The U.S. Midterms and Venezuelan Democracy

David Smilde and Orlando Pérez both have takes on the potential effects of the U.S. midterm elections on Venezuela. I'd say there are three main takeaways: there will be more oversight (especially over oil deals); there will more pressure for elections; and potentially Delcy Rodríguez will fear retaliation less because Trump's foreign policy is unpopular.

Overall, this is good for Venezuelan democracy. Many Republicans were already talking about needing elections more quickly but Democrats will be louder and more aggressive. We can only hope it means that Venezuelan oil revenue is not sucked entirely out of the country.

The last point about Delcy requires some thought. There is indeed something there because she basically had a gun pointed at her (which is metaphorical but only barely so) to liberalize. I would think resistance would take the form of delaying. But MCM's return will exert even more pressure than the U.S. And that's good! This process should be coming from Venezuelans. Even with a weakened Trump administration it is very hard to imagine her arresting MCM. The Venezuelan people would respond en masse.

In short, we cannot separate the midterms from MCM's return. They happened very close together so it's tough to see what caused what inside Venezuela. Taken together, they will make it very hard for the dictatorship to remain intact. But not impossible...

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Delcy Recasts Herself

The Orinoco Tribune is a Pro-Chavista outlet and has a piece on Delcy Rodríguez that is indicative of how she's been operating. She was, of course, central to repression in the country, but is recasting herself as an empathetic technocrat who deserves your vote. She is trying to erase her own history.

She starts out by saying something that seems clearly aimed at demands for elections:

“Venezuela’s political horizon is not measured by a date on the calendar,” she emphasized, “but rather by a sequence of objectives we must reach.”

Analysts suggest that since the return of far-right politician María Corina Machado, the Chavista leadership has entered into a pre-campaign mode aiming at the upcoming tentative elections.

Tentative elections indeed!

She enumerated the deep transformation of the justice system “to rebuild confidence and recover credibility in institutions” without mentioning she was right in the middle of eroding all credibility.

Rodríguez reported that the government continues to restore access to news websites that were subject to administrative measures as a result of the confrontation experienced.

"Administrative measures" included raids and censorship while the rest of the sentence is a passive mess of obfuscation.

The acting head of state reaffirmed that she is familiar with the affairs of the state in depth because of the different positions she has held. “I come from the system we are transforming and changing; I do not hide that; I turn that origin into a strength to drive the changes Venezuela needs.”

I guess the campaign message is that she knows dictatorship really well and so is the best person to transform the dictatorship, though in fact she has precious little experience with democracy. And then:

To young Venezuelans: it is worth believing again. These reforms are here so that, when it is your turn to decide the country’s course, you find institutions and not ruins.

This is perhaps the most noteworthy one because it is actually thanking Donald Trump, without whom Delcy Rodríguez would not be in her position and there wouldn't have been any changes at all. 

I doubt any of this will be compelling to the vast majority of Venezuelans, particularly because polls show they don't think anything is getting better. And it won't be compelling to the likely next president, who will set up tribunals that may well try Delcy Rodríguez.

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Marco Rubio's Message to María Corina Machado

Marco Rubio's message to María Corina Machado:

And you’re not going to street-protest your way into a democracy.  It’s just not – the way you do it peacefully is through a process, and it’s the one we’ve set up.  And if this process doesn’t work, then the alternative is going to be worse.  The alternative is going to be either violence and armed conflict within the country, or back to the way things have been for the last 20 years, which have not been good for the people of Venezuela. 

This is baldly untrue. I get what he means: electoral and judicial institutions should be reformed to ensure a free and fair vote. But still, it's untrue. Protests tend to be the most effective way of forcing democratic change, particularly in this context where the U.S. government clearly wants a transition that preserves its economic influence.

It just feels like Rubio doesn't trust MCM in no small part because the U.S. doesn't control her. She's a wild card with a massive following so they want her sidelined as much as possible. So she's been back for only like 48 hours and he's made several public statements aimed in her direction. I hope very much that elections are held before long and that the U.S. doesn't meddle with the process, though we can't count on that.

In the meantime, I will be fascinated to see how MCM operates. Her very presence--irrespective of protests--will hopefully speed up the process.

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María Corina Machado Returns

María Corina Machado returned to Venezuela, which is huge. No one can say how this will affect the political situation, which of course will be dictated by her actions. Clearly Marco Rubio expects her to toe the line.

In the weeks since, the process of political dialogue in Venezuela has gained momentum, the U.S. officials said. That has given the administration some confidence that the authoritarian government would not arrest Ms. Machado if she returned, they said.

Mr. Trump and Mr. Rubio expect Ms. Machado to respect and support the ongoing process of political dialogue as well as economic plans for Venezuela, one of the administration officials said.

