On the ground in Venezuela after Trump’s ‘operation’

0:00This is The Guardian.

0:07Today, the view from Venezuela on what comes next.

0:17I actually did what I have come to call an apocalyptic shopping spree two months ago. I went to the supermarket and I bought like 20, 30 cans of canned food. This is a Venezuelan journalist based in Caracas. We're calling her Anna, but that's not her real name to protect her identity. And we actually bought a Starlink satellite because we thought, you know, if something happens and they cut the internet, we still have to be able to communicate with our family members and know what's going on. So we were preparing for this. Anna was awake in the early hours of Saturday morning when she heard the first blasts.

0:57I'm a bit of an insomniac so at almost 2am I was awake and the first explosion I swear I thought it was an earthquake my room has a big window overlooking the north the mountain that is so emblematic to Venezuelans, El Avila and it started trembling the walls were shaking we had an earthquake here last year So this time what I did is I got up and I ran to the living room where we have a hanging lamp. And, you know, I thought that if it was moving, confirmation of an earthquake. But it wasn't. It wasn't moving. Everything was still. But then when the explosions continued in the following 20 minutes, one after the other, something deep down told me, you know, it's the Americans.

1:49With their president in a New York jail cell, paramilitary groups on the streets and the future of their country hanging in the balance. Are Venezuelans daring to dream of a better future? From The Guardian, I'm Helen Pidd. Today in Focus. Venezuela after Maduro.

2:11Anna, goodness, what a few days it has been in Venezuela. You're talking to us today from your flat in Caracas. We're talking as a new president has been sworn in, Delcio Rodriguez, the deputy to Nicolás Maduro. And Maduro, of course, is now in custody in New York, facing a laundry list of drugs charges. How are people feeling now that he's gone? I'm going to tell you an anecdote that morning on Saturday 3rd at 5 a.m. I was doing an interview with the windows open and with my back towards the window and all of a sudden I hear this screaming like people clap like a burst out of silence you know and people were screaming bad words that they usually scream at political rallies against Mahouro and people were grabbing their pots and pans and hitting them with what we call cacerola, caceroleando, which is like a very traditional way of protesting Maduro.

3:07So I looked at the phone and Trump had just posted the truth social post. And that's how we knew that that had happened because there was like a burst of celebration. From the president of the United States, the United States of America has successfully carried out a large scale strike against Venezuela and its leader, President Nicolas Maduro, who has been along with his wife, captured and flown out of the country. This operation was done. But I think as time has passed and it has become clear increasingly that we have still no answers or clear paths towards a democratic transition, people are cautious again.

3:49They are again in their safe space, you know, in silence. and only the people that are outside of Venezuela can safely, I think, express that happiness. But also I'd venture to say that the people that are outside, and I don't mean this like in a bad way at all, but maybe don't understand the complexities of what it is like actually still being here and how Maduro leaving doesn't really give us a democratic transition yet. And there's a piece of context here that I want to make very clear. Since the last presidential elections in 2024, when Maduro lost 7-3, the crackdown was the worst that we've ever seen in the past 20 years.

4:352 ,000 people were jailed, some of them for even posting WhatsApp messages against Maduro. And so people really changed their way of protesting. I hadn't seen that like that before. And I've covered the protests like for 10 years. People are really scared of posting on social media. Repression is hard. You know, I have a friend that's imprisoned and has been tortured. They put a plastic bag on top of his head and made him feel like he was choking. And what was his crime? Protesting against Maduro, illegitimately claiming that he'd won the election? Yes. And also being a political activist. it's hard and people are not celebrating openly as much or saying as much as they really want to say because they're scared still scared because to us again it hasn't changed profoundly in the ways that you know many people think it did and inside Venezuela what do people make of Trump right now you can be against Trump not like him against foreign interventions and at the same time be in favor and celebrate that Maduro was extracted.

5:47And I think that's a very widespread feeling. It's a conflicted feeling. It is. We feel so many things right now in Venezuela, some very conflicting emotions because for a while we've felt powerless in our own country. There's an authoritarian regime. They lost the elections. They refused to recognize that. There's repression. You can't really speak freely. So we don't feel like we control our destiny. And that's one hell of a feeling, let me tell you. You know, you say that Venezuelans can't control their destiny and you've got Trump saying that the US is going to run the country. And he's left Maduro's deputy, Delce Rodriguez, in post on the basis that, as he put it, she's essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again.

6:32What do you make of that and what's the feeling like towards Rodriguez? We are not in control of our destiny again. I think most Venezuelans see Delcy Rodriguez as just part of the same institution as Maduro. Sure. She's vice president, which means that she is actually in charge of the intelligence services, which are responsible for so much repression. She is not a very public figure, so people don't really have necessarily like an emotional relationship with her. There's not like a culture personality or anything around that. But people on both sides of the political spectrum, either you like Maduro or you don't, Cid Alci Rodriguez is just part of the same animal.

