Venezuelans have endured more than two decades of an authoritarian socialist regime that has destroyed the nation’s institutions and impoverished its people. Now Chavismo is entering what I believe is its final stage. On 3 January 2026, the United States carried out Operation Absolute Resolve, capturing Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. Their removal forced the surviving leadership into a new relationship with Donald Trump’s administration.
Yet removing Maduro did not dismantle Chavismo. The system he inherited and strengthened remains embedded in the state. The earthquakes that struck northern Venezuela on 24 June and María Corina Machado’s return on 25 October have exposed the central question facing the country: can a regime built on control oversee a transition that requires it to surrender that control?
Chavismo Without Chavistas
The events of 3 January shattered the image of an untouchable leadership and undermined the narrative Chavismo had instilled within its ranks: control, revolution, anti-imperialism and permanent resistance to the United States. A movement that defined itself through defiance now depends on accommodating Washington.
Chavismo survived not only through repression and patronage, but by instilling fear among members of the state and the movement itself. Dissent threatened careers, livelihoods and personal safety. The leadership’s submission to demands from the country it had portrayed as its greatest enemy has weakened the ideological discipline sustaining that structure. Coercion, however, remains.
The earthquakes exposed another part of the same system. In July, survivors, rescue workers and aid organisations described a slow and ineffectual government response, with delays in supplies and shortages of heavy machinery. Delcy Rodríguez rejected allegations that her government had reacted too slowly.
Three months after the disaster, Amnesty International reported accounts from affected residents describing delayed, poorly coordinated assistance and security deployments focused on surveillance and territorial control rather than rescue. Such testimony raises the question of what the state considers its first responsibility: protecting Venezuelans or maintaining control over them.
In my view, the population’s response points towards an important change. Venezuelans are no longer merely confronting Chavismo as they did in previous years. They are increasingly rejecting its claim to authority. A regime can suppress a demonstration more easily than it can restore legitimacy.
Delcy Rodríguez’s Dead End
The dictatorship’s inner circle, represented by Delcy Rodríguez, her brother Jorge and Diosdado Cabello, is trapped in the system it helped construct. Power extends beyond Miraflores Palace through political loyalties, security institutions and economic interests. Changing the person at the top does not automatically change those relationships.
This is the danger of a decentralised dictatorship. Even if Chavismo loses formal political authority, figures within its structures may retain control over territory, institutions and economic resources. A transition that leaves those arrangements intact risks preserving the substance of the old order.
Washington nevertheless needs people capable of implementing agreements. The US-backed negotiations begun in August brought together representatives led by Jorge Rodríguez and an opposition delegation headed by Dinorah Figuera, representing the National Assembly elected in 2015. Machado was absent from the opening talks.
Negotiation may be necessary, but participation does not confer democratic legitimacy. Any settlement must secure acceptance beyond those sitting at the table, including Machado, Edmundo González Urrutia and Venezuelans whose demands for political change cannot be reduced to an agreement between rival leadership groups.
Reform Against the Regime’s Interests
The reforms Chavismo is undertaking are inseparable from US pressure. They also create a fundamental contradiction: rebuilding the economy could weaken the dependency on the state that has helped sustain the regime.
The January amendments to the Organic Hydrocarbons Law expanded opportunities for private participation, including arrangements allowing private contractors to assume technical, operational and financial management. The framework retains significant state powers while changing how investment and production can be organised.
The oil agreement announced by the White House on 31 August illustrates the scale of the new relationship. Washington said the arrangement involved concessions for 17 oil fields, a 35 per cent equity stake for the Department of War’s Office of Strategic Capital in NABEP’s corporate parent, and extensive purchasing and governance rights.
Alejandro Betancourt, NABEP’s chief executive, is therefore more than an intermediary. His company occupies a central place in an agreement intended to expand production and bind Venezuela’s recovery to American strategic interests.
Yet an oil agreement cannot give investors everything they need. Predictable rules, functioning infrastructure and confidence that contracts will be honoured matter as much as access to oil fields. Venezuelans also need opportunities to work and build businesses without depending on political loyalty.
The destruction of the national economy has not merely been a failure of governance. I believe it has also served as an instrument of social control. Genuine recovery would give Venezuelans greater independence from the state, threatening relationships on which Chavismo has relied.
Washington’s stabilisation plan therefore depends on leaders being willing and able to relinquish powers that have sustained them. Their promises must be measured against the changes they actually implement.
The Apparatus Remains
The same problem applies to political reform. Prisoner releases are significant, but they do not establish that the machinery of repression has been dismantled.
In September, the UN fact-finding mission on Venezuela reported a decline in long-term politically motivated detentionswhile warning that hundreds remained arbitrarily detained. It also described short-term arbitrary detention and intimidation, stressing that the repressive apparatus remained in place.
A government can release prisoners while retaining the capacity to create new ones. It can negotiate institutional changes while preserving the networks that frustrate their implementation. Any credible transition must address those powers, rather than treating individual concessions as evidence that the system has changed.
Even a weakened Chavismo can obstruct the construction of a democratic state. Maduro’s removal does not guarantee that what follows will be a liberal democracy.
A Transition Without Democracy?
Machado’s return changes the political calculation. Reuters reported that tens of thousands of supporters greeted her journey towards Caracas on 25 October. Her presence restores a major opposition figure to domestic political life and creates another source of pressure on both the Chavista leadership and Washington.
The negotiations have produced concrete agreements, including steps concerning political disqualifications and the selection of a new Supreme Court. Their value will depend on implementation and whether they allow Venezuelans to exercise political rights freely.
Figuera has expressed hope for elections in late 2027 or early 2028, subject to conditions that make them credible. That remains an expectation rather than a settled electoral timetable. Venezuelans are entitled to ask what must happen before then, who will verify progress and how further delay will be prevented.
I believe Machado will use her leadership and capacity for mobilisation to challenge attempts at stabilisation without democracy. That pressure is essential. Economic recovery must not become an excuse for postponing political freedom, nor should cooperation with Washington be mistaken for consent from the Venezuelan people.
Chavismo’s leaders are being asked to dismantle arrangements that protect their influence and security. Their willingness to promise reform should therefore be judged against what they actually relinquish. The end of Chavismo will come when Venezuelans can replace their rulers freely and the institutions of the state no longer serve the movement that captured them.
