30 Days in Venezuela

On January 23rd, I ignored a factually incorrect State Department warning about chavista motorcycle gangs “kidnapping Americans” and flew into the airport in La Guaira, Venezuela, for a 30-day reporting assignment for TeleSur. The first thing I saw stepping into the airport was a “wanted” sign for US-backed 2024 presidential candidate Edmundo Gonzalez, who fled the country that September after being charged with falsification of public documents, instigation to disobey the law, conspiracy and other crimes associated with the wave of violent mercenary attacks against police and public institutions the day after the elections on August 1.

I was a little worried. I remembered my trip to Serbia a few years earlier when friends