She needs to support both the political negotiations she was intentionally excluded from and the business deals that she in fact has already questioned because the regime does not represent the interests of the Venezuelan people. So can she keep quiet about them? How does this directly challenge the authority of Dinorah Figuera in her capacity as opposition negotiator?

As an aside, I am struck by the Trump administration's claim that it needed to wait for confidence that she wouldn't be arrested. One could reasonably argue that if Rubio told them not to arrest her, then they wouldn't. But was there perhaps a whiff of doubt, a concern that they might arrest her anyway and call the administration's bluff?

Her return will change internal dynamics but no one can predict how. She's going to press for elections, fair business deals, and the like. She cultivates Trump but is not beholden to him. So let's see. But it's good she's back--Venezuela needs to become a democracy that's safe for everyone to return to.

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Venezuela: Going Full Circle

Billionares seem to be talking about Venezuela. Richard Branson says investment will flow in once there are elections. On the one hand, it's good in the sense that it can create more pressure to have free elections. That was certainly a factor in the U.S. starting to pressure Augusto Pinochet in the mid-late 1980s.

On the other, it's a return to an era that Hugo Chávez specifically fought against, where foreigners dominate the economy, which also means they have significant influence over the government's economic decisions. In the late 1980s that led to austerity policies that hurt a lot of people, followed by protests that were met with deadly force. Chávez stepped into politics in that context and people looked to him because theyir own elected leaders were not serving their interests.

It's now 40 years later. What replaced that splintered system is far worse and hurts most Venezuelans, so clearly change is needed. But the current U.S.-pushed plan to have foreign companies and billionaires swooping in will have long-term consequences. There are think tank conferences that say they're aimed at the Venezuelan private sector and I hope that becomes more common.

Regardless, are any of these folks discussing historical context as they go on about licensing, enforceable contracts, and regulatory obstacles? I hope so, though I am not terribly hopeful. Richard Branson doesn't know the history and almost certainly would have no interest in it. But Venezuelans do.

We constantly hear about the need for investment, protection of property rights, etc. but we don't hear anything about social programs. Early on, Chavismo gave many people hope who otherwise felt entirely outside the system. They were ultimately betrayed and they begin whatever new era we're in as outside the system once more.

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The Latin American Right Hearts Delcy

Imdat Oner has a good analysis at Responsible Statecraft about the Latin American right and Delcy Rodríguez. They were publicly critical of Nicolás Maduro's lack of legitimacy and now embrace Delcy because it's convenient. He goes through all the various reasons, which is worth reading and I won't bother repeating them. But I do not fully agree with this:

The decisive factor is Washington’s change of course. For many governments in Latin America, democratic principles and electoral legitimacy are becoming secondary considerations, defended mostly when they align with Washington’s preferences.

On the surface, yes, obviously, these are governments that want to remain in Trump's good graces and going along with this has no political cost. But there is something deeper here as well, a longstanding Latin American (or maybe everywhere) political pragmatism that manifests in all different ways. In a sense, this shouldn't surprise us at all.

Various examples:

--Hugo Chávez railed against the U.S. and international capitalism but happily continued selling oil to the U.S., thus helping a president he had referred to as the devil.

--Current right-wing governments publicly criticize China and quietly reinforce their economic ties.

--Evo Morales railed against capitalism and yet had a staunchly pro-capitalist Finance Minister.

--The Latin American right-wing railed against the Cuban dictatorship and was fine with Pinochet. 

--Latin American leftists railed against right-wing dictatorships and remained quiet about Cuba.

Maybe these aren't exactly apples to apples, like how a fly in your chardonnay actually isn't the same as a free ride when you've already paid. But going against your stated ideological beliefs in the name of self-interest is not all that unusual.

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Venezuelans Are Even More Unhappy With Delcy and Trump

Back in August I linked to a Meganalisis poll showing growing Venezuelan dissatisfaction with Trump and the state of affairs in Venezuela. The September poll shows that's just getting worse. They think, with considerable justification, that no one has any interest in the welfare of the Venezuelan people. Not Trump, not Delcy, not investors, not the negotiation teams, nobody. They want Chavistas out of power and they want elections. Things are bad and the status quo is not making them better. If anything, they're in worse shape financially and with power outages.

Here is the trajectory of feelings toward Donald Trump:

There is no doubt that most Venezuelans supported ousting Nicolás Maduro. But that action came with the expectation that things would get better. Instead, Trump has consistently said the U.S. is profiting from the invasion and Venezuelans are finally believing him, to the point that approval and disapproval have pretty much inverted since January 2026.

There's not much new to say about this. I think Venezuelans feel frustrated and helpless. They thought Trump was swooping in to help them and that just wasn't true. The administration could compel significant change and simply chooses not to. Meanwhile, Delcy and Co. are holding onto power with all their might, ceding only when forced. So things don't get better. Like the rest of us, they can only wait and see what happens with negotiations and María Corina Machado.