7:11Right. The fact that Trump did not mention democratic elections, did not mention Maria Corina Machado, who's leader of the opposition, that was very strange for Venezuelans that disagree with Maduro. Are you aware of the location of opposition leader Machado? And have you been in contact with her? No, we haven't. Oh, I think it'd be very tough for her to be the leader. She doesn't have the support within or the respect within the country. She's a very nice woman, but she doesn't have the respect to visit. Yeah, Trump was pretty dismissive of Mercado saying that she doesn't have support in Venezuela.

7:43I mean, is that true? No. I mean, she won the primary elections in 2023 with 92 percent of votes from the opposition. And then she won the presidential elections through her proxy with 7 million votes. That's almost record breaking in the last 20 years. So she does have popular support. Of course she does.

8:13Trump's made no secret at all of the fact that one of the aims of this operation has been to take back control of Venezuela's oil industry, which was nationalized in the 1970s. And Trump has said he's going to send in American companies to revive it. What do you make of all of that? Here's the thing. Oil has not gone to Venezuelans for a while now. Chavez made agreements with China and Iran and other countries where oil revenues didn't really enter the national treasury and were redistributed. They were used for political goals and to pay off debt. And just to remind our listeners, Chavez, of course, was the predecessor to Maduro and Maduro took over when Chavez died kind of unexpectedly.

8:58Exactly. Yes. Trump is not saying anything new. Basically, the oil that used to be going to some countries like Cuba, Iran and China are now he wants to take them to the US. It's just a change of another foreign government intervening in our sovereignty, in our economic independence. It's nothing new in that sense. But obviously, Venezuelans are not happy. I mean, this should be one of the richest countries in the world. We have the biggest oil reserves in the planet and people here starve to death. People here die queuing for medicines. People here saw their entire savings lost to hyperinflation, like one of the biggest episodes of hyperinflation, longest ones in modern history.

9:43We have the biggest migration crisis in the entire history of the Western Hemisphere. A third, a third of our country migrated without wanting to. People don't want to leave their home and their family and everything they love and everything they know for the uncertainty of starting over somewhere else. And we've had that with the biggest oil reserves in the world. So to us, Trump saying he wants oil, yes, it doesn't make us happy, but you know, what the hell? It's been like this for a long time. And, oh, sorry. Take a breath. You know, it's, I think you're painting, you're painting this in a really clear picture of all of the sort of contradictory feelings here and everything that Venezuelans have been through in the past few decades.

10:28And what a difficult moment this is. It's not clear cut, is it? It's not a clear cut. And it's so uncertain. But I think that one thing that is, and I see this over and over again, in international outlets, one thing that's not clear is just how bad the situation was, you know, and just how much that influences how people feel right now. But I think many Venezuelans are waiting and seeing. We really cannot afford to lose hope at this stage. We are very resilient people. And even if it sometimes feels like blind hope, I think we have to still think and believe that although there's a lot of work ahead towards achieving a democratic transition, that we are perhaps maybe closer.

11:24Tom Phillips, you are The Guardian's Latin America correspondent. And right now you are on the border of Colombia and Venezuela. Can you tell us what is it like there? What's the atmosphere like? Are people still coming and going freely across the border? Venezuelans are still coming and going freely over the border. Others are not. And foreign journalists at the moment are not being allowed across. The atmosphere here in Colombia is quite apprehensive. and there's some very happy Venezuelans around. I came out of the hotel this morning after breakfast and found the cleaning lady sweeping the doorstep of the hotel and she was dancing as she swept and grinning.

11:57I'm so happy, I'm so happy. She thought that after 10 years, she might finally be able to go home and that her relatives who have been scattered across the globe in Australia and Spain might also be able to go home. And we're talking after Delce Rodriguez, Maduro's former deputy, has been sworn in as president, something that Anna has told us is not actually welcomed by many Venezuelans because it's essentially just continuity of the old regime and a regime which stole an election. Tell us, what have the opposition politicians had to say about everything that's happened in the last five days? The opposition politicians are in a state of sort of emotional turmoil at the moment.

12:34They woke up on Saturday morning, absolutely over the moon. My goodness, this day that they've been waiting for for so many years finally come with Maduro's capture. And then a few hours later, got a bucket of cold water thrown over them when Donald Trump indicated that he would not recognise their leader, that he was going to support Maduro's number two, Delcey Rodriguez. So that has left a lot of people in a state of shock. On the streets of Caracas today, supporters of ex-president Maduro came out in big numbers. The regime still very much in control. They had, I think, anticipated that after Maduro fell, Machado and Edmundo Gonzalez, who was her surrogate candidate in the 2024 election, would be able to fly back triumphantly.

