began straight after independence and raged on and off for 27 years before finally ending in 2002. More than a half-million people are believed to have been killed.
Angola is now the fourth-largest oil producer in Africa and among the world’s top 20 producers, according to the International Energy Agency. The country is also the world’s third diamond producer and has significant deposits of gold and highly sought after critical minerals.
But despite its varied natural resources, the World Bank estimated in 2023 that more than 30 percent of the population lived on less than $2.15 a day.
“You know well that all too often people have looked – and continue to look – to your lands in order to give, or, more commonly, in order to take,” Leo told the Angolan authorities.
The pontiff said: “It is necessary to break this cycle of interests, which reduces reality, and even life itself, to mere commodities.”
While in Cameroon, Leo had railed against the “chains of corruption” that were hindering development, as well as the “handful of tyrants” who were ravaging Earth with war and exploitation. He raised similar points in Angola.
“How much suffering, how many deaths, how many social and environmental disasters are brought about by this logic of extractivism! At every level, we see how it sustains a model of development that discriminates and excludes, while still presuming to impose itself as the only viable option.”
Leo and 'the tyrants': Does new pope's defiant message resonate?
Jose Eduardo dos Santos, the late former president who led Angola for 38 years from 1979 to 2017, was accused of diverting billions of dollars of public money to his family, largely from the country’s oil revenue, as millions struggled in poverty.
After Lourenco took over as president, his administration estimated that at least $24 billion was stolen or misappropriated by dos Santos. Lourenco’s administration has vowed to crack down on corruption and has worked to recover funds allegedly stolen during the dos Santos era.
But critics note that Angola still has deep problems with corruption and have questioned if Lourenco’s actions were more aimed at political rivals so as to consolidate his power.
Angola, on the southwest coast of Africa, was considered to be the epicenter of the trans-Atlantic slave trade as a Portuguese colony. More than 5 million of the roughly 12.5 million enslaved Africans were sent across the ocean on ships departing from Angola, more than any other country, though not all of them were Angolans.
The highlight of Leo’s visit to Angola is expected to be his visit on Sunday to Muxima, south of Luanda. It’s a popular Catholic shrine in a country where around 58 percent of the population is Catholic.
The Church of Our Lady of Muxima was built by Portuguese colonizers at the end of the 16th century as part of a fortress complex and became a hub in the slave trade. It remains a reminder of the inextricable link hundreds of years ago between Roman Catholicism and the exploitation of the African continent.
Leo has Black and white ancestors who included both enslaved people and slave owners, according to genealogical research. He's going to Muxima to pray the rosary, in recognition of the site becoming a popular pilgrimage destination after believers reported an appearance by the Virgin Mary around 1833.
(FRANCE 24 with AP)
Pope Leo warns AI boom could fuel polarisation, violence in Cameroon address
The proliferation of artificial intelligence could spread “polarisation, conflict, fear and violence”, Pope Leo XIV told students at the Catholic University of Central Africa in Cameroon’s capital Yaoundé on Friday. The pope has slammed tyrants, corruption and neocolonial world powers over the course of his 11-day tour of Africa.
Pope Leo XIV on Friday warned against the use of AI to fan "polarisation, conflict, fear and violence" and criticised the "environmental devastation" caused by the extraction of rare earths to fuel the digital boom.
"The challenge posed by these systems is greater than it appears: it is not just about the use of new technologies, but about the gradual replacement of reality by its simulation," he said in a speech at the Catholic University of Central Africa in Yaoundé, Cameroon.
"In this way, polarisation, conflict, fear and violence spread. What is at stake is not merely the risk of error, but a transformation in our very relationship with truth."
The pope had earlier held a giant open-air Mass at a stadium in Cameroon's economic capital Douala, the biggest event of a visit marked by his calls for peace and spat with US President Donald Trump.
More than 120,000 people attended the celebration, the Vatican said based on local authority figures, with some travelling far or arriving the previous night for a chance to see the leader of the world's 1.4 billion Catholics.
Amid a heavy security presence, Cameroonians began filing into the stadium on Thursday, staying there overnight so they could witness Leo’s homily in person.
Leo, the first US pope, on Thursday criticised leaders who spend billions on wars and, in unusually forceful remarks, said the world was “being ravaged by a handful of tyrants”.
After arriving in Douala by plane from Yaoundé, Leo said on Friday that many in Cameroon experience "material and spiritual poverty" but called on believers to reject violence as a means to get ahead, regardless of the hardships they face.
"Do not give in to distrust and discouragement," the pope urged, in an appeal made in English during a speech that was otherwise mostly in French.
"Reject every form of abuse or violence, which deceives by promising easy gains but hardens the heart and makes it insensitive."
The pontiff invoked the miracle of the loaves and fishes recounted in the Gospels, in which Jesus fed thousands with meagre resources.
"There is bread for everyone if it is given to everyone," he said. "There is bread for everyone if it is taken, not with a hand that snatches away, but with a hand that gives."
The pontiff conceded that "Christians, and especially young African Catholics, must not be afraid of new things".
But the continent "also knows the darker side of the environmental and social devastation caused by the relentless pursuit of raw materials and rare earths", he added.
The AI boom is largely reliant on the extraction of cobalt needed to run energy-hungry data servers, with Africa often bearing the environmental, social and human cost of mining. 'Hope will come to rise again'
Notably, competition for the Democratic Republic of Congo's rich veins of cobalt, copper, lithium and coltan has fuelled a spiral of violence in the mineral-rich east that has lasted three decades.
On a 11-day tour across Africa, the pontiff has also decried violations of international law by “neocolonial” world powers and said “the whims of the rich and powerful” threaten peace.
Cameroon, an oil- and cocoa-producing country, faces grave security challenges, including a simmering Anglophone conflict in which thousands of people have been killed since 2017.
Crowds greeting the pope on his visit have been enthusiastic, lining the streets along his routes and wearing colourful fabrics featuring images of his face.
Bishop Leopold Bayemi Matjei called Leo’s visit “a moment of great joy” and said he hoped it meant God would bless Cameroon.
“Our country needs a lot of blessing, a powerful blessing, so that hope will come to rise again,” said the bishop, who leads the Church in Obala, about an hour north of Yaounde.
(FRANCE 24 with Reuters and AFP)
Wednesday, April 08, 2026
The world could run out of chocolate by 2050
Is the world going to run out of chocolate by 2050? The accelerating climate crisis is making it more difficult to grow cacoa plants. / bne IntelliNews
The world could face a severe shortage of chocolate by 2050 as climate change disrupts cocoa production in key growing regions, according to scientific estimates and industry data.
