Did Trump really rescue Venezuela?

0:00This is The Guardian.

0:08Tom Phillips:Today, four months on for Maduro's abduction. What next for Venezuela?

0:20The last time I flew out of Venezuela was right at the start of August 2024, just after the disputed presidential election.

0:29Tom Phillips:Tom Phillips is The Guardian's Latin America correspondent. And it was a moment of real turmoil. There was a huge wave of repression that was unfolding as Nicolas Maduro tried to silence any kind of dissent to his bogus claim to have won that election. Thousands were thrown in prison, many were going underground, and journalists were racing to get out of the country. I flew out to Portugal, of all places, on one of the last flights available. And we all flew out thinking, what on earth is coming next?

1:09And then, nearly two years later, when I come back, the reception could not have been more different.

1:18Tom Phillips:Now, four months on from the dramatic abduction of Nicolas Maduro by US Special Forces, Tom has returned to the country. landed, stood in a very short queue, showed them my visa, breezed through immigration, and couldn't quite believe that for the first time in years, it felt like I was entering a normal country.

1:42Tom Phillips:After Maduro's capture, Donald Trump promised Venezuelans an end to tyranny and a bright new future. But with Maduro's second-in-command, Deltien Rodriguez, still in charge, American oil tycoons rushing in and no elections in sight. Will Venezuelans get real change or is it just an illusion? Ordinary Venezuelans feel a sense of optimism. But I think alongside this optimism, there is also real anxiety and trepidation about what comes next. And it's striking how so many of the interviews that I did whilst I was there end in tears. Tears of nervousness about what comes next, that they are not yet fully convinced that they've escaped.

2:40Tom Phillips:From The Guardian, I'm Annie Kelly. Today in Focus. Who is really profiting from Venezuela's bright new future?

2:55Tom Phillips, you are The Guardian's Latin America correspondent and you have just returned from a two-week trip to Venezuela. I think it's the first time international media have been let back in after the US audacious capture of President Nicolas Maduro in January. So first, what was it like being back? Well, it was wonderful being back because Venezuela is a country that is very close to my heart and a wonderful place to be, despite all of the agony that it has suffered over the past few years, particularly since Maduro came to power in 2013. so it was uplifting in some sense to see political activism taking place again, people coming out of hiding, hundreds of political prisoners being released.

3:36So very uplifting in very many ways and yet at the same time troubling because I don't think it's clear to anyone how long these changes are going to be here for. And it's kind of so much has happened since January, hasn't it, in terms of kind of world events, that it's probably worth just quickly reminding us of the events of the past few years since your last visit in 2024, when Maduro was very firmly in control. Can you just give us a quick timeline of how everything played out for Venezuela since then? So on the 28th of July, 2024, there was a presidential election, which Maduro is widely believed to have lost, lost by a landslide.

4:24And on the night of that election, many opposition activists were out on the streets celebrating because they thought that finally he was finished. Maduro had other ideas.

4:46Clung to power, unleashed this massive wave of repression. Thousands of people were thrown in jail. and effectively snuffed out any kind of street activism, political activism against his regime. After that, last year we saw Donald Trump launch a massive pressure campaign with a huge military buildup in the Caribbean, basically saying to Maduro, you know, you're finished. He accused him of being a narco-terrorist. He started bombing boats in the Caribbean. And that culminated on an extraordinary military attack on Venezuela's northern coast and the capital Caracas in the early hours of the 3rd of January.

5:27Late last night, overwhelming American military power, air, land and sea, was used to launch a spectacular assault to bring outlaw dictator Nicolas Maduro to justice. In which special forces swooped in to the Fuerte Tuna military base where Maduro was pulled up, grabbed him and flew him back to the US where he is now in custody.

6:05I mean, it's important to remember that there were civilians who really were on the front line of that attack. Afterwards, really PR'd by Donald Trump as being this amazing, kind of audacious military campaign where no American was killed. Could you tell us what were some of the people that you met? What was their experience of that extraordinary night? So one of the first places I visited was a housing estate on the Caribbean coast in a place called Catia la Mar. And we visited a housing estate that had been bombed by US troops in the early hours of that morning.

6:41One man, Angel Linares, who we met, he's a firefighter and he's seen a lot in his more than 20 years as a firefighter. He woke up at about 2 a.m. to this strange whizzing sound and then an explosion.

7:01Neighbors thought a coup was underway, gunfire started breaking out. He thought it was people celebrating the new year with fireworks, but pretty quickly realized something more serious was underway when the whole front of his building was ripped off. and he said about saving his mum and his neighbours and one elderly neighbour who subsequently died who had Alzheimer's and was about 80.

7:25And Angel's mum showed us four months later that she had turned her shopping trolley into an emergency grab bag filled with her medicine and her clothes. Hezracipo is her name. She is ready. And she, at 85 years old, will jump out of bed, pick up her bag and take cover out in the streets in case any more American missiles rain down. My goodness.