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Maria Corina Machado's Perspective

María Corina Machado gave an interview to the New York Times, which highlights how she differs from the Trump administration, primarily in terms of democracy, and frankly why they don't want her in power, though she is very careful with her language.

Some takeaways:

1. If she becomes president, some high-level people will be tried and some will go to prison. She says by a truth commission, which is not how they've worked in Latin America. They haven't been courts--their purpose has been to investigate and publicize what happened. Regardless, this will rock the political boat, and in a way that's inconvenient for the administration.

2. Rocking the political boat brings us to the military. She says she believes only the leaders want to persecute her and her followers, and lower levels of the military support her. We have no way of confirming or disconfirming that, but it's a reasonable argument on its face. Reassurance of not being put on trial (which she also does say is possible for lower level officials) will help a lot in that regard as well. As a side note, in Argentina lower level officials were granted an amnesty that actually years later was overturned, opening the door for prosecutions at a time when democracy was firmly entrenched.

3. The oil deals being done now will be looked at. She frames it as those "that have signed contracts right now would like to improve the terms of their contracts once we’re done." I don't know if everyone will have the same definition of "improve."

4. She mentions how a democratic transition will bring many thousands of Venezuelans back to their country, so a free election is good for U.S. immigration policy. This is a shrewd framing you don't hear very often.

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Brazil Remains (and Will Remain) Close to China

Roberto Simon writes about Brazil and China, and how their relationship upends the Trump administration. If Flávio Bolsonaro wins, he will move ideologically into Trump's orbit but that will not change Brazil's relationship with China, which is deep.

None of that, however, would meaningfully reverse China’s deepening economic influence in Brazil, or the belief among many Brazilian business executives and foreign policy elites that the best long-term strategy is to hedge against an increasingly unpredictable United States. 

If Brasília becomes the next Latin American capital to shift rightward, the region would be ideologically aligned with the United States to a degree not seen since at least the early 1990s, following the end of the Cold War. Yet the U.S. unipolar moment is long gone, including in Latin America. No matter who is in power in the region, Trump’s revived Monroe Doctrine is destined to collide with the reality of growing dependence on Chinese trade, investment, and technology.  

As Simon points out, it's common in Latin America for conservative presidential candidates to rail against China and then quietly (or sometimes even loudly) favor it when they take office. It just makes economic sense.

It's actually quite similar to Chile. As I wrote last December:

Keep that in mind for most other Latin American countries. The U.S. press in particular likes neat categories--there is a left and a right, and we can point to specific people who embody it. Presidential elections will be framed as wholesale change when in fact plenty of core policies will remain or at least will be tweaked without overturning them. China (and Europe) now have deep ties and those are not likely to change drastically. Add U.S. tariffs to the mix and the incentive to maintain friendly relations with China is even more evident.

It's important to keep emphasizing the point that despite ideological congruence, the U.S. is an unstable and unreliable partner right now and will be perceived as such for a while even after Trump is gone. He set the precedent for attacking your allies and it won't quickly be forgotten. 

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There Are Still Political Prisoners in Venezuela

The Economist has a great article about Venezuelan political prisoners. The context is that the U.S. accepts not pushing against authoritarianism because stability is prioritized far higher than democracy or human rights protections. The U.S. could force lots of positive change but chooses not to. This is obviously ideal for Delcy Rodríguez.

Prisoners serve three main purposes for the regime:

1. Bargaining chips with the U.S. The regime lets some people out, gets some good PR, stays in Trump's good graces, and stays in power.

2. A reminder to Venezuelans that the repressive apparatus is still functional so they need to be afraid. Protests are increasing and could get out of hand if people felt truly free.

3. A reminder to the armed forces that they support the regime or else. This is critical. The military has always been the linchpin of power, which is why Hugo Chávez was so careful about purging. Right now, there are 322 political prisoners, 140 (or 43%) of which are military.

The clear conclusion here is that freeing all political prisoners (and of course not taking more) is essential for weakening the regime, which unfortunately the Trump administration is not interested in at the moment. 

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U.S. Troops in Latin America

The New York Times reported on U.S. troops in Latin America. There's plenty to unpack here.

First, there is no goal at all, which the article points out. Wander around until you shoot or get shot at? This will end up killing innocent people for no gain. That will not matter to a U.S. audience until a U.S. soldier is killed, though I can't be sure people will care much even then. But objectively, it's a disaster for human rights. Plus, as I've written ad nauseum over many years, these operations will not stem the flow of drugs. They're largely for show, a testosterone-laden theater in the jungle. Probably miserable for the soldiers to boot.

Second, what happens when new presidents are elected that don't want these troops? That may not be a problem if someone else is president in the U.S. But for right now, we know the Trump administration likes forcing out governments, and of course the U.S. has a long history of it. That will hang over the region for a while.