Rising temperatures and declining rainfall in West Africa — particularly in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire, which together account for up to 70% of global cocoa output — are placing increasing strain on crop yields. Researchers warn that as much as half of the land currently suitable for cocoa cultivation could become unusable within the next 25 years. But over the past two years, cocoa production has plummeted by as much as 40% due to changes in the weather.
The last three years have been the hottest in recorded history and even hotter years are ahead as the Climate Crisis accelerates faster than scientists predicted. For every 1℃ increase in air temperature, the atmosphere is able to hold around seven per cent more moisture, which can cause more intense and heavy rainfall. Cocoa plants love humidity, but they drown if there is too much rain.
That is already dramatically changing rainfall patterns that threaten to turn formerly fertile regions into barren wastelands and make parts of the planet uninhabitable for human life and unproductive for agriculture.
The projected decline reflects cocoa’s sensitivity to climatic conditions. The crop requires a narrow range of temperature, humidity and rainfall, leaving it vulnerable to even modest environmental shifts. Prolonged dry seasons and higher average temperatures have already begun to reduce productivity in some areas.
Ghana raised the price it pays cocoa farmers by more than 60% for the 2025/26 season to pressure top producer Ivory Coast and boost production. Ghana's cocoa industry was on the brink of crisis in 2024 as local Licensed Buying Companies (LBCs) face potential collapse, threatening the livelihoods of smallholder farmers and destabilising the country's cocoa supply chain
The tightening supply outlook has been reflected in global markets. Cocoa prices have surged by more than 400% in recent years, driven by poor harvests and mounting concerns over long-term availability. The sharp increase has added pressure on manufacturers, many of whom have responded by reducing the size of chocolate products while maintaining prices.
Industry participants are also exploring adaptation strategies, including the development of more resilient cocoa varieties and shifting cultivation to higher altitudes. However, such measures face logistical and economic constraints, particularly for smallholder farmers who dominate production in West Africa.
The cocoa belt sits in the band 20 degrees north and south of the equator, where there are the best conditions to grow the cocoa trees, everywhere from Mexico to Fiji. The steady moisture a cocoa tree needs to thrive is being replaced with consistent rainfall along with a climb in temperature as weather patterns move due to global warming.
In 2024 Côte d'Ivoire saw 40% more rain than expected, submerging plantations and damaging crops. By December, the rains had vanished, leaving cocoa trees to wither in scorching heat. In Peru, wildfires destroyed vast areas of farmland, in Mexico, cocoa farming is on the decline as extreme heat and erratic rainfall push young farmers to abandon the industry altogether. And in Brazil, Ecuador, and Indonesia, rising temperatures and unpredictable weather patterns are putting cocoa production at risk.
In addition to climate change, a fungus has plagued cocoa plants in South America for decades. However, scientists from the University of California, UC Berkley, are using CRISPR gene-editing to tweak the DNA of cocoa to make it more disease-resistant, according to reports.
Researchers are already looking for alternatives to keep the billion-dollar chocolate industry going and focused on carob, a climate-resilient plant grown in the Mediterranean that thrives in hot, arid climates with very low water requirements. After roasting, it releases a "unique aroma” that resembles cocoa – but doesn’t quite taste the same. But through the use of enzymes to increase bitterness and enhance sweetness, researchers are hoping to create a viable alternative.
Saturday, April 04, 2026
Untaxed wealth of the top 0.1% eclipses assets of the poorest half of the world
The world's ultra-rich have stashed around $2.84 trillion (€2.47tn) in untaxed offshore accounts, a figure that surpasses the combined wealth of the bottom 50% of the human population, according to a new report.
The amount of untaxed wealth hidden in offshore tax havens by the world’s richest 0.1% exceeds the collective assets of the poorest 4.1 billion people on Earth, an analysis by Oxfam shows.
The report released on Thursday highlights that a decade after the Panama Papers leak, the global elite continue to utilise a complex international financial system to move immense fortunes beyond the reach of public scrutiny and taxation.
Speaking to Euronews, Christian Hallum, the tax lead at Oxfam, stated that the ultra-rich are still sequestering "oceans of wealth" and warned that this is not merely a matter of clever accounting, but one of "power and impunity".
According to the UK-based global confederation of over 20 independent NGOs, approximately $3.55 trillion (€3.08tn) in private wealth remained untaxed and unreported in offshore accounts.
This sum is nearly equivalent to the entire economy of the UK and is more than double the combined GDP of the world’s 44 least-developed countries.
The concentration of these hidden assets is particularly stark, as the top 0.1% hold roughly 80% of all untaxed offshore funds, representing around $2.84 trillion (€2.47tn).
Within this group, a tiny fraction of the top 0.01% accounts for $1.77 trillion (€1.53tn).
Hallum explained to Euronews that the business model of tax havens remains robust because "ultra-rich individuals have the means to hire wealth managers and accountants to come up with ever-more fanciful ideas for how to evade taxes".
FILE. The Ugland House, a registered office for thousands of companies in George Town on Grand Cayman Island, Aug. 2012AP Photo/David McFadden
While total offshore financial wealth reached an estimated $13.25 trillion (€11.51tn) in 2023, representing 12.48% of global GDP, the untaxed portion is estimated to have stabilised at approximately 3.2% since then
Oxfam is now urging the UK government and other G7 leaders to introduce permanent and progressive wealth taxes on the ultra-rich to reclaim these lost revenues.
The organisation argues that such funds are critical for addressing global poverty, supporting the transition to a green economy and strengthening crumbling public infrastructure.
Euronews asked Hallum if a wealth tax is truly the solution for this problem considering that the ultra-rich specifically use offshore services to avoid taxes all together.
The tax lead at Oxfam answered that "a wealth tax does not solve the offshore problem, but when the richest 0.1% own somewhere around 80% of all untaxed wealth offshore we believe that our losses to tax havens cannot be separated from the issue of extreme inequality".
"If we really want to get serious about stopping this business model we have to increase financial transparency, but we also have to start addressing the extreme inequality that is driving demand for the services that tax havens offer. That is why we need a wealth tax on the ultra-rich," Hallum concluded.
Without structural reform to close remaining loopholes and a truly inclusive global cooperation strategy, advocates warn that the offshore system will continue to function as a safety valve for the world's most affluent at the expense of the majority of people.
