For nearly three decades, Venezuela’s socialist government has rallied behind a simple battle cry that symbolized Hugo Chávez’s nationalist movement: “United, we will win!”
This rallying call has echoed through government gatherings, street protests, and state media broadcasts, with supporters of all ages raising their fists to demonstrate allegiance to the anti-American socialist administration. The diverse alliance of military officials, ideological believers, and political opportunists has traditionally presented a unified front, even when facing overwhelming challenges.
However, that solidarity is showing signs of strain following the dramatic U.S. military action that resulted in the capture of former President Nicolás Maduro this past January. Devoted supporters are now openly challenging acting President Delcy Rodríguez’s administration and publicly speculating that internal betrayal enabled the American operation against Maduro.
Rodríguez has abandoned several of Chávez’s signature policies, accommodated American requests, and restructured the government according to her preferences, dismissing cabinet members, advancing National Assembly legislation to transform the country’s petroleum sector, and freeing imprisoned opposition figures.
Chavismo adherents are expressing their dissatisfaction openly. Numerous supporters condemn the improved relations between Rodríguez’s administration and Washington, which the movement has traditionally viewed as its primary enemy regardless of which political party controls the White House.
The May deportation of a former cabinet official to face U.S. criminal charges and Rodríguez’s recent permission for American forces to conduct military training in Venezuela’s capital have exposed deep internal rifts.
Mario Silva, who spent years promoting government messaging as host of a state television program before being taken off air after Maduro’s detention, challenged the constitutional validity of deporting Alex Saab, a close Maduro associate, claiming it violated constitutional prohibitions.
Silva argued that Rodríguez lacks true governing independence, suggesting certain choices “are being made in the U.S. Embassy.”
“The imperialists don’t negotiate. They conquer, test and probe — until our country shatters,” Silva said in a livestream. “Nobody is safe right now. And that is a concrete, terribly dangerous fact.”
On May 23, several dozen demonstrators in Caracas protested the military training that brought two Marine Corps Osprey aircraft to the U.S. Embassy grounds. Protesters displayed a Venezuelan flag bearing the words “No to the Yankee drill.” The small turnout was notable in a capital accustomed to mass demonstrations involving thousands of participants.
Elías Jaua, who served as Chávez’s vice president and in Maduro’s cabinet in his first years in office, repudiated the exercise on social media. He later told The Associated Press he was speaking up to raise awareness among Venezuelans of the “humiliating” situation facing the country.
“At this stage, the most important thing is to prevent this occupation and this colonial administration to which a nation like Venezuela is being subjected from becoming normalized,” Jaua said.
Chávez and Maduro — as well as Rodríguez, in her previous roles as vice president and communications and foreign affairs minister — had long prophesied that the U.S. would use force to take control of Venezuela’s oil industry, which has opened up to private capital after Maduro’s capture. The Trump administration oversees oil sales and administers revenues as part of its phased plan to turn the troubled South American country around.
The social, political and economic crisis that took hold when Maduro became president in 2013 drove more than 7.7 million people to leave Venezuela and pushed millions of others into poverty. It also led to rounds of anti-government protests and U.S. economic sanctions, both of which the ruling party survived.
Party stalwarts celebrated a Maduro victory in a 2024 election despite overwhelming evidence showing he had lost. They also echoed the party leadership’s denial of a surge of migration. Their loyalty was often rewarded, be it with food and basic goods for the poor or multimillion-dollar contracts and bodyguards for the better-off.
Andrés Izarra, a communications minister under Chávez and tourism minister under Maduro, said the fractures are not based in ideology or a defense of Chavismo, which he believes ended when its founder died in 2013. Maduro’s interest, he said, was in enriching himself and remaining in power at all costs.
Self-interest, he said, is creating division.
“Since there is no ideological foundation, it is simply a struggle for power, money, positions, and survival. Do you think (he) would be protesting if he’d kept his bodyguards, or if they’d kept his little salary, or his share of power?” Izarra, who lives in exile since becoming a government target last decade, said of one critic of change under Delcy. “If they had an ideological interest, they would have spoken much earlier.”
Criticism even aired on state television last month, when a Colombian leftist leader sitting in the audience of Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello’s show stood up and questioned Venezuela’s efforts to free Maduro and first lady Cilia Flores from U.S. custody.
“We’ve seen a very weak campaign for Cilia and Nicolás’s freedom,” Manuel Caicedo said before a visibly stunned Cabello.
Another devout Chavista, lawmaker Iris Varela, told a podcaster she believed a government insider had helped the U.S. oust Maduro. The idea has widely rumored since President Donald Trump announced that the authoritarian leader had been captured on Jan. 3, but no evidence has emerged.
“Of course there’s a betrayal,” Varela said. “I say that every Christ has a Judas. If our Lord Jesus Christ knew he was going to be betrayed and yet he let Judas kiss him on the cheek, … won’t a traitor emerge for Maduro?”
