Venezuelans wonder who’s in charge : NPR

CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuelans scrambled Saturday to figure out who is running their country after the U.S. military seized President Nicolas Maduro, ousting a strongman who has survived a failed coup attempt, several army mutinies, mass protests and economic sanctions in the vast country of 29 million people.

“What will happen tomorrow?” asked Juan Pablo Petrone, a resident of the Venezuelan capital of Caracas. As fear gripped the city, the streets quickly emptied except for long lines snaking out of supermarkets and gas stations. – What will happen in the next hour?

President Donald Trump has offered a shocking answer: The United States will take control of Venezuela, perhaps in coordination with one of Maduro's most trusted aides.

Delcy Rodriguez, next in the presidential line of succession, has served as Maduro's vice president since 2018, overseeing much of Venezuela's oil-dependent economy as well as its feared intelligence service. On Saturday, Venezuela's Supreme Court ordered her to assume the role of interim president.

“Essentially, she's willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again,” Trump told reporters about Rodriguez, who faced U.S. sanctions during the first Trump administration for her role in undermining Venezuelan democracy.

Trump has sharply dismissed opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who won the Nobel Peace Prize last year, as lacking the support to govern the country.

Trump said Rodriguez had a long conversation with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio in which Trump claimed she said, “We'll do whatever you need.”

“I think she was very kind,” Trump added. “We cannot allow anyone else to take over Venezuela without caring for the welfare of the Venezuelan people.”

High-ranking officials remain in their positions

Key Venezuelan officials appear to have survived the military operation and retained their positions, at least for now. There were no immediate signs that the US was running Venezuela.

Rodriguez tried to demonstrate the strength and unity of the ruling party's many factions while downplaying any hint of betrayal. Speaking on state television ahead of the court's decision, she demanded the immediate release of Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores and denounced the US operation as a flagrant violation of the UN charter.

“There is only one president in this country, and his name is Nicolás Maduro,” Rodriguez said, surrounded by top civilian officials and military commanders.

Seeking to calm a nervous public, Venezuelan military officials took a defiant tone in video messages, lashing out at Trump and vowing to resist U.S. pressure.

“They attacked us, but they will not break us,” Defense Minister Gen. Vladimir Padrino Lopez said, dressed in uniform.

Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello, one of Maduro's top enforcers, called on Venezuelans to “take to the streets” to defend the country's sovereignty.

“These rats attacked and they will regret what they did,” he said of the US.

Some Venezuelans heeded his call, rallying behind the government and burning American flags at scattered gatherings across Caracas on Saturday.

But most people stayed inside out of fear.

“What's happening is unprecedented,” said Yanire Lucas, another Caracas resident, as she collected shards of glass after an explosion at a nearby military base that blew out the windows of her home.

“We are still on the edge and now we don’t know what to do.”

No sign of political transition

Trump pointed out that Rodriguez had already been sworn in as Venezuela's president under the transfer of power required by the constitution.

However, state television did not broadcast the swearing-in ceremony.

During Rodriguez's televised speech, a ticker at the bottom of the screen indicated that she was vice president. She has given no indication that she will cooperate with the United States and did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“What is being done to Venezuela is an atrocity that violates international law,” she said in her address. “History and justice will make the extremists who encouraged this armed aggression pay the price.”

The Venezuelan Constitution also states that if the president is absent, new elections must be called within a month. But experts debate whether a succession scenario applies here, given the government's lack of popular legitimacy and extreme US military intervention.

Strong ties to Wall Street

A lawyer trained in Britain and France, Rodriguez has a long history of representing the revolution started by the late Hugo Chavez on the world stage.

She and her brother Jorge Rodriguez, head of the Maduro-controlled National Assembly, have impeccable leftist credentials born out of tragedy. Their father was a socialist leader who died in police custody in the 1970s. The crime shocked many activists of the era, including the young Maduro.

Unlike many members of Maduro's inner circle, Rodriguez's siblings escaped criminal charges in the United States.

Delcy Rodriguez developed strong ties to Republicans in the oil industry and on Wall Street who rejected the idea of ​​US-led regime change.

Her past interlocutors have included Blackwater founder Erik Prince and, most recently, Richard Grenell, Trump's special envoy who has tried to negotiate a deal with Maduro for greater U.S. influence in Venezuela.

Internal tensions may flare

A fluent English speaker, Rodriguez is sometimes portrayed as a well-educated, market-friendly moderate, in contrast to the military hardliners who took up arms with Chavez against Venezuela's democratically elected president in the 1990s.

Many of them, especially Cabello, are wanted in the US on drug trafficking charges and accused of serious human rights abuses. But they continue to exert influence over the military, the traditional arbiter of political disputes in Venezuela.

This creates serious problems for Rodriguez in asserting power. But some analysts said they expect Venezuela's powerful figures to close ranks, as they have done before.

“All of these leaders realized the value of unity. Cabello has always taken second or third place, knowing his fate is tied to Maduro's, and now he may well do so again,” said David Smilde, a sociology professor at Tulane University who has studied Venezuela's political dynamics over the past three decades.

Much depends on the state of Venezuela's armed forces after the US bombing, Smilde added. “If it no longer has a lot of firepower, it becomes more vulnerable and reduced.”

Disregard for the opposition

Shortly before Trump's news conference, opposition leader Machado called on her ally Edmundo Gonzalez, a retired diplomat widely seen as the winner of the country's disputed 2024 presidential election, to “immediately accept his constitutional mandate and be recognized as commander in chief.”

In her triumphant statement, Machado promised that her movement would “restore order, free political prisoners, build an exceptional country and bring our children home.”

She added: “Today we are ready to defend our mandate and come to power.”

Trump appears to have thrown cold water on these plans.

Asked about Machado, Trump was blunt: “I think (Machado) will have a very hard time being a leader,” he said, shocking many Venezuelan viewers who had expected Trump's talk of release to signal a quick transition to democracy.

“She has no support or respect within the country.”

Machado did not respond to Trump's remarks.