Related
The push for a global tax framework
A significant hurdle in the fight against tax evasion stems from the uneven implementation of the Automatic Exchange of Information (AEOI) system.
Although 126 jurisdictions have signed up to the Common Reporting Standard (CRS) as of last year, including major hubs like Singapore and the British Virgin Islands, many countries in the Global South remain excluded.
Hallum told Euronews that the requirement for "reciprocity" is a major barrier for developing nations, as they must build complex systems to identify beneficial owners and transfer data to other countries before they can receive information about their own citizens’ offshore holdings.
"Developing the mechanisms needed to transfer that information from financial institutions to the proper authorities is a very demanding task for even the most financially advanced countries, and for many developing countries it represents a task that is beyond their reach," the expert explained.
Hallum also cited the example of Ghana, which signed the CRS in 2014 but only started receiving information in 2022 after spending an estimated $1 million (€862,800) to build the necessary capacity.
This technical and financial burden often prevents cash-strapped administrations from accessing vital data that could help them reclaim lost tax revenue.
A cocoa farmer walks through a section of his farm that has been given over to sand mining in Kona, Ghana, 6 March 2026AP Photo/Tsraha Yaw
The persistent scale of offshore evasion has accelerated a shift in global tax governance.
In November 2024, United Nations member states approved the terms of reference for a UN Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation.
Formal negotiations began in early 2025 and are expected to continue through 2027, with the aim of creating a more inclusive system than the current OECD-led framework.
Hallum noted that many governments in the Global South have been more vocal about increasing transparency than their peers in the Global North, partly because the wealth stashed offshore tends to flow toward the richest nations.
In addition to a wealth tax, Hallum explained that Oxfam is calling for a global asset registry to map beneficial ownership across jurisdictions and the opening of public registers to "pierce shell companies and trusts" that hide real estate and other assets.
Hallum told Euronews that these measures, combined with increased investment in tax administrations, would build the "informational infrastructure" necessary to make tax evasion structurally harder and ensure that the ultra-rich contribute fairly to the societies in which they operate.
The European figures
While the Oxfam analysis focuses on global figures, the Atlas of the Offshore World provides a different look on total offshore wealth, not just untaxed funds, and allows for a view of the European context.
This initiative by the EU Tax Observatory and the Norwegian Centre for Tax Research is compiled using data from Gabriel Zucman and other economists.
Estimates suggest that offshore wealth remains high across the continent, with Greece holding the highest amount relative to its economy among EU members, at around 80% of its GDP.
Additionally, Greece loses 47% of its corporate tax revenue, the highest in Europe, followed by Germany at 29% and Estonia at 24%.
France and the UK round out the top 5 both losing an estimated 16%.
The bulk of the Greek assets are reportedly held in Switzerland which remains a primary host for offshore wealth alongside Luxembourg, Cyprus and the Channel Islands.
Thursday, April 02, 2026
Rats and Bananas: Western Media, Violence, and Freedom in Venezuela
On the morning of 26 March 2026, two crowds gathered outside of the federal courthouse in Manhattan where President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores sat awaiting their trial, set to begin at 11AM that day. On one side was a group of protestors gathered behind a large yellow banner that read “Free President Maduro and Cilia Flores.” On the other, separated by a metal barrier, was a smaller group, largely of Venezuelans cheering on the prosecution. Nearly the entire press presence was located on the anti-Maduro side: around the time the trial was set to begin and during the two hours leading up to it, there was roughly one journalist for every member of the opposition from outlets such as CNN, AP News, The Guardian, and BBC.
“I wonder how many of those people [supporting Maduro] are actually invested in this issue in the long-term,” The Guardian’s reporter told me after I casually asked who she was reporting for and if she had talked to both sides. When I mentioned that I had returned from 3.5 months in Venezuela the day before, and that I was in Venezuela during the 3 January bombing of Caracas, she promptly told me that she had to “circulate some more” and scurried off to talk to more members of the anti-Maduro side of the protest.
The Rat, Banana, and Right-Wing Violence
Prominently featured in the center of the anti-Maduro protest was an effigy of the president dressed in orange prison clothes, with a chain around his hands and his neck; red, bulging, rat-like eyes; and oversized hands with pointed fingers that appeared almost rodent-like. Stuffed into the effigy’s handcuffs was a banana, not unlike the racist imagery that US President Donald Trump recently used to degrade former President and First Lady Barack and Michelle Obama. The latter was met by outrage, yet the ape-ish prop adorning Maduro went largely unnoticed—or unreported—by the press.
This sort of symbolism speaks volumes: what Maduro, and Chávez before him, represent to the Venezuelan elite is a process through which the poor and working class stood up to demand not only access to basic human rights such as literacy and health care, but also dignity and a say in the direction of their country. To them, Maduro, a former bus driver, is a banana-holding ape, a less developed species that should have stayed in the barriofrom which he came.
“I’m from Venezuela! They [are] not from Venezuela!” shouted one man holding the shackled Maduro and banana. Others hit the effigy in the eyes, strangled its neck, and hung it from a tree as others cheered and laughed. The zealous violence inflicted upon this effigy is not merely symbolic: it is a defining feature of Venezuela’s right wing. In the guarimbas, violent right-wing protests that swept the country in 2004, 2014, and 2017 and were championed by opposition leader María Corina Machado and others, Chavistas—or anyone assumed to be a Chavista if they were dark enough or looked poor enough—were attacked, beheaded, stabbed, shot, and even burned alive. (It is worth noting that Corina Machado’s role leading this violence is among the reasons she was not eligible to run for president). Accountability for such crimes—or even common crimes, if perpetrated by the right wing—are portrayed by the ‘international community’ as authoritarian repression.
William Camacaro, a pro-Maduro Venezuelan activist protesting in front of the courthouse on Thursday, told me about the historic impunity of the elite in Venezuela, and how the justice system had changed over the 26 years of the revolution. Before the revolution, he said, “suspending constitutional rights was a sport… People would be murdered in the street without anyone being held to account”—even when the state killed thousands of Venezuelans in the Caracazo uprising, including three of his cousins. Since Chávez’s election in 1998, he continued, “there have been gross excesses on the part of the opposition. There have been takeovers, arson attacks, people have been burned alive. They have done everything, and yet constitutional guarantees have not been suspended.”
