What’s next for Venezuela

0:02The fallout of the US capture and extradition of Nicolas Maduro was felt globally today. Maduro appeared in court in New York City. Also in New York, the U.N. Security Council met to discuss whether President Trump's actions were legal. Now, Colombia demanded that meeting. President Trump later threatened Colombia's president. Colombia is very sick, too. Run by a sick man who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States. And he's not going to be doing it very long, let me tell you. Right after that, aboard Air Force One, Trump said this. Cuba is ready to fall. In the 48 hours or so since Maduro's capture, Trump has also threatened Greenland, Mexico and Iran.

0:41We're going to have more on that in the coming days. But today on Today Explained, we take you to Venezuela to hear how people there are reacting to Maduro's downfall.

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2:24Ana Vanessa Herrero, freelance reporter in Caracas. It's great to be able to talk to you, especially since you filled us in on what was going on in Venezuela just a few weeks ago. Why don't we do this? Tell me where you are right now and what's going on. Well, right now I'm in the capital city of Caracas and we'll still, you know, it's what's going on. Everything's going on. I mean, since Saturday, people have been, you know, wondering what what is going to happen next. in just 48 hours, Venezuelans experienced not only the first bombing and the first glimpse of war that they have experienced for hundreds of years now, but also they had to face the fact that Nicolás Maduro is no longer here.

3:12And that happened just in a couple of hours. And now we are waiting to see if Delcy Rodriguez is going to finally be formally thrown in as the new interim president. To do so, the National Assembly and the government, basically, would have to acknowledge and accept that Nicolás Maduro's absence is permanent. And that is huge. That is an historic moment for Venezuelans who oppose Maduro, but also for those who follow him. What are people on the streets saying? And is it safe to be out on the street today? It is. I mean, it is. You know, you would what would you expect after severe bombing in the middle of the night?

3:56And then, you know, the the capture of the running president, you would expect not to step outside. Right. It was a surprise for sure. But, you know, I was very careful. I tried to wait as long as I could to see what was going on. And then to my surprise, no military on the streets, no cops on the streets, no danger whatsoever. People just wandering and trying to line up in front of supermarkets, pharmacies to get water, food supplies, whatever they could just to avoid being off guard in case something else happened. And the same image was repeated at the same the same the next day on Sunday. And now today people are just trying to get back to normal.

4:41We see malls opening in a shorter period of time, of course, maybe for a few hours. But, you know, even Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino asked Venezuelans to just continue, basically, I'm paraphrasing, but continue with their lives.

5:01And what is normal exactly after what I just, you know, explained and what I witnessed? And people are trying to do their best. I still see people running first to the supermarkets and pharmacies. You know, such calm after such storm is not something that you would expect. And, you know, some people tell me that it's not normal. I spoke to someone, to an elderly woman, and she said in all of her years living in Venezuela and being born here, you know she felt she felt such stress that she just wanted to like go to sleep and figure it out later and and I hear a lot of people are having trouble sleeping they're not feeling safe going to bed because you know they're scared that the bombings could resume and and I mean even I have to be honest with you even when I hear a sound that you know sounds like a plane I immediately start like looking around, getting nervous, trying to figure out what's going on.

6:08All right. So here in the U.S., we're puzzling over what it means that President Trump says the U.S. is going to run Venezuela. It sounds like in Venezuela, you are no clearer on what Trump is intending. But let's talk about Delce Rodriguez, right? Because Delce Rodriguez, as you said, expected to be sworn in. And we've known this since shortly after Maduro was captured. Who is this woman and who is she aligned with? Well, Delcey Rodriguez has been a longtime critic of not only the U.S. policies against Venezuela, but against South America. And she has been a fierce critic of Trump and Trump's approach to against Nicolás Maduro.

6:51And she has a very, very strong leftist background. She was she's the daughter of a leftist leader and she was very extremely close to Hugo Chavez, who gave her the first chance to to be part of the of the government with him. And then she became a strong name. She became a powerful name after Chavez died, working closely with with Nicolás Maduro. So no wonder why her sudden change of tone, it's raising some eyebrows around. Tell me what she's been saying. You say her tone is changing. What exactly has been happening with her? Well, just to give an example, on Saturday, she said... Declaring Nicolás Maduro is the only president of Venezuela.

7:47She said that what happened to Maduro was a kidnapping and it was illegal. And she urged the U.S. government and Trump to bring him back to Venezuela. And then less than 24 hours later, or maybe a day later, she sat down with all the ministers of the former Maduro's government. And she called the U.S., invited the U.S. to work together in a joint agenda. And she didn't explain further. But I think there's no need. that phrase alone was enough to raise some eyebrows. What do you think happened exactly? Why did she change her tune? I'm not sure, but I can suspect that, you know, the threats that Donald Trump made against her if she didn't comply had something to do with it.

