Bolivarian Twilight, by Luis Bonilla-Molina – 29 May 2026

The recolonization of Venezuela

As US planes, helicopters, and special forces stormed Caracas in the early hours of January 3, Vice President Delcy Rodríguez was nowhere to be seen. Rumor had it she was in Russia, though the Kremlin denied the claim. It was only after the withdrawal of US forces that she reappeared, demanding proof that President Nicolás Maduro was alive. The humiliation brought by Maduro’s capture quickly raised concerns about an eruption of internal conflict, along with speculation that the Revolution had been betrayed.

Hours later, when Donald Trump announced that the United States would henceforth “run Venezuela,” he was already in talks with cooperative authorities in Caracas. In contrast to the mass uprisings against the April 2002 coup orchestrated by the employers’ association Fedecamaras and opposition parties, the streets of the capital remained eerily calm. The silence was broken only briefly by a small, timid mobilization called by the ruling Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (United Socialist Party of Venezuela, PSUV) on January 4. The next day, Rodríguez was sworn in as acting president by extra-constitutional fiat. She wasted no time in describing Trump as a friend and partner; her call for sanctions to be lifted was justified in terms of accelerating bilateral cooperation. The Venezuelan government’s prior anti-imperialist rhetoric had vanished overnight. The priority, it seemed, was to rectify twenty-five years of estrangement between Washington and Caracas.

The US now appears to control all the major power blocs in Venezuela: the post-Maduro faction represented by Rodríguez, the right-wing grouping of former assembly member and steel-industry heiress María Corina Machado, and the centrist coalition behind former National Assembly Vice President Enrique Márquez. Venezuela’s new acting President has become the local enforcer of the US National Security Strategy and the Trump Corollary.

How can we explain this seismic reversal in Venezuelan politics, overseen by Maduro’s former right hand? Answers must be sought beyond the spectacular capture and imprisonment of Venezuela’s sitting president. The most recent reforms and realignments since January have served to strengthen an elite orientation to the US, but the conditions for today’s turn to Washington were set in place years before, with the transition from Chavismo to Madurismo. It was at this time that a recomposition of the country’s ruling elite under Maduro exacerbated the structural crises of Venezuela’s rentier development model. Much remains uncertain about Venezuela’s future but for now the revolutionary left, and its anti-imperialist positions, have failed to find popular resonance. We can now say definitively that after twelve years of Madurismo, the US invasion, and the Venezuelan government’s capitulation, the Bolivarian Revolution has come to an end.

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Luis Bonilla-Molina is a Venezuelan academic and visiting professor at the Federal University of ABC in São Paulo, Brazil. During Hugo Chávez’s presidency, he served as president of the Miranda International Center, vice minister of university education, and founder of the International Research Center Other Voices in Education. He has also served as president of the Governing Council of the UNESCO International Institute for Higher Education in Latin America and the Caribbean (IESALC).

Bolivarian Twilight, by Luis Bonilla-Molina – 29 May 2026

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