QUO VADIS VENEZUELA?

Venezuelan diaspora faces an uncertain future

After the removal of President Maduro by US forces, Venezuelans, at home and abroad, wait for US President Trump’s next move

By The Immigrant Times

Who will govern Venezuela: Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez, US President Donald Trump or Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado? (Photos: Reuters; Javier Torres)

Venezuela’s diaspora celebrated President Maduro’s capture

February 2026: When US special forces extracted Nicolás Maduro from Caracas on 3 January 2026, Venezuelan communities across three continents faced a moment they had anticipated for years, yet one for which the path forward remains profoundly unclear.

Polling conducted in the immediate aftermath shows substantial support for the intervention among Venezuelan migrants: over 90 per cent of those living outside Venezuela approved of Maduro's capture, according to regional surveys, while within Venezuela itself, 80 per cent viewed the operation positively (Sources: Centro Nacional de Consultoría, 5 to 9 January 2026; The Economist/Premise, 9-13 January 2026).

In Spain, home to approximately 400,000 Venezuelan immigrants, thousands gathered at Madrid's Puerta del Sol. In Miami's Doral, where Venezuelans constitute 40 per cent of the 76,000 residents, celebrations began at dawn. Similar scenes played out in Buenos Aires (Argentina), Santiago (Chile), and Bogotá (Colombia).

Yet this diaspora approval comes with significant caveats. The same polling reveals that 61 per cent of Venezuelans fear increased repression in the short term, and when asked who currently holds power in Venezuela, respondents are nearly evenly split: 49 per cent say the Americans, 43 per cent say Chavismo, and only eight per cent perceive any opening for the democratic opposition.

More fundamentally, the international community of Venezuela analysts, from the Atlantic Council to Latin American think tanks, warns that Maduro's removal, while symbolically significant, represents merely the beginning of a protracted and uncertain transition. The mechanisms of Chavista power remain largely intact; the opposition is fragmented; and the Trump administration's decision to work with Maduro's former vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, rather than opposition leaders María Corina Machado or Edmundo González has raised profound questions about Washington's actual commitment to Venezuelan democracy.

Venezuela in the 21st century

To understand the Venezuelan diaspora's complex response to the US intervention requires understanding what drove millions to flee in the first place, and why, despite that exodus, the Bolivarian project once commanded genuine popular support.

Hugo Chávez's election in December 1998 was, by all accounts, free and fair. He won with 56.4 per cent of the vote in a campaign that promised to redirect Venezuela's oil wealth toward the poor majority. His victory came after two decades of economic decline: between 1978 and 1998, Venezuela's economy had stagnated while poverty rates soared from under 20 per cent to over 50 per cent. The 1989 ‘Caracazo’, riots sparked by IMF-mandated neoliberal reforms that left hundreds, possibly thousands, dead—had shattered Venezuela's image as a stable democracy and created the conditions for Chávez's rise.

The early Bolivarian Revolution delivered measurable gains. Using unprecedented oil revenues during the 2000s boom (prices reached $147 per barrel in 2008), Chávez's government created social ‘missions’ that expanded access to healthcare, education, and subsidised food. According to Venezuela's National Statistics Institute, poverty fell from 48.7 per cent in 1999 to 32.1 per cent by 2013. The Gini coefficient, a measure of income inequality, declined from 0.495 in 1998 to 0.39 in 2011, placing Venezuela behind only Canada in the Western Hemisphere on this metric.

Yet these gains were, as subsequent analysis revealed, ‘real but superficial’ (NACLA, 2017). The social programmes depended entirely on high oil prices rather than structural economic reform. Chávez's government failed to diversify the economy, instead deepening Venezuela's dependence on petroleum, which accounted for 95 per cent of export earnings. Currency controls implemented in 2003, intended to prevent capital flight, instead created a dual-exchange system that bred corruption. State takeovers of private enterprises often led to declines in productivity.

When oil prices collapsed from $100+ per barrel in 2014 to below $30 by 2016, the entire edifice crumbled. Under Chávez's successor Nicolás Maduro, hyperinflation reached 130,060 per cent (prices doubled every 19 days) in 2018. By 2021, Venezuela's GDP had shrunk by roughly three-quarters from its peak. The exodus began: more than 7.7 million Venezuelans, over one-quarter of the population—fled between 2014 and 2024, creating the largest refugee crisis in the Western Hemisphere's modern history.