8:02We've stopped at a quaint little beach resort about an hour's drive north of Caracas. It's a very peaceful scene. There's lovely Venezuelan music playing in the background. The waves are lapping up against the shore. And it's just incredible to think that four months ago, there was this highly trained assault team sweeping in through the skies and opening fire on air defences and buildings in the communities around us here. And now life appears to have gone back to normal. And the only sign that you see of Maduro, of course, is having custody in the U.S., are the street corner dustbins, which have been branded with this propaganda.

8:38It says, super moustache, a reference to Maduro's whiskers painted onto the side. And apart from that, no sign of him whatsoever.

8:57After Maduro was whisked off to the US in chains, Donald Trump, you know, he promised the Venezuelan people this new dawn, you know, an end tyranny. Just how bad had things got for people under Maduro by the end? I've spent the last eight years covering the humanitarian and political crisis in Venezuela. And it is very hard to put into words just how bad and how distressing it has been for the people at the eye of the storm. I've attended the funeral of a three-month-old baby who died of malnutrition because the healthcare system had collapsed I have watched thousands and thousands thousands of Venezuelans flee through the borders into Ecuador and Brazil you know old ladies young men with holes in their shoes and not a penny in their pockets they don't have water in their homes I met another woman on this trip and she said to me and my jaw dropped she said we have not had a drop of running water in my house in 21 years.

9:5921 years? It is unimaginable. And just that, you know, the trauma is just constantly present. I don't know, seven out of 10 interviews that I do end in tears. And it is heartbreaking. And sometimes it is very hard to hold back the tears yourself. And so, you know, Maduro made things really, really hard for people in Venezuela. But what What about the people that have been left in charge? How are they running the country now? So there seems to be a quiet but quite concerted campaign now to airbrush Maduro out of Venezuelan history. And I suspect that deep down, many of his allies or perhaps former allies, the people now running the show, are frankly glad to see the back of him, to see the back of someone who had become a cartoon book dictator.

10:56That's not to say, though, that they are necessarily keen on moving the country towards democracy, because since his capture and in the wake of Donald Trump's decision to recognise members of his party, the government is now led by his former vice president, Elcio Rodriguez. We've seen a lot said about the first two stages of Donald Trump's roadmap for Venezuela, which is political and social stabilisation, economic recovery, and then political transition. We've heard a lot said about the first two phases, but very little said about the third. There is no sense that we are moving towards a genuine democratic transition.

11:33The political transition that many Venezuelans had expected on January the 3rd, when they woke up to that stunning news that Maduro was gone, and that while they had expected the opposition leader and Nobel laureate Maria Corina Machado to be able to come back to the country, her movement having won the 2024 election and take power, that has not come to pass. And in fact, it was Maduro's vice who took power with Trump's blessing after he was gone. And Rodriguez and her allies have also made it quite clear that they are not pushing for fresh elections anytime soon. The acting president was pushed by a New York Times reporter recently to say when there might be fresh elections and she responded oh sometime right but that is not to say that there has not been a significant albeit sort of very ephemeral political opening which has allowed people to go out onto the streets and express themselves

12:41One of the first places I visited was a very beautiful former shopping centre that had been turned into a torture centre in political prison over the last few years. And we went to see something which would have been absolutely unimaginable just a few months ago a protest involving hundreds of people who had parked themselves on the pavement under the gaze of the police and were placing candles on the street corner to remember the political prisoners who were still inside and were writing the names in chalk on the sidewalk

13:18some of those names included a 16 year old girl those are the people who are still inside so But a few months ago, it would have been impossible for these people to be there without being arrested. There were police watching them taking their photographs, but they were allowed to gather. They closed the road, they sang the national anthem, they called for freedom. And I was able to speak to some of the families there about the people still behind bars.

13:44You know, do they have any hope of getting their children out? Were they more hopeful that they might see their children released? There is hope in the sense that they are now able to sit there or stand there and to raise their voices and to talk to the international journalists who have now been allowed into the country about the plight of their loved ones. But I think there's also despair. I mean, we watched ambulances coming in and out of this one prison at nighttime. And I think every time the ambulance comes into the prison, they think, my goodness, has something happened to my son or my partner?

14:15and a few days after that visit we discovered that a political prisoner in the very same prison had died under very mysterious circumstances a year earlier and only now were authorities owning up to the fact that this person whose mother elderly mother has been looking for him all over had died within that detention centre so you know yes there is hope but there is also despair and people are asking you know why have these people not been released yet and what will it take for them to be freed. How many have been released since January? About 700 political prisoners now have been released and about 500 are thought to still be behind bars in different parts of the country, some as young as 16.

15:00But yeah, of course, there is absolutely hope. I mean, I met an activist called Jesús Armas, who studied in the UK for a period before coming back to Venezuela to join a political fight, was part of the 2024 election campaign and part of Maria Corina Machado's movement, he was snatched from a cafe after the election, taken to an underground jail, tortured, had a bag put over his head with secret police trying to get information on Machado's movement and what their next plans were, and then vanished inside El Helicoid, only to be released after Maduro was gone. So yeah, I mean, it was very uplifting to sit down with him in a park and to talk about Venezuela's political future.