But here is the part that shows the highest level of illogic.

Earlier this week, Gen. Joseph A. Ryan, who heads the Army’s Western Hemisphere Command, described the stark challenges the U.S. military faces as it returns to a region that for decades has not been its main focus. It is a part of the world where China has growing economic leverage, and where drug cartels have built sophisticated global networks to sell their illicit products, he said.

“We have ceded economic dominance in the region to an adversary, and that is a fact,” General Ryan said in remarks on Monday at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference in Washington. “We are fighting now to retake terrain — maritime and land, human terrain, cognitive terrain — in many cases that we’ve given up previously.”

Sending troops has nothing to do at all with China's economic influence. It will certainly not reduce it. You're retaking "cognitive terrain"? Say what? Maybe he thinks that Latin Americans will be so happy at the sight of U.S. soldiers that they will stop buying Chinese products. How anyone could think that is beyond me. 

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Nicaragua Denies US Ambassador

The Nicaraguan government rejected Natasha Franceschi as the U.S. Ambassador. I immediately wondered whether she was a Trump political connection, but no (and perhaps his connections don't want Nicaragua anyway!). She's a career diplomat with long experience. There hasn't been a U.S. ambassador in Nicaragua for three years.

At first this puzzled me. Given what happened in Venezuela and is currently happening in Cuba, I couldn't understand why Daniel Ortega wanted the Trump administration spotlight on him, especially when it seems like the ambassadorial choice was a professional. Then I looked at her testimony from her nomination hearing.

If confirmed, I will sustain diplomatic pressure toward a solution in Nicaragua that

advances American prosperity and security. 

It is well past time that Nicaragua return into the fold of prosperous American

nations, free from totalitarianism.

Then it made more sense. That was pretty blunt. Nicaragua does not get in the U.S. news much but bilateral tension is definitely rising and I could imagine Trump seeing this as a personal slight. That said, Nicaragua does not have much to offer him in economic terms and can't reduce the price of gas in the U.S.  As always, stay tuned.

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Marco Rubio's Venezuela Messaging

The State Department has a quick summary of Marco Rubio's meeting with Dinorah Figuera and it's as weird as everything else in this saga. Here's part of it:

He highlighted this year’s steps toward establishing an independent Supreme Court of Justice, the release of over 1,200 political prisoners, the recently restored access to blocked media websites, and efforts to reform the Law Against Hatred as important milestones toward restoring fundamental freedoms for the Venezuelan people. 

Looking ahead to the next round of talks beginning October 14, the Secretary urged continued progress on political freedoms and electoral reform, which would lay the groundwork for free, fair, and credible elections in Venezuela.

This is the language you use when you don't have all the leverage. "Recently restored" media could have been restored in early January. The hate law could've been pushed months ago. Rubio "urged" continued progress?

The U.S. invaded the country and could have restored many freedoms a very long time ago, but chose not to. I understand that stability was favored over democracy. But abrograting the hate law wouldn't undermine stability--it would just stop innocent Venezuelans from being targeted for their political beliefs. Low-hanging fruit.

Instead, we have this scenario where the U.S. portrays the two sides are equal. In democratic transition terms, it's a bizarre combination of imposition and pacted. The former (which is rare unless you include foreign use of force) involves force while the latter involves compromise. Venezuela thus becomes a combination of the U.S. overthrowing Manuel Noriega and the Chilean dictatorships negotiated with the opposition, which I think would be unfathomable to all the scholar studying this 30ish years ago. It also confounds predictions of outcome. We hope it ends up like Chile, where the repressive apparatus was dismantled and elections persisted (even if the military's role remained strong for a long time). For now, it's like Chile where military internal intelligence remained going strong.

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Maria Corina Machado Makes Her Pitch

María Corina Machado published an op-ed in the New York Post three days ago about why she needs to return and Venezuela needs to hold free and fair elections.

First off, why the New York Post? I mean, I guess it doesn't really matter since people will read it regardless, but it's a tabloid. That said, it's conservative and has ties to Trump.

Her points are pretty straightforward and while careful to praise Trump, she makes it clear that you can't continue to have positive relations with an illegitimate government. You can't have certainty with a rickety and thoroughly corrupt dictatorship. She makes a point directly aimed at the administration's oil deals, which is that you can't guarantee contracts with the current regime.

Donald Trump's response: "Well, I'll say one thing: she is an excellent woman. She gave me her Nobel Prize because she knew I had earned it, and she is an excellent woman, and everything is going to turn out fine."

It's a beautiful blend of narcissism and vagueness.

Meanwhile, Marco Rubio denies that anyone blocked her return and a coordinator of Vente Venezuela said she might return "within hours."

Stay tuned.

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