The deterioration was not merely economic. The Chávez and Maduro governments progressively dismantled democratic institutions, packing the Supreme Court, controlling the electoral council, and using security forces and paramilitary ‘colectivos’ to suppress opposition. The July 2024 presidential election, which opposition candidate Edmundo González appeared to win by a two-to-one margin according to independently verified vote tallies, was stolen through outright fraud, with Maduro declaring victory despite providing no supporting evidence.

It is this history, of initial hope transformed into authoritarian kleptocracy, that explains both the diaspora's overwhelming support for Maduro's removal and their profound anxiety about what comes next.

Scenarios for Venezuela's future

The Atlantic Council, among the most authoritative sources on Venezuelan affairs, has outlined what its experts characterise as three distinct pathways for post-Maduro Venezuela, each with profoundly different implications.

Scenario 1: A negotiated transition

In the most optimistic scenario, articulated by Alex Plitsas of the Atlantic Council's Scowcroft Centre, "the detention of Maduro could catalyse the desertion of the élites. Faced with the threat of prosecution, sanctions, and loss of privilege, regime officials could seek guarantees of safe exit, limited amnesty, or asylum in third countries in exchange for transferring power to the legitimately elected opposition."

This scenario would require key military commanders, particularly Defence Minister Vladimir Padrino López, to calculate that their interests lie in accommodation rather than resistance. As Jason Marczak, Vice President of the Atlantic Council's Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center, noted: "Most of these forces were not loyal to Nicolás Maduro. Many were either scared of being thrown in jail if they went against Maduro or were directly benefiting from the illicit financial resources that Maduro procured and then doled out to military officials. If those resources are now drying up, well, do you want to take additional action to perpetuate a regime that's falling? Or do you want to be on the right side of history?"

However, James Story, former US Ambassador to Venezuela (2018-2023), emphasised the difficulty: "Vladimir Padrino López, minister of Defence and commander of the Fuerza Armada Nacional Bolivariana, is an institutional military officer. We must bear in mind that today the Venezuelan Armed Forces are a 'shell' of what they were; military personnel feel ashamed by the events of 3 January, by the fact that Maduro's protection was in the hands of Cubans." (Interview with Infobae, February 2026).

A negotiated transition would allow Venezuela to "avoid massive escalation of violence, stabilise institutions, and open a path, albeit narrow, toward economic recovery and international reintegration," according to Plitsas.

Scenario 2: A modified Chavismo under US supervision

The second scenario, which multiple analysts suggest may be the Trump administration's preferred approach, involves working with the remnants of Chavismo (Left-wing ideology developed by Hugo Chávez) under Vice President Delcy Rodríguez's leadership in exchange for access to Venezuela's oil reserves and cooperation on migration and drug trafficking.

This is precisely what appears to be unfolding. Despite Trump's initial rhetoric about Venezuelan democracy, his administration has endorsed Rodríguez, who served as Maduro's vice president since 2018 and is deeply implicated in regime corruption and human rights abuses. As Trump stated at his 4 January press conference, Rodríguez was gracious and willing to do what we consider necessary.

Yet experts are nearly unanimous in their scepticism. Iria Puyosa, a Venezuelan expert at the Atlantic Council's Democracy+Tech Initiative, states bluntly: "Delcy Rodríguez cannot guarantee the stability Trump wants. Chavismo no longer enjoys the widespread popular support it had two decades ago."

Geoff Ramsey of the Atlantic Council's Adrienne Arsht Centre added, "The mission is not accomplished until Venezuelans get free and fair elections. Democracy can only be restored with a plan that guarantees free elections and the release of all political prisoners."

This scenario draws comparisons to Iraq post-2003, where the United States, despite initially promoting a complete break with the Ba’athist system, ended up relying on elements of the old security apparatus to maintain stability. As noted by Control Risks in its analysis: "As in Iraq, Maduro's capture offers the U.S. a sufficient symbolic victory to reduce direct military pressure and channel the transition through economic and diplomatic incentives" (El Tiempo, January 2026).

In this "ugly" scenario, what Venezuela experiences is not a virtuous democratic transition but "an administered fracture," in the words of Colombian analysts at Fundación Paz y Reconciliación. Oil flows resume to American refineries, migration pressures ease, but genuine democratic transformation remains elusive.

Scenario 3: A descent into prolonged conflict

The darkest scenario envisions Venezuela fragmenting into sustained low-intensity conflict. As Plitsas warned: "If regime remnants reject negotiation and fragment, Venezuela could descend into prolonged guerrilla conflict. Armed collectives, criminalised military units, and factions linked to drug trafficking could initiate asymmetric warfare, transforming entire regions into disputed zones and prolonging civilian suffering long after the regime's formal fall."

