Venezuelan Power Without Maduro Leaves Delcy Rodríguez Holding Lightning Rod

With Nicolás Maduro captured by U.S. forces on January 5, 2026, Venezuela faced an immediate leadership vacuum. In response, Delcy Rodríguez stepped in as acting president, embodying both continuity and an emergency patch. She now faces the dual challenge of selling legitimacy at home while managing Donald Trump’s conditions abroad in a nation still trembling from recent shocks.

A Leader Shaped by The System She Must Now Defend

In Caracas, the word “transition” can sound like hope or like a trap, depending on the listener. This complexity became unavoidable in the immediate aftermath of Maduro’s capture, marking the uncertain opening days. In this new context, Delcy Rodríguez, formerly executive vice president, is now acting president. The text presents her as a temporary stabilizer under an understanding with the Trump administration. Yet on Venezuelan state airwaves, she insists that the “only president” remains Maduro, now on U.S. soil with his wife, Cilia Flores, facing charges linked to narcotrafficking. This contradiction is deliberate—the political shape of survival in the changed landscape.

Rodríguez, 56, has spent years climbing the core ladders of chavista power, moving through roles as foreign minister, communications minister, economic and finance portfolios, and, crucially, the institutional machinery built to outflank the opposition. She served as president of the National Constituent Assembly, created in 2017 and established outside the opposition-led parliament at the time. In June 2018, she became the government’s number two, replacing Tareck El Aissami. By August 2024, she was also minister of hydrocarbons, a position that pulled her closer to the oil economy and to the private sector that still functions, unevenly, around the state.

Her first major post was as minister of the presidency under Hugo Chávez (1999–2013), tying her biography to chavismo’s core myth. If chavismo is built on loyalty, Delcy Rodríguez is a central internal beam.

That background explains why, in the text, she is described as the figure now positioned to guide a transition from within the system, not against it, especially after an “oleada de ataques militares” in Caracas and other parts of the country that culminated in Maduro’s capture. It also explains why her public line is uncompromising. In a mandatory national broadcast, she demanded the “immediate release” of Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores, calling him the country’s “only president,” while leading a defense council alongside officials, including Diosdado Cabello, the minister of interior and justice.

Her statements are designed to project institutional stability and suppress destabilizing speculation about power vacuums following significant political shocks.

The Trump Factor and The Old Gamble with New Stakes

The text also sketches a longer arc that makes today’s crisis feel less like pure surprise and more like a delayed consequence. In 2017, as political outsider Donald Trump prepared to enter Washington, Rodríguez, then foreign minister, saw an opening and tried a charm offensive. She directed Citgo, a subsidiary of Venezuela’s state oil company, to donate $500,000 to Trump’s inauguration. With the socialist government struggling to feed Venezuela, she gambled on a deal that might have reopened the door to American investment. The outreach expanded: Trump’s former campaign manager was hired as a Citgo lobbyist, Republicans in Congress were courted, and an attempt was made to secure a meeting with Exxon’s top leadership.

The effort failed. Soon after taking office, Trump, urged by then-Senator Marco Rubio, made restoring Venezuela’s democracy a central focus in response to Maduro’s crackdown on opponents. But even a failed charm offensive leaves fingerprints. The text argues that it raised Rodríguez’s profile in U.S. political and business circles and helped pave the way for her rise.

Now, facing a changed reality, history seems to have returned in harsher form. Trump has stated publicly that he will not deploy troops or launch new attacks if the “vice president of Maduro” complies with his administration’s demands. This offer of conditional peace hangs over Venezuela’s leadership. At the same time, Rodríguez—shaped by this past and present dynamic—says she is willing to negotiate a “constructive agenda” with Washington, but only within the boundaries of international legality and the laws of the Bolivarian Republic, after what she describes as a military assault.

This scenario places her on a diplomatic and political tightrope: compelled to assert sovereignty while negotiating with the force that removed her predecessor. Such a position in Latin American history often transforms leaders into symbols of either resistance or submission before their roles can be clearly defined.

A Family Story That Fuels the State’s Mythology

Rodríguez’s legitimacy inside chavismo is also personal. It is shaped by the family narrative that the movement treats as sacred. Born in Caracas on May 18, 1969, she shares the political stage with her brother Jorge Rodríguez, now president of the National Assembly. Their father, Jorge Antonio Rodríguez, founded the Liga Socialista. He died in July 1976 from injuries allegedly inflicted by officials of the old Disip intelligence service. Chavismo considers him a “revolutionary martyr.”

The text says he had been detained and accused in connection with the kidnapping of William Frank Niehous, an American executive at Owens-Illinois, a glass-processing company. In the chavista imagination, this is not just a biography. It is lineage, proof that the state’s struggle began in blood long before ballots, sanctions, and televised speeches.

Her credentials are also technocratic: she is a lawyer trained at the Universidad Central de Venezuela (UCV), pursued social law studies at the University of Paris X Nanterre, and holds a master’s degree in politics and social studies from Birkbeck, University of London.

She stands as a rare hybrid: ideologue with institutional skill and negotiator with academic polish.

But the central question remains unresolved in the text itself: is she merely holding the chair warm, or is she quietly becoming the chair?

A report cited in the text states that in October of the previous year, the Miami Herald reported that Rodríguez offered the United States the lead in a transitional government without Maduro, with Qatar mediating proposals allegedly approved by Maduro. Rodríguez denied it, calling it false and accusing the outlet of feeding “lies” and “carrion.” Trump later said Marco Rubio, now U.S. secretary of state, is in contact with her. She did not confirm that, but repeated her openness to negotiation.

In the streets of Caracas, where politics is experienced as shortage, fear, and rumor, these developments create layered uncertainty. Titles alone will not decide the outcome. Delcy Rodríguez can demand Maduro’s release while running the state. She can invoke the law while navigating conditions imposed by a foreign power. She can serve as acting president and still insist the president is someone else. This paradox defines Venezuelan power in 2026, as the country is asked to accept stability as a temporary arrangement. Yet, history shows that “temporary” often signals the beginning of new eras.

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