8:42I've been talking to a lot of people on the ground here, regular Venezuelans, and they have thoughts. And some of those are that she was somehow involved in what happened to Nicolás Maduro, that maybe she was part of a plan to us, Maduro of power. And we don't know. We have no idea if that is true. That is like something people think, because, of course, as I'm telling you, like no one believed that she could have been the one to invite the U.S. like that. Now, let's just be super clear. That was just a small statement that she gave. What and how this is going to be translated into the future, we don't know.

9:26I mean, is she going to, you know, change laws to favor the U.S.? Is she going to resume the diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Venezuela? We have no idea what working together on a joint agenda means. But for sure, it's interesting, right? Yeah, it certainly is. And we do know what is motivating the United States here in part, because President Trump came right out on Saturday, gave a press conference and said, We're going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country.

10:11In Venezuela, how did people hear that remark? What was the response? Well, you know, people are so focused on the here and now and trying to, mostly immediately after the attack, how to survive the next few hours and days. That wasn't part of the conversation up until very recently. I spoke to a lot, as I was telling you, I have been talking to a lot of people on the ground, and some of them are addressing that issue, but not all of them. So the ones who are tell me that some of them say they dropped the line right there, that they don't want anyone running the country that Venezuela is for Venezuelans.

10:57And on the other hand, you have the other extreme, and it's people saying, you know what, if the U.S. wants to run the country, then great, as long as they didn't do it with Nicolás Maduro. And really no one, what they all agree on is that they really don't know what that means. Running the country doesn't mean that they're going to be actively part of a government. Are they going to be advisors to the new government? Are they going to make decisions on, for example, elections, which is a huge and basic and key element right here when we address and when we see the future of Venezuela, we don't know.

11:34And I think no one knows. And so lastly, Ana, what are people hoping for next? When you ask people what they would like to see happen, what do you hear? Well, they would like elections. And that is a very popular sense. and the mood around people who are actually talking about the future, elections are a huge part of it. And, you know, in 2024, as you can recall, Venezuela had presidential elections, and those results were not recognized by Nicolás Maduro, who claimed himself as a victor without any proof. Now, I think people, you know, have that feeling of, you know, we now need our fair election again.

12:20I mean, we need to and the Constitution says that in case of an absolute total void of power in the presidency, then the vice president should fill that void and call for elections in the next 30 days. We don't know if that is going to happen because, you know, the circumstances right now are unprecedented for Venezuelans. So we don't really know what's going to happen. But elections, for sure, are a huge part of the conversation.

12:54But yet again, just to be clear, Venezuelans right now are trying to get out of the state of shock. And they're trying to get as much food and water as they can because they're accustomed to problems, turmoil and tragedy. And they, you know, they feel that something else might happen. Ana Vanessa Herrero is in Caracas. Thank you so much for taking the time, Ana Vanessa, and be safe, please. Thank you.

13:30When we come back, over its long history, the United States has intervened in other countries in this region in very similar ways. Can you name all the countries?

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17:25This is Today Explained. Greg Grandin is a historian at Yale and the author of America, America. All right. So, Greg, the United States has a long history of intervening or meddling in Central and South America. Can you list every country where the U.S. has done something akin to what we just did in Venezuela? No. We don't have enough time. We don't have enough time. I can list the countries in which we haven't intervened, which would be a couple of small British Commonwealth islands. I mean, there is no country in which the United States hasn't intervened in South America, in Central America.

18:05By some counts, between 1898 and 1992, the United States successfully was involved in over 40 regime changes. So there is no every country in Latin in South America has had some intervention, every country in Central America and of course, Mexico and quite a number of countries in the Caribbean. As you watch this news unfold over the weekend, which of those examples from the past felt the most analogous? Where did you say, oh, we're just doing this again? Well, that is what it's like living in this moment. It's a little bit of a bricolage. You see elements of all different interventions. I mean, certainly the invasion of Panama, one that comes up immediately.

18:5625 ,000 American troops hit the Central American country hard in the middle of the night. It was a coordinated attack with mechanized divisions, special forces, paratroop drops and air cover. Panama's General Manuel Noriega has taken shelter from the American forces at the Vatican's mission in Panama. If diplomacy can't move Noriega, why not try rock music, playing it at full volume outside the Vatican embassy, where he remains holed up? Good morning, Panama! The United States sent Marines into Panama to capture Manuel Noriega, who in the 1980s during the late Cold War was a CIA asset. The problem was also that he was deeply involved with a lot of drug running, as are a number of U.S.

19:43allies during this period. But Manuel Noriega is a perfect example of this, and he had served his purposes by the end of the Cold War. President Bush announced Noriega's surrender tonight from the White House. On Wednesday, December 20th, I ordered U.S. troops to Panama with four objectives. It was important for a number of reasons. One, it was a showcase of Colin Powell's exit strategy doctrine, that you had to have a clear idea of what you were going in for and what you were getting out for. And also, it was also the first that eventually became understood as an intervention to install democracy, to defend democracy, as opposed to national security or anti-communism.