Venezuela has approximately 60,000 members of paramilitary ‘colectivos’, irregular armed groups originally created by Chávez to defend the revolution, but which have evolved into criminal enterprises with deep ties to drug trafficking. These groups operate with significant autonomy and have access to weapons. As Story noted: "What will happen with the 'colectivos'? Every autocracy has a similar structure that has a certain degree of autonomy, and the regime is not responsible for its actions."

Additionally, Venezuela hosts elements of Colombian guerrilla groups (ELN, FARC dissidents) and has become a major transhipment point for cocaine. The US indictment of Maduro alleges that his government conspired with these groups and Mexican cartels in drug trafficking operations, an allegation Maduro denied but which forms the legal basis for his arrest.

In this scenario, Venezuela could become what one analyst described as "Libya or Syria in the Caribbean", a failed state with competing armed factions, mass displacement, and regional spillover effects that would affect Colombia, Brazil, and the broader hemisphere.

The probability of this scenario depends largely on decisions made in the coming weeks by Venezuelan military commanders, colectivo leaders, and Trump administration officials. As Txomin Las Heras of Universidad del Rosario in Colombia warned: "The main warning would go in the direction of avoiding power vacuums that can generate internal confrontations in Venezuela between different factions or groups that today are somehow united around Maduro's exit. For this, it is important to reach a large national agreement that includes the Armed Forces to support a transition government."

Fazit

The Atlantic Council's scenario framework provides a useful lens for understanding what lies ahead for Venezuela and its diaspora in Latin America, the US, and Spain. Scenario 1, a negotiated transition with democratic elections, requires military commanders and Chávez's officials to abandon a system that has enriched them for decades. The "ugly" scenario, modified Chavismo under US supervision, appears to be the Trump administration's actual preference, despite democratic rhetoric. The catastrophic scenario, descent into sustained conflict, remains a real possibility if power vacuums emerge or if armed groups resist transition.

What is striking is the disconnect between diaspora celebration and expert caution. Millions of Venezuelans welcomed Maduro's removal, yet the analysts who study Venezuela most closely emphasize that his capture solves none of the fundamental challenges: a decimated economy requiring years of reconstruction, a corrupt military apparatus deeply implicated in drug trafficking, paramilitary groups operating with autonomy, and an opposition weakened by years of exile and internal division.

Trump's dismissal of María Corina Machado, the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize winner who led the opposition's electoral challenge, in favour of working with Delcy Rodríguez, represents perhaps the clearest signal that Washington prioritises stability and oil access over democratic transformation.

Machado's reckless decision to present her Nobel medal to Trump, a gesture ridiculed by Norwegian politicians as ‘pathetic’ and ‘absurd’, with the Nobel Foundation clarifying that the prize ‘cannot be transferred’ produced only a photo opportunity and a Trump-branded gift bag.

The incident encapsulates the power asymmetry: the Venezuelan opposition leader who risked everything to challenge Maduro was reduced to a symbolic gesture, whilst Trump opted to work with Maduro's former vice president instead. As Jason Marczak noted: "What's needed in Venezuela is a partner government that allows for the freedom of its people, respects foreign investment, and advances US and Venezuelan security and economic interests."

For the Venezuelan diaspora, the question is no longer whether Maduro is gone; he is, but whether his removal creates space for the democratic Venezuela they fled to seek, or merely replaces one form of authoritarianism with another, more palatable to Washington. The celebrations in Miami, Madrid, and Buenos Aires may prove premature, or they may mark the beginning of genuine transformation. The answer will emerge not in weeks but in months and years, as Venezuela navigates the treacherous path from dictatorship to an uncertain future.

As Geoff Ramsey of the Atlantic Council concludes: "The mission is not accomplished until Venezuelans get free and fair elections." By that measure, Venezuela's transition has barely begun.

Sources:

Atlantic Council (Adrienne Arsht Latin America Centre, Scowcroft Centre, Democracy+Tech Initiative); Centro Nacional de Consultoría (CNC); The Economist/Premise; Infobae; El Tiempo; Control Risks; NACLA (North American Congress on Latin America); Fundación Paz y Reconciliación (Colombia); Universidad del Rosario (Colombia); Venezuela National Statistics Institute

Further reading from The Immigrant Times: Venezuelan diaspora celebrates the fall of President Maduro || Venezuelan migrants boast economies || Remittances from immigrants in the US || Immigration in South America || Maria Corina Machado wins Nobel Peace Prize ||

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