15:43Anyway, thank you for coming. No, thank you for inviting me. So I'm back here for the first time in two years, trying to understand what is going on. I also want to understand what is going on in Venezuela because right now everything is so confusing. Of course, January 3rd happened. Of course, we are really glad, Venezuela, and we are really glad because we saw that the dictator is right now in jail. Nicolás Maduro is a human right violator he's a criminal so to see justice it's really important for us but the thing is that his regime is still in power because Delce Rodriguez was here number two so it's kind of confusing we are happy also because we see many political prisoners outside of the jail right now including myself but we are also very worried because we still get more than 500 political prisoners in different detention centers all around the country we need a change, we need an electoral calendar to bring back democracy to Venezuela because right now we are still under a dictatorial or authoritarian regime in the country Do you think the opening like the political opening so like you being here because you were released in prison me being here because I've been finally given a visa for the first time in two years is that real?

17:19or is it a facade? yeah, actually this feels sometimes like an illusion because of course I'm free and I feel great for that without any doubt nobody wants to be in prison but I still got friends in prison. You know, political activists are in prison. Innocent people are in prison. So this is not freedom. This is not a transition right now. The majority of time, I have members of the intelligence police of Nicolás Maduro following me. So... Delce Rodríguez, I got it. Exactly. Delce Rodríguez, exactly. So when I saw that, I knew, okay, this is not a transition. we still need to fight. It's a very strange moment.

18:08Really strange, really weird.

18:21And that path to democracy is very much contingent on this very, you know, slightly surreal relationship now between the people who are in charge of Venezuela and Donald Trump and his administration. I'm really curious to know what the people that you interview, how they felt about Donald Trump and the US. A lot of people, and you have to remember that Maduro lost the 2024 election by something like 70%. People, broadly speaking, despised him and wanted him gone. So yeah, many, many Venezuelans are absolutely overjoyed and very grateful, frankly, to Trump for taking him, Even if quietly they will say to you off the record, yeah, of course, we know that this was completely illegal and sets a terrible precedent.

19:08And we don't frankly trust Donald Trump. And we know he's only interested in Venezuela because of its massive oil reserves and natural resources. The Americans focus so far has been on phase one of their three step plan, stabilisation. Stabilisation. Stabilisation means, has meant them leaving in place the bulk of Maduro's regime in order apparently to control the security forces and the military who don't much like Machado. Yeah, and I guess that it's interesting as well how tenuous their grip on power might be if they do anything to upset Trump or they don't allow him to fulfil his ambitions, which he's been very open about in terms of getting his mitts on Venezuela's oil.

19:55Did you see any evidence of that, that kind of lust for Venezuela's oil to be spirited away to the US? Is that happening already? Yeah, I mean, absolutely. Venezuelan oil is now going to the US. It is able to sell it. It has been selling huge, huge amounts of Venezuelan oil. And I saw scenes that, frankly, I had to pinch myself to believe that it was really happening. On my first day there, I drove down to the airport and the whole airport was decked out in red, white and blue balloons, symbolising the American flag. And the airport was full of American officials waiting for the first direct flight from the US in more than seven years to arrive.

20:40I'd certainly never thought I would hear New York, New York and Hotel California playing in that airport.

20:50Yeah, there they were, and there were Venezuelan diplomats saying, oh, you're very welcome here, we're thrilled to have you here to the journalists. The US officials came in, their message was basically, drill, baby, drill, we're here, and this is a wonderful new era. Under President Trump's leadership, the United States remains fully committed to Venezuela's economic recovery. Today, the results speak for themselves. Direct flights are back. Commerce is flowing. Venezuela's economic engine is ramping up. And we're just getting started. Thank you very much. That must be so surreal. It was absolutely surreal.

21:34And then a few days later, I went to the Marriott Hotel in Caracas, which has become the nerve center of the US. It's basically the de facto US embassy in Caracas now. And it is absolutely filled with a mixture of US diplomats, officials, spies, marines. You go down to breakfast and there are these sort of burly tattooed guys sitting around on tables with walkie talkies on their hips. And you hear, you know, the lingua franca in the hotel is English, not Spanish. And you listen to some of the conversations and it is Americans talking about what they are going to do with the future of Venezuela.

22:04Yeah. It sounds like something of a movie or something. It absolutely is. And who could have imagined it? And there's another nearby hotel where rooms are even more expensive. And I've spoken to people who've been there and they say that they are seeing foreign billionaires arrive, sort of people who won't give you their surnames, they won't give you their business card, but they are obviously absolutely stinking rich. And they have come to Venezuela because they are interested in the opening of its mining sector privatizations and this new economic opening that is obviously underway under this bizarre sort of joint presidency between Delcy and Donald Trump.

22:38And considering the kind of quagmire he's got himself into in Iran, do you think that there's a sense that he kind of needs this, you know, his project Venezuela to work out? Absolutely. I think from his point of view, there's a real sense among people that Donald Trump needs a win, a win, win, win. And he wants to show Venezuela off on the global stage as his big foreign policy success. And that means no violence, no internal power struggles, no coup. It means U.S. and foreign business people being able to come to Caracas and develop oil and gas projects, mining projects, make money, money, money.

23:17without any trouble on the streets.