20:26And it was a unilateral intervention. Everybody, every country in the OAS, Organization of American States was opposed to it. The United Nations was opposed to it. And so many observers see this as a kind of turning point leading to Iraq in 2003 in the sense that it was the beginning of the United States acting unilaterally or outside the channels of the United Nations or the Organization of American States.

20:58You know, I'm old enough to remember Iraq. What I don't remember is the United States, its leadership being so explicit about the oil. Disarm Iraq to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger. This weekend, President Trump came out and he said, we want the oil. That's why we did this. You know, they stole our oil. We built that whole industry there, and they just took it over like we were nothing, and we had a president. Did that surprise you? No. Huh? And I don't think—I'm not one of these scholars who think that it's all about the oil. Obviously, oil is important. Oil plays a factor.

21:39But there's lots of ways of getting oil, right? And the Trump administration could have negotiated with Maduro as elements within the administration wanted to do. I think Trump's talking about oil was kind of a way of providing fig leaf for his America First base. Why is running a country in South America America First? Well, I think it is because we want to surround ourselves with good neighbors. We want to surround ourselves with stability. We want to surround ourselves with energy. You know, a lot of those nationalists, they don't want a regime change. They don't want to rebuild world economies and have the United States superintend a global economy.

22:25But when you put it in tough guy terms and when you put it in the terms of plunder and we're going to take the oil, you know, it resonates with certain sectors of America first nationalism and aggrieved nationalism. We need that for ourselves. We need that for the world. And we want to make sure we can protect it. So I'm not saying oil wasn't important, but I'm saying Trump's move from immigration to drugs is looking for a justification. And then to oil was really just a kind of trying out different ways of justifying what they wanted to do. And it goes back to this idea of the Monroe Doctrine that the United States will police the hemisphere.

23:05They now call it the Don Roe Doctrine. I don't know. Let me ask you about an argument that I saw circulating this weekend. And Nicolas Maduro was in power in Venezuela for more than 10 years. During this time, as you know, the economy craters. Eight million people flee. They flee repression. They flee censorship, fake elections, people being disappeared into prisons and tortured. What do you say to the argument that this was just the right thing for the United States of America to do? You do not have to carry water for Nicolas Maduro. You do not have to support or defend Nicolas Maduro in any way to hold on to the ideal of national sovereignty.

23:49There is a system of international law which recognizes the sovereignty of nations, the absolute sovereignty of nations. It shouldn't be left to the judgment of one nation. You know, international law is something that is always being destroyed. It's a phrase that people use, it weakens international law. Internet's world has always been weakened. But this certainly is a major step in that direction. The idea that the United States can claim for itself the sole jurisdiction and power to decide what country's sovereignty is legitimate. And then to go a step further and then to kind of cosplay colonial plundering and saying we're doing it because of the oil.

24:34We're not doing it because of democracy. We're not doing it because we care about human rights. We're doing it because we want to get the oil. I mean, I think that's what Trump brings to the table. He pulls out the kind of some of the implicit or repressed premises of the power dynamics of the international order and just says them out loud. A couple hours after this news broke on Saturday, I got a text from a Cuban-American friend, and the text just said, Cuba next. And, you know, I watched the president's press conference. Yeah, look, if I lived in Havana and I was in the government, I'd be concerned at least a little bit.

25:13Heard Marco Rubio speak. Cuba is a disaster. It's run by incompetent, senile men and in some cases not senile, but incompetent nonetheless. A lot of people started saying that day, Cuba next. What do you think is coming next? I do think the long game ultimately goes beyond Cuba. I think Cuba may be next. But what we see in the Trump administration is an attempt to bring Latin America to heel, not just Cuba, not just Venezuela, not just Nicaragua, but also what we might call these social democratic regimes, the Workers' Party governed by Lula in Brazil and Claudia Scheinbaum in Mexico. These represent not so much confrontational challenges to the United States, but they represent a kind of intolerable independence and autonomy.

26:11A country like Brazil is insisting on doing business with China, for instance, and finding ways to weaken U.S. economic influence so it could diversify its trading partners. These are totally legitimate actions. But if we envision Latin America as a place that Trump wants to show dominance, then they're intolerable. What it really is is about demonstrations of power and will. You know, Higgs had said the other day that nothing can prevent us from doing what we want in Latin America. And Trump said effectively the same thing. These are, you know, this is really about bringing Latin America, all of Latin America, to heal and bringing Trump allies to power.

27:03And Latin America really is on a knife's edge.

27:17Greg Grandin. He's a historian at Yale. America, America is the book. I enjoyed it. I recommend it. Ariana Espuru and Peter Balanon-Rosen produced today's show. Amina El-Sadi edited, Patrick Boyd engineered, and fact-checking was a big old team effort. I'm Noelle King. It's Today Explained.