Social Debt
The revolution marked a significant change not only in the long-held impunity of the elite, but in paying the ‘social debt’ owed to the Venezuelan population at large and democratizing society, allowing historically disenfranchised sectors of the population to be the drivers in creating a new, democratic society. Whereas the Venezuelan elite had previously been the primary beneficiaries of the wealth from the country’s oil reserves (the largest in the world), after the election of Hugo Chávez in 1998, 75 percent of national spending was directed towards social investment for the population at large. A series of social missions focused on lifting the population out of poverty: Mission Robinson taught three million people how to read and write and achieved 100 percent literacy in the country while Mission Sucre graduated over 600,000 professionals from universities; Mission Vivienda granted over 5 million homes to families across the country; Mission Barrio Adentro built health clinics across the country; and Mission Milagro restored the eyesight of some 300,000 Venezuelans while providing eye surgery to 1 million. Dozens of missions focused on various aspects of well-being that had long been out of reach for the majority of Venezuelans. Beyond the services they provided, missions were also a way for working-class people to take a leading role in building the new vision for their country and the organizational structure to sustain it, such as by sending Venezuelans to Cuba to learn from the country’s hugely successful literacy campaign and lead the campaign back home.
Yet these programs have suffered tremendously since the imposition of US sanctions, when Venezuela experienced a “deep deterioration in health, nutrition, and food security indicators… [that reflected] the largest economic collapse outside of wartime since 1950,” as Venezuelan economist and opposition supporter Francisco Rodríguez reported. By March 2020, former UN Special Rapporteur Alfred de Zayas estimated that 100,000 Venezuelans had died as a result of the sanctions. Outside of the courthouse on 26 March, this hardship was a common point of discussion—but the factors causing it were not. Nor was there any mention of what life was like for the majority before 1998.
That day—as is often the case in discussions about Venezuela within the US—the theme that centered “the Venezuelan perspective” came up again and again. The opposition supporters claimed to speak for all Venezuelans, a narrative that the press eagerly amplified. Yet, in addition to seeming only to interview Venezuelans on one side of the barrier in front of the courthouse, press coverage left out the voices of Venezuelans in Venezuela. So, what do Venezuelans in Venezuela think? What would they have told the reporters?
Freedom
Over the last three and a half months, I asked Venezuelans across Venezuela what they thought of the diaspora in the United States’s claims that they represent the voice of their country in celebrating freedom after the fall of a dictatorship, as many in front of the courthouse expressed. “If this is a dictatorship”, Andreína Álvarez, a young afro-Venezuelan woman, told me the day of the communal consult on 8 March, “I don’t know what you call the actual dictatorships in the world, which the oppressors and, well, the empire, don’t [say anything about]”. “The dictatorship that those… stateless people talk about, who aren’t even here in our country fighting the fight—it’s a complete fabrication”, Jenifer Lamus, a mother and leader of the Maizal Commune, told me. ”Those of us who are here are working and we’re pouring our heart and soul into every organizational process.”
One taxi driver in Caracas who never voted for Chávez or Maduro, and supported neither, told me with horror what it was like to be woken up at 2 AM with hundreds of helicopters descending upon his city. Anaís Marquez, a mother of three and member of the 5 de Marzo Commune, recounted that ‘When [the bombing] started, I was with my children, and they didn’t know what to do. They asked me, “mom, what’s going on?”. My youngest daughter is seven years old, and she thought it was a tsunami or an earthquake. I hugged them and I told them to be still, to stay calm, and to get dressed to find out what was going on.’
Was it worth it, I asked her? Did she feel that she had been freed, as many Venezuelans abroad were claiming? Her voice shook with anger. “We’re not a repressed people; we are a free and sovereign people, and we are fighting… for our president Nicolás Maduro and for our [first] combatant Cilia Flores… And now, more than ever, [for] Trump to get out of Venezuela.”
What was clear to me was that Venezuelans in Venezuela—both those who support and oppose the revolution and President Maduro—were overwhelmingly horrified by the actions of the United States and want the right to determine their own path, and to sort through their own internal contradictions, without foreign intervention. “Bullets don’t care if you’re a Chavista” was a phrase I heard over and over again.
Venezuelans across the political spectrum each had a story of the collective trauma imposed by the 3 January bombing and kidnapping, from tending to their children who could no longer sleep without being woken by nightmares to the common experience of jumping up at each sound, unsure if it the backfiring of a motorcycle was just that or the dropping of another missile. Despite years of foreign intervention—from illegal US sanctions and unliteral coercive measures to an information war and US funding of opposition groups—support for US actions within the country is a marginal phenomenon blown out of proportion by Western media.
Celina della Croce is a coordinator at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research as well as an organizer, activist, and advocate for social justice. Previously, she worked in the labor movement with the Service Employees International Union and the Fight for $15, organizing for economic, racial, and immigrant justice.
Agencia de Noticias ANDES, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
As I was leaving the University of the Communes in Tocuyito, after a joyful and uplifting visit, an earnest young Professor came up to me and pulled me aside. Very quietly, he asked me what was going to happen. A number of the students were terrified there would be regime change and they, picked as young socialist leaders in the commune movement, would be imprisoned, tortured and executed.
With students at an agricultural project of the Vittoria commune
It was a sharp reality check after a great day at this fledgling university. But it is very real. I had met sober and professional diplomats at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs who knew exactly which part of the mountains they would flee to with assault rifles in the event of the right coming to power, and were resigned to a life of guerilla warfare, including partners and children. I have met nobody who doubts that a change of regime in Caracas would lead to immediate mass killings of leftists, and a lengthy civil war.
Almost everything you are told in the West about Venezuela is untrue, and the biggest lie is that Machado, Guaidó and the groupings around them are in any sense democrats or liberal. They are not, and have direct family and political links to the murderous CIA-sponsored regimes of the pre-Chávez years. They also have many scores to settle – Machado’s family, to give just one example, dominated the electricity supply before it was nationalised.
A very large number of the “political prisoners” the West is so concerned about, were involved in efforts at military coup or violent insurrection, of which Guaidó’s comic opera attempt in 2019 was only the most publicised. After the disputed 2024 elections many of those imprisoned were actually brandishing weapons – I met the families of three young men who told me their sons were misled into taking to the streets with guns, and hoped they would get out in the current amnesty.
Sanctions caused great economic hardship which affected government popularity. But it is a huge error to conflate discontent at the Maduro government with support for Machado – there is almost no evidence of the latter, no matter how hard you look. That Machado does not have the internal support to run the country is one of the few things Trump has stated truthfully. The alternative to the socialist government is chaos.