13:21Well, first of all, I'm planning to go back to Venezuela as soon as possible. That has not happened. And the opposition people I've been speaking to say, well, look, yeah, of course, that was never realistic. The Trump administration need to protect her physically. They don't want to fly them back in if the security situation is not under control. And there are reports in the US media that Donald Trump's decision to recognise Maduro's number two was partly based on a CIA analysis that basically indicated that Machado and Gonzalez would not be able to control the security situation after Maduro's downfall.

13:55And therefore, it was necessary to recognise and to keep in place members of his regime who would be able to control the security services, the armed forces, the spy agencies and the pro-regime paramilitaries. So, yeah, very difficult situation. They are now saying that perhaps the next step is going to be moving towards fresh elections, whereas before they had always insisted that the result of the 2024 election had to be respected and that there would be no new vote. Now, several of them have said to me, OK, well, that actually looks like what we're going to have to do, have another vote. And of course, they believe that much other would again win.

14:28How stable do you think this new government will be? Are you anticipating there could be a power struggle at the top? Because things must be pretty tense inside the government, given that Maduro was, by all accounts, betrayed from somebody on the inside, somebody who had all of the salient information about his whereabouts so that the Americans could nab him. I think extremely unstable at the moment. She's on a very complex tightrope trying to navigate between ideological supporters of Maduro, maduristas, loyalists, and also trying to keep the White House happy, given their threats that if she doesn't toe the line, she will suffer an even more dramatic fate than Maduro.

15:10We were prepared to do a second strike if we needed it. We're totally prepared. But that's off the table. We're still prepared. That's off the table now. No, it's not. If they don't behave, we will do a second strike. Yeah, and you can see why they would be paranoid, given that only on Sunday, Trump hadn't ruled out a second series of strikes, had he, if things didn't go as he wished them to. And on that front, can we expect that the new government will stand up to Trump at all? I think probably not, particularly if we just look at the statement that Delceiro Rodriguez made in English on Instagram on Monday.

15:41It was, you know, it felt like a complete capitulation to American demands. There was one passing reference to Maduro, no mention of a demand for him to be freed or anything like that. And it just said we hope to basically improve relations with the US. Remarkable handbrake turn. So I don't think so. But there are, of course, forces, criminal forces, military forces, ideological forces in Venezuela that will be furious at what has happened and may seek to fight back in some way. Right. We just don't know. Yeah. And those forces that you mentioned, these reports of these so-called colectivos on the streets, these sort of paramilitary groups who previously were quite loyal to Maduro, what do we know about what they have been up to in the past few days?

16:23One witness we spoke to said that in the early hours of Saturday, immediately after the attack, they started swarming onto the streets of his neighbourhood with guns, wearing military uniform. They've been driving around the city on their motorbikes. They've been seen near the presidential palace with guns.

16:43I've seen them in action myself, a very scary group of people, very, very intimidating. I think people are very worried about what they might do. They are obviously staunch supporters of the regime. And of course, you also have rebel groups like the National Liberation Army in many parts of the country along here on the border with Colombia and Venezuela. They are present and they are ideologically aligned with Maduro and his movement. So remains to be seen what they are doing. There are reports that some of those groups are moving across the border now into Colombia because they are afraid of another attack from Trump targeting them.

17:13And do you think that what these groups are up to is essentially trying to silence any dissent and to preemptively stop people from taking to the street to protest about this sort of illegitimate government? I think partly it may be that, yeah. Although I think people, to be honest, are so afraid and have been so afraid for such a long time now that it's very unlikely we're going to see street protests. I think more what they may be doing is trying to hunt down people who were involved in Saturday's attack. As you said, someone or a group of people betrayed Maduro. They will want to know who did that.

17:45And so apparently they are searching people's phones. They are searching the streets and trying to track down anyone who might have been involved in the attack.

18:02the u.s insists that it is not at war with venezuela because there are no u.s boots on the ground at the moment but trump hasn't ruled that out in future and he's actually said hasn't he that he would potentially send troops there in order to secure the oil industry and at the very time that we're recording this, the US has just announced that it seized a Russian oil tanker that was travelling to Venezuela, presumably to pick up oil, which would be breaking US sanctions. And Trump, of course, wants the oil to go to the US instead. And on Tuesday, he said that up to 50 million barrels of Venezuelan oil will be diverted to the US.

