Venezuela After Maduro

Venezuela After Maduro 

On January 3, 2026, Venezuela’s political trajectory suddenly shifted. In a surprise operation, Operation Absolute Resolve. , U.S. forces struck key sites in Caracas and captured President Nicolás Maduro. Within hours, Maduro was flown to New York to face federal charges tied to narcotics trafficking and terrorism, pleading not guilty in a U.S. court. ^[1]

Vice President Delcy Rodríguez was sworn in as acting president on January 5, in line with the Venezuelan constitution. ^[2]Despite expectations of regime change, the structures of Chavista governance have endured. The Trump administration signaled it would oversee a transition, promising to “take control” of Venezuela, but so far, the impact has been absent. 

Who’s Next?

Rodríguez’s ascent was swift and calculated. While opposition figures like María Corina Machado are internationally prominent, they are effectively excluded from any realistic path to power inside Venezuela. Machado had been formally barred from holding office by Venezuela’s Supreme Tribunal in 2024.^[3] Allowing Machado and opposition parties to come to power would require a massive reshaping of the current political system, a rather tedious process that may not suit the President’s short attention span. 

By contrast, Delcy Rodríguez represented continuity within the existing system. As vice president at the time of Maduro’s capture, she was the constitutionally designated successor in the event of presidential absence. More importantly, she maintained relationships across the military command, the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, and key economic ministries.

Adapting Repression

At first, the opposition was willing to take what they could get. Machado was not in power, but she celebrated, calling for a democratic transition and recognition of the previous election outcomes. Yet inside the country, momentum quickly stalled.

Rodríguez’s government quickly demonstrated that dissent would remain constrained. Many who publicly celebrated Maduro’s capture were arrested, and protests were limited by both fear and enforcement. ^[4]

Some political prisoners were released under a new amnesty law, but the narrow scope of those releases warrants scrutiny. While the government cited hundreds freed, independent organizations reported far fewer confirmed cases involving genuine political detainees. Many who were released still face charges and are just as afraid to speak out against the government as before. ^[5]The change in leadership has not translated into a change in lived experience for most citizens. The broader system shows little structural reform.

Public health systems struggle to provide basic services. While the interim government has allowed greater access for humanitarian aid, shortages of medicine and equipment remain. Hunger remains one of the most immediate consequences of Venezuela’s prolonged crisis. ^[6]For many households, access to food is about whether they can find any, not if they can afford it. Rising food prices erode purchasing power and place healthy diets out of reach for large segments of the population. Even where markets are stocked, families often resort to coping strategies such as reducing portion sizes or skipping meals. ^[7]The result is chronic undernourishment that continues to shape Venezuela’s long-term public health outlook.

As a result, leaving remains the most viable option for many. With access to food growing increasingly more difficult, and human rights still being trampled, Trump’s control of Venezuela is looking less like a new dawn, and more like Venezuela is “under new management”. 

Growth and Stagnation

Venezuela’s economic trajectory in the post-Maduro period reflects visible macroeconomic stabilization layered over deep structural fragility. Following years of contraction, the economy has registered a tentative rebound, driven almost entirely by hydrocarbons. The partial easing of sanctions and rapid re-engagement of foreign energy firms have unlocked production capacity that had long been dormant. By spring 2026, oil output had risen markedly, with exports reaching their highest levels in several years and regaining access to key markets in the United States, India, and Europe. ^[8]This external reopening has restored a degree of fiscal breathing room for the state, which remains heavily reliant on petroleum revenues.

Official data for 2025 suggests GDP growth of approximately 8.7 percent, extending a multi-quarter recovery from the country’s prolonged economic collapse. Yet this expansion is best understood as narrow and sectorally concentrated. Oil-related activity continues to outpace the rest of the economy, while non-oil sectors remain structurally weakened after a decade of infrastructural decay.

Beneath these aggregate figures, inflation remains the defining constraint on recovery. Price increases continue to erode real wages and distort economic planning. The national currency has not regained credibility as a store of value, and dollarization (adopting the dollar alongside or in place of the current currency), once informal, now functions as the economy’s de facto operating system in many urban and commercial sectors.

Capital-intensive oil-linked industries have begun to recover, benefiting from renewed external engagement. By contrast, domestic consumption markets remain constrained by persistent import bottlenecks and limited access to stable credit. The rebound visible in macroeconomic indicators is only faintly reflected in the daily economic life of the average Venezuelan.

In this sense, Venezuela’s recovery is less a broad-based reconstruction than a recalibration of extractive capacity within an unchanged structural framework. The state has regained access to oil revenues, but has not yet resolved the deeper institutional and monetary distortions that led to its earlier collapse.

Conclusion

Venezuela has not undergone a clean break from its past. Instead, it has adapted its government to appease the US while maintaining a firm grip on its citizens. Power has shifted but not fundamentally restructured. Economic growth in the oil industry is what Trump wants, putting the industry in a perfect position for extraction. Any humanitarian or democratic concerns are tossed in the wind.

Venezuela today is not defined by collapse or recovery alone. It is defined by uncertainty.