So Delcy Rodríguez has to maintain the Socialist Party in government, or see supporters butchered and the start of a civil war. At the same time she has to contend with the blatant colonialist assertion of control over Venezuela’s assets and finances by the USA, while placating the irascible and irrational Trump.
Let us get one thing straight. I have spoken personally to those closest to President Nicolás Maduro. I have spoken with Francisco Torrealba, who followed Maduro as President of the Transport Workers Union and also took over Maduro’s seat in the National Assembly. I have spoken to Maduro’s son, also Nicolás. None of these people believe for one second that Delcy Rodríguez was in any way implicated in the kidnap of Nicolás and Cilia Maduro.
Why does almost everybody in the West believe a narrative that nobody in Venezuela believes, and which I am quite certain is untrue?
That narrative has been force-fed to you. Trump undermined Delcy Rodríguez by open praise of her and assertion that she is his choice. The truth of course is different: as Maduro’s Vice-President, she naturally assumes the duties of President, as confirmed by the Venezuelan Supreme Court. A co-ordinated effort of briefings to journalists by the Trump administration, by the security services, and by Machado-aligned Venezuelans in Miami, gave to the media in a coordinated fashion a detailed story of negotiations between Delcy and her brother Jorge and the Americans, for a strategy of economic reform that included Maduro’s removal.
I have looked again through many articles that forward this narrative, and all of them very obviously come primarily from Washington sources, and it is a narrative that the United States has been very, very assiduous in feeding you.
It begs the question, if Delcy really is a Western puppet, why is the Western Establishment so keen to tell you that? In every other circumstance, like the Gulf monarchies or al-Jolani, they are always anxious to promote the myth that their puppets are not puppets.
My maxim, that if the government really wants you to know something, it probably means it isn’t true, holds in this case. Trump wants it known that Delcy Rodríguez is his puppet because it is part of his victory narrative, the fake story of Trump greatness. It is also intended to divide and weaken the socialist movement in Venezuela.
We have to look at the night of 3 January when Maduro was kidnapped. There is one key fact which again is simply not part of the Western narrative. It was Nicolás Maduro who instructed the military to stand down and not to fight, in the event of an attempt to take him. In fact he was aware that such an event was imminent, though he did not know the exact date.
Maduro’s primary concern was to avoid war between Venezuela and the United States, war which would devastate this peaceful country.
It is important to note that Maduro was consciously following the template of his mentor President Hugo Chávez in his kidnapping in a CIA-orchestrated coup in 2002. (That link is a wrenching reminder that there was once a Guardian and Observer not captured by the security services). Following armed opposition insurrection on 11 April 2002, in which 19 Chávez supporters were massacred and 150 injured, a military coup captured President Chávez and he was flown to the island of La Orchila in a CIA-chartered plane.
Opposition leader Pedro Carmona was sworn in as President by the military leaders and instantly recognised by the Bush regime in Washington. He announced the immediate repeal of all of Chávez’s reform measures. However the people and bulk of the armed forces rose against the plotters and after only 48 hours took back control. Chávez returned to power. This is the basis of the brilliant Irish documentary The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (which, naturally, was never televised).
The key thing to understand is that – remarkably – Chávez did not execute any of the coup participants, not even those in the military. There were in fact few prosecutions, jail sentences were remarkably light and many – including “President” Carmona – were allowed to “escape” into exile. The longest jailings were for those who actually took part in the massacre of April 11. Chávez gave a December 2007 general amnesty.
The same astonishing tolerance was shown to Juan Guaidó, the Western puppet who attempted a farcical military coup on 30 April 2019. While his coup was a pathetic failure and his total number of military defectors was 50, he nevertheless caused the deaths of four people and wounding of 230.
Again the response of the socialist government was astonishingly lenient. Nobody was executed. Proper trials were held of those accused and jail sentences were remarkably light even for those convicted of treason. It is worth saying that the numbers tried and the sentences were notably lighter than those handed down for the Washington Capitol Hill “insurrection” of 2021.
A group of thirty who took refuge in Bolsonaro’s Brazilian Embassy were allowed peacefully to leave the country. Guaidó was never arrested and was tolerated to wander around the country for years claiming to be President, and travel freely in and out, until he was indicted by the Government of Colombia for entering that country illegally in 2023.
The socialists’ refusal to spill blood has never been mirrored on the right. The large majority of those “political prisoners” you constantly hear about were involved in these or a whole series of lesser-known armed attempts, or in the opposition’s very real links to narcotics trafficking and organised crime.
What is surprising to me is not the claimed authoritarianism of the socialist government but, on the contrary, its quite astonishing leniency with the opposition in the face of repeated CIA-sponsored, frequently armed attempts at overthrow.
One has only to envisage how a right-wing Latin American government would deal with repeated left-wing armed coup attempts, to appreciate just how extraordinary this restraint has been. Lack of violence or vengeance has always characterised the Bolivarian Revolution’s reaction to right-wing coup attempts. Though it is admirably principled, I am not even sure I think this extreme degree of tolerance is wise.
It is in the context of this longstanding socialist reluctance to use violence that you have to view Maduro’s decision to stand down the defence forces in the event of an American kidnap mission. This is a government which does not just use revolutionary slogans, it lives by them, and “peace” is a key one. Maduro almost certainly hoped that domestic solidarity would oblige his return quickly, as had happened with Chávez. It is unlikely it occurred to him that Trump would simply – and pointlessly – remove Maduro and leave his government in power.
Multiple sources have confirmed to me that the Venezuelan forces were ordered to stand down. I visited the hillside location at Fuerte Tiuna where young female Lieutenant Alejandra del Valle Oliveros Velásquez, age 23, refused the order to stand down and continued to stand guard with her gun at a vital hilltop communications facility. She died as it was struck by American missiles.
This is also a point missing from the Western narrative of military events. Venezuela’s defensive posture is hopelessly outdated in the age of precision missile warfare. Its radar installations and anti-aircraft batteries are highly visible on open hilltop locations, not in hardened bunkers. Its troops are in open barracks, like the unnecessarily murdered Cuban guards.
Outrage at the entirely unprovoked American assault has restored a much-needed sense of national unity to Venezuela. In the bitter aftermath of the disputed July 2024 presidential election, many government supporters, including some in office, concede that the wave of arrests went too far. That overreach damaged the government’s moral authority at home and handed valuable propaganda ammunition to its critics abroad.