18:38What do you think is going to happen in this battle for all of this oil? When you talk to oil industry experts, they are unanimous in saying that after years and years of decay, it is going to take billions and billions of dollars of investment to get the industry here back on its feet. And I find it very hard to believe that companies are going to invest that kind of money when the political situation remains so unstable. And I think it's also very hard to imagine that boots are going to be put on Venezuelan soil by the Americans. And frankly, that would potentially provide armed members of whatever resistance might exist to all this, a target, potential groups to attack and could make the situation even worse.

19:21So I think what they are banking on is that Rodriguez and Diosdado Cabello, the interior minister, who is a very powerful man with real connections to the security forces, that they are going to somehow manage to keep the security situation under control. And that that might reassure oil companies and might allow them indeed to invest in some way. But I guess that is why Machado and González have not been recognised, because Trump felt that they could not provide that guarantee that the situation would be calm enough for foreign companies to come in. And you're in Colombia right now. How are Venezuela's neighbours feeling now that there's been this realisation, I presume, that the old rules don't apply and that Trump can essentially do whatever he wants?

20:05There have been these threats from Trump to Colombia's president saying that he's a sick man who's sending cocaine to the United States. well, is Trump planning a similar operation targeting Gustavo Petro, the Colombian president? Could he do it in other parts of the region? I think people are really, really worried about the precedent this sets. The defence minister in Colombia said that after Trump's threat, he stepped up security around the president and 30 ,000 troops have been sent to the border here with Venezuela to deal with any potential trouble here. Frankly, I think people will be very worried because they will have seen what politics and international law aside was an extraordinarily, from the American point of view, successful and audacious raid on the best protected address in the whole of Venezuela.

20:46And is there any part of you, the sort of human, non-cynical journalistic side of you that is daring to hope, do you know what, maybe, just maybe, this might lead to a better life for people in Venezuela? I have been covering the humanitarian crisis in Venezuela a great deal since 2018. Been to Venezuela a lot. I have witnessed some awful, awful scenes, dying babies, malnourished children, absolute poverty, families living in such a state of economic distress that you open their fridge in their electricity-free house and all you see is half a mouldy carrot or an egg. I mean, it's unbelievable.

21:30I've seen thousands of Venezuelans pouring out of the country through the borders into Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil, some of them without shoes, eating fruits off trees because they've got nothing to eat. Many of those people were desperate for this day to come. They said the only way they would be able to come back home was if this regime fell. So of course, there is a part of everyone who has been covering this who wants to see those people return home and rebuild their lives and be reunited with their families. But at the same time, I don't think many of us have any faith, really, that such an act of US aggression is going to lead to positive change.

22:08And, you know, frankly, we've seen over the last few hours that not very much has changed. And I think the fear is that things could actually get even worse. And that is why many Venezuelans inside and outside of the country are now waiting inside the country, hunkered down outside the country, just keeping their eyes on it. Is there going to be another attack? Like, could there be another uprising, another coup? Could there be more violence? Could the country splinter in some way because of this? Listening to the very bellicose comments of Trump and Stephen Miller, it's hard to believe that this is moving in a positive direction for Venezuelan people who just want to be able to live their lives in their country.

22:50Coming up, why Anna sees what has happened to Venezuela as a warning to the rest of the world.

23:06Anna, you said it's been a time of huge uncertainty and that is not going to change in the coming days and weeks amid incredible instability. How are Venezuelans preparing for what might come next? I know people are making plans to come back, but I think they're also cautious, just because that means also leaving a life behind that they've built with so much effort. One of the things that I think worries us the most is internal fighting between the leaders that are left. So you have the Othao Cabello, who's very hardline. He is in charge of the security forces. He's one of Maduro's right-hand men, yeah?

23:46Exactly. And he's never had a good relationship with El Ciro Rodriguez. So I think one of the worries is inner fighting for power, especially if it was a negotiated exit for Maduro and there was some sort of betrayal that apparently there was. Yeah, somebody on the inside. Yeah. Yeah. So I think that's a point to be fearful of, inner fighting among them. Yeah. And what about further strikes from the Americans? Is that something that you're worried about? I think only time will tell because if Delcy Rodriguez is able to maintain a good relationship with Trump, whatever that means, I think that won't necessarily be a reality, but only time will tell.

24:28But, you know, having aircraft fly over you at night, hearing them like zooming and not being able to see them and knowing that they're foreign, that feeling of uncertainty, I cannot shake. And I think many people cannot shake. Yeah. And finally, we don't often hear in the media from people inside Venezuela. So we're incredibly grateful that you've taken the time to talk to us today. What do you want the outside world to know about Venezuelans and what you guys want for the future of your country? I want the world to know that we come from the future. We lost our democracy to authoritarianism, and it felt like a very robust democracy.