There was not sufficient discrimination between armed and unarmed protestors, and while many would argue that emergency measures were essential to prevent immediate anarchic violence, it is generally admitted that many incarcerations have gone on far too long.
Acknowledging this does not mean accepting the inflated figures and politicised methodology pushed by Western-funded NGOs such as Foro Penal and their international partners. Those counts routinely lump together genuine dissidents with armed plotters, participants in violent insurrection attempts, and outright criminals — many of whom were brandishing weapons or linked to coup networks.
The NGOs’ inflated numbers are not neutral human rights monitoring; they are part of a longstanding information warfare operation, generously funded by the very governments and foundations that have spent years supporting regime change efforts in Venezuela. Their selective outrage and consistent inflation of “political prisoner” tallies serve a clear political purpose: to delegitimise the Bolivarian process and justify external interference.
Broader perspective is essential. The arrests did not emerge from a vacuum. They followed years of sanctions-induced economic pain, repeated opposition attempts to subvert constitutional order through street violence, election disruption both physical and electronic, and what were forged or selectively manipulated election returns from the opposition. The response was heavy-handed, but it occurred against a backdrop of genuine security threats.
The narrative that the opposition won 70% of the votes in the 2024 election is simply absurd to anyone who knows Venezuela. In their final election rallies, Maduro had 1 million people on the streets of Caracas and the opposition had 50,000. Many of the alleged voting machine printouts bandied about by the Biden regime were very evident forgeries – with the same handwriting in different locations, and multiple examples of returning officers or party officials signing with an X in a country with almost 100% literacy.
The Opposition refused to present these printouts to the Supreme Court for verification. The truth is that the electronic electoral process (I am not a fan) was badly affected by external hacking, almost certainly by the USA. There was indeed popular discontent with the effects of economic sanctions, and many seasoned observers think the elections were close. It will never be possible to discover the real result. But Western claims of 70% opposition support are absolute nonsense.
In fact, I do not believe that either the government or the Supreme Court really knew the true result. I certainly do not. But it was American-orchestrated disruption that made it impossible.
Venezuela is a substantively free country. People have criticised the government to me openly and without fear, including on camera. There was an opposition demonstration in Caracas a few weeks ago. It was very lightly policed. Speakers could say what they wished – support for Donald Trump was a key theme – and nobody has been subsequently questioned. About 500 people turned out. I have seen three or four opposition posters around town. Nobody takes them down.
I have been filming all around Venezuela in total for six weeks, and have never been asked who I am by officials or police, or required to produce identity papers. I received a permit from the Ministry of Communications but nobody has ever looked at it. Nobody has ever suggested what I should say, or instructed me not to film something.
I have been to many different areas and provinces. Everywhere the shops are fully stocked and the bars and restaurants fully operational. People look well fed. I have not seen one drug addict, beggar or homeless person. I have seen five police or military checkpoints in six weeks – three at the Presidential residence, Police HQ, and National Assembly; one checking car tyres and lights; and one at the exit to a national park doing wildlife conservation enforcement.
I have been rather obsessively keeping check because Western journalists always put in police and military checkpoints in their imaginary descriptions of Venezuela, penned from thousands of miles away. The Machado opposition have made it a meme, putting out advice saying you are not obliged to show identity documents at police checkpoints. It would be very hard to find a checkpoint to show your documents to.
This is not a repressive government. The atmosphere of repression is entirely absent and that is because the mechanisms of repression are entirely absent. There is no heavy police presence. People are not scared of informers. I have seen very few guns carried by police, and zero guns carried by anybody else.
The narrative now dominating Western media — that any economic liberalisation or pragmatic opening under Delcy Rodríguez is a sudden capitulation forced by Trump’s pressure — is simply false. Nicolás Maduro himself initiated processes of economic liberalisation years earlier, as a direct survival response to the crushing weight of sanctions. These are Maduro’s policies. The recent legislation liberalising the hydrocarbons sector was entirely developed under, and approved by, Nicolás Maduro.
Dollarisation spread from below as ordinary people sought stability; the government gradually relaxed price controls, permitted greater private-sector involvement in imports and distribution, and developed workarounds for oil sales. These were pragmatic adaptations forced on the revolution long before Trump returned to the White House.
As I told the students at the University of the Communes, if late-stage capitalism were (as it claims) the natural order of society, rather than a series of entirely artificial institutions and arrangements designed to produce an extreme concentration of resources in the hands of an elite, enforced ultimately through the violence of the state, then the capitalist states would not need to crush states practising other systems, through crippling sanctions and isolation from exchange of resources and capital, and ultimately through military force.
Its own founding ideology states that capitalism will naturally prevail eventually in any society through its greater beneficence and more efficient distribution of resources. Yet the rulers of the capitalist states constantly seek to crush any state practising any alternative system. They do this for fear that their own population will see the possibility of a better path than working as effective slaves while the value produced by their labour concentrates entirely into the hands of the Epstein class.
We will never know how the Bolivarian Revolution would have developed were it not for the financial and trade sanctions that crippled it.
But this is the key fact. Venezuela was targeted because of the extraordinary successes of Chavismo, not because it was a failed state. Poverty was more than halved. Literacy increased to better rates than the United States. Free education and healthcare were instituted. Pension recipients were tripled. Utilities were nationalised. Massive amounts of social housing were provided. These were the achievements that precipitated sanctions.
The economic collapse of 2017 was not caused by failures of a socialist system. The collapse – and the subsequent mass wave of emigration – was caused entirely by the sanctions regime, and particularly the blocking of all payment systems and financial transactions.
There is an obvious point seldom discussed: sanctions — particularly the financial sanctions that block normal international payment transactions and banking channels — do not merely cause hardship.
Sanctions actively breed corruption.
When a sovereign government is prevented from conducting legitimate trade and finance through standard global systems, it is driven into the arms of those who specialise in sanctions-busting, informal transfer networks, and money laundering. These forced partnerships with elements outside the formal economy then infect the state apparatus itself, creating new avenues for graft and abuse.
It is a vicious, predictable cycle engineered by Washington policy.
Sanctions force states for very survival to do things classified as illegal, and draw their operatives into the ambit of actual criminals. Some of the criticisms of the Maduro government should be viewed through this prism; and of course there is not, and has never been, any state entirely free of corruption.
Maduro’s rule is not the failure that is routinely portrayed in the West. The economy has rebounded remarkably. Under Maduro, the government scored measurable successes in public security. Murder rates have dropped by over two thirds and the narco gangs are almost entirely off the streets.
Large-scale operations significantly curtailed narcotics production and trafficking routes through Venezuelan territory. Venezuela reported record drug seizures to the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs — nearly 66 tonnes in 2025 alone, the highest level in two decades. UN data states that Venezuela plays only a very marginal role in global cocaine flows, and almost none in production. On fentanyl it doesn’t feature at all.
Maduro has succeeded to an extraordinary degree in suppressing drugs on the streets of Venezuela and in stopping trafficking. That he is now in a US jail charged with “narco-terrorism” is truly a sign of how depraved the United States has become.
At the same time, the overall crime rate fell sharply. Cities that once ranked among the most dangerous in the world became noticeably safer for ordinary citizens. Even Venezuelans critical of the government on other grounds acknowledge this improvement in daily life and personal safety. Just two nights ago I was talking to a Venezuelan visiting home from Germany, who told me she used to be terrified to walk the streets of Caracas at night, but now felt perfectly safe.
It is important to understand what kind of socialism Venezuela actually practised under Chávez and Maduro.
The Bolivarian project was never the full state ownership of the means of production and distribution envisaged in classical Marxist texts. Venezuela has always been a mixed economy. Its distinctive feature — and its greatest strength — was the heavy reliance of the state on ownership of the full range of oil sector activity, upstream and downstream, to channel large public revenues into socialist-oriented goals: universal free education from cradle to university, a national health service that brought clinics and hospitals into every barrio, expanded social security, housing programmes such as the Gran Misión Vivienda, and subsidies that kept basic foodstuffs affordable for the poor.
The nationalisation of utilities — electricity, telecommunications, water — followed the same logic. In many respects it resembled the Western social-democratic model of the 1970s, when European governments used progressive taxation to fund the welfare state while leaving large parts of the economy in private hands. The massive scale of affordable decent quality public housing in Venezuela is truly a marvel to behold for a developing economy.
What made Bolivarianism different, and ultimately more radical, was the commune movement. Its philosophy is genuinely grassroots. The communes did not spring from decrees in Miraflores Palace; they grew from below, from the communal councils that ordinary people in poor neighbourhoods formed to solve their own problems — fixing roads, organising rubbish collection, building clinics.
Chávez gave these organic commune structures constitutional recognition and legal power, but the energy came from the communities themselves.
Decision-making in the communes is direct democracy in action: assemblies debate and vote on how to spend the funds allocated to them. The people decide their own priorities. I have always been a sceptic of people’s assemblies and direct democracy. Visiting Venezuela’s communes has converted me. The key factor is the quite astonishing prevalence of political education and social awareness among the ordinary members of the Venezuelan working class.
For a long time the communes remained largely a mechanism for redistributing oil revenue in a more democratic and transparent way. But it was still, in essence, social democracy with revolutionary rhetoric — spending the rents from oil on social goods.
But the commune movement has not stood still. It has begun to push outward, asserting communal ownership over the means of production and distribution. Increasing numbers of communes now run their own small factories, agricultural cooperatives, bakeries, abattoirs, transport collectives and distribution networks. I have discussed with senior government figures how to use commune-owned enterprises as a spearhead in liberalised sectors of the economy, to socialise profit.
Communes are moving beyond simply receiving and spending state money and towards controlling the actual creation and allocation of wealth. This is the qualitative leap that marks Bolivarian socialism as something more than 1970s-style welfare statism.
Maduro instituted the University of the Communes in 2025. It is predicated on providing practical university-level teaching in the areas of particular value to the communes, ranging from public administration to electrical engineering and agriculture. Agricultural production is an area where many of Venezuela’s over 7,000 communes are engaged.
Agriculture collapsed in Venezuela long before Chávez. This is in common with many oil states.
My first overseas diplomatic post was an appointment to Nigeria in 1986, as Second Secretary (Agriculture and Water Resources), where my favourite statistic was that Nigeria went, in just 8 years, from being the world’s largest exporter of palm oil to being the world’s largest importer of palm oil. Oil-backed currencies frequently make agricultural exports uncompetitive and imported agricultural products cheaper than domestic.
This collapsed Venezuela’s cocoa, coffee, maize and other agricultural sectors decades before Chávez came to power.
The communes are reintroducing agricultural production from ground level up. I visited local commune Vittoria not far from the University. It has over 20 agricultural production units, and students were assisting in developing, for example, bamboo cattle pens to replace iron hurdles no longer imported due to Western sanctions.
At the other end of the production process I visited the Metro HQ in Caracas on the day when all the Metro workers and pensioners are given monthly packages including cooking oil, pasta, flour, eggs and tinned meat and fruit, all of it now produced in Venezuela, and almost all are new products since the 2018 crisis.
What strikes every visitor is the extraordinary level of public awareness of socialist philosophy. In the communes, in the Bolivarian universities, in political education circles, ordinary people discuss with real knowledge the difference between social democracy and socialism, the role of the commune as the “cellular tissue” of the new society, and the necessity of moving from distribution to production.
Ideology is lived daily practice. I have heard teenagers and market sellers quote Chávez and Marx with ease, and with confidence their interlocutors will follow.
These are the fundamental elements of Bolivarian socialism that Delcy Rodríguez is now fighting to preserve and safeguard in the face of the Trump onslaught: the oil-funded social democratic state, the nationalised utilities, the direct-democracy structures of the communes, and the moves to spread the assertion of popular ownership over production.
Consider this: Venezuela has the most beautiful Caribbean beaches I have ever seen. They are as good as Mauritius or the Maldives. These are my own photos and the colours are not retouched.
What is remarkable about this is that all the people you see are ordinary Venezuelans. There is not a foreign tourist in sight: no beachside bar, restaurant or hotel chaining off stretches and covering them in sunbeds. Instead you have happy Venezuelan families with coolboxes enjoying the day for free. That is because, Isla Margarita aside, the Bolivarian Revolution protects Venezuela’s hundreds of miles of white sand beach by National Parks.
Where Chavismo sees a great amenity for the people and an astonishing habitat to be preserved, the Kushner and Machado worldview sees billions of dollars of prime beachside real estate, ripe for condominiums and huge hotels. Do not for one moment believe that they do not have their eye on it as part of the Imperialist grab. They do not want Venezuelans frolicking with their families on those beaches. They want them reserved to American and Israeli tourists, with the only Venezuelans in white shirt and bow tie carrying trays of drinks.
It may seem a small digression, but it is I believe a potent, and poignant, symbol of the clash of worldview that is at the heart of the struggle in Venezuela.
What the opposition wish to do is dismantle this entire architecture. Machado is pledged to abolish communes, to privatise utilities, to return Venezuela to the pre-Chávez model in which oil wealth flowed upward to a tiny elite and foreign corporations, while the majority existed only to serve. Delcy’s task is to hold the line so that the communes, and the consciousness they have created, can continue to develop while the universal education, healthcare and social provision are retained.
But this is the reality Delcy Rodríguez now confronts: Trump imposed a physical naval blockade on Venezuelan oil exports. Tankers carrying Venezuelan oil to buyers not approved by the US were physically seized by the US Navy. The US thus, by military force, imposed control over Venezuelan crude sales.
Revenues were initially routed to a US-controlled account in Qatar, later shifted to US Treasury accounts. Disbursements to the Rodríguez government are discretionary and ad hoc — for example, only $300 million of the first $500 million was released, with US approval required for its spending. The mechanism operates under executive emergency powers in the USA but under no Venezuelan authority. This is not with Delcy Rodríguez’s agreement.
It is totally illegal in every possible way. The naval blockade, the seizure of tankers, the stealing of oil revenue. All of this is absolutely against international law. Precisely what “Emergency” is justifying Trump’s powers, even in US domestic law, I have no idea.
The United States has no treaty agreement with Venezuela or international mandate permitting it to seize Venezuela’s oil and sell it. It is simple theft.
By controlling the tankers, Washington seized control of Venezuela’s only significant source of foreign revenue and crippled the government of Delcy Rodríguez. Oil accounts for over 70% of Venezuelan government revenue.
Oil cargoes approved by the United States are now sold on the international market, but the proceeds are not paid to Caracas. They are, incredibly, paid to the United States Treasury. The Trump regime dispenses ad hoc payments back to the Venezuelan government — whatever portion it chooses, whenever it chooses — to allow basic state functions to continue. It is a system entirely governed by the whims of Donald Trump, controlling another sovereign state.
This is less structured than the formal occupation authority the United States imposed on Iraq after 2003, but the principle is identical. Iraq’s oil revenues have been treated this way for 25 years. A great many people are unaware that all of Iraq’s oil revenue is stolen into United States Treasury accounts: the legacy media never tell you.
It is the classical colonial model. It is exactly how the British East India Company ran the princely states of India in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: the local ruler was allowed to remain in nominal office, but the taxes were collected by the British and the local ruler given back whatever they chose. Senior East India Company officials in post were actually titled “Collector”.
Western coverage calls it “safeguarding,” “protection,” or “leverage”; the reality is pure, physical piracy.
Yet Delcy Rodríguez is stuck. She has no military force capable of countering it. The Venezuelan navy cannot challenge the US fleet, while the USA’s giant bombers can reach Caracas with 2,000lb bombs direct from US airbases in Florida. Any open attempt at defiance would spark the US military regime change which would lead to massacre.
Rodríguez is therefore reduced to negotiating with the occupiers over how much of Venezuela’s own money she is allowed to spend on her own people. She is obliged to host a series of sickening visits from smirking Trump henchmen, openly humiliating and raping Venezuela. The claims that Rodríguez wants this, still more that she engineered this, are nuts.
I have seen criticism from the political left in the West, that Venezuela should have fought, should still fight, should join the anti-Imperial resistance. I have seen Venezuelans criticised as “sell-outs”.
Rather few of those making these criticisms have personally taken to the mountains with an AK47 to fight a superpower which has openly abandoned all pretence to follow the laws of war on protection of civilian life and infrastructure. It is certainly an option; but the death toll would be appalling and Venezuela would be condemned to many years of civil war and US military occupation.
It is a suicidal option, as Maduro himself recognised.
Delcy Rodríguez is struggling under an almost unbearable burden. A lifelong socialist whose own father was tortured to death by a CIA-run Venezuelan security service, she now finds herself effectively a prisoner of the United States. Venezuela is not Iran. It does not possess the military capacity, the strategic depth or the alliances to fight the United States. If Trump wakes up one morning and decides on full regime change — and he could — the result would be an immediate bloodbath and the total erasure of all the social gains of twenty-five years of Chavismo.
To prevent that catastrophe Rodríguez must placate Trump. She must speak the language of economic liberalisation that Washington wants to hear, even though the actual policy shifts amount to only the smallest rightward adjustment in an economy that remains overwhelmingly mixed. The fundamental social-democratic achievements — the education, the health missions, the housing programmes, the pensions and welfare, the privatised utilities — are being preserved.
Rodríguez’s strategy is therefore one of grim endurance: hunker down, preserve what can be preserved, and wait for a change of political wind in Washington. Sources very close to her repeatedly mention the November midterms in the USA as the next possible turning point.
The tragedy is that this woman must endure the portrayal abroad, spread from Washington, as a traitor to her class and her country. She cannot publicly kick too hard against Trump without risking the provocation of the psychopath to the very violence she is trying to avert. A friend who has known her for decades told me: “She is doing what she can to keep the peace in this time of war.”
There is very concrete evidence of Rodríguez’s loyalty to Maduro. Far from erasing Maduro or positioning herself as the new face of the revolution, Delcy Rodríguez has covered Venezuela in highly visible “Free Nicolás and Cilia” billboards and street art, while introducing no material that praises herself or attempts to construct her own cult of personality. This public symbolism is a powerful, real-life counter to narratives of disloyalty or betrayal.
One of my personal critiques of Chavismo is that it is too centred on cult of personality. It is a key fact that Rodríguez is doing the very opposite of trying to move that spotlight onto herself.
Most of Rodríguez’s critics, especially those in the Western media and commentariat, know almost nothing of Venezuela. Most of what the Western public think they know is the very opposite of the truth; the ability of Western media to maintain a false narrative is astonishingly evident on a visit here.
I have now spent a total of six weeks in the country over two trips, talking to students, diplomats, union leaders, commune activists and people inside the government – and a great many barmen. What I have seen and heard convinces me of one thing above all: Delcy Rodríguez is not a traitor. She is a socialist doing the only thing possible to her in this impossible situation — buying time for the Bolivarian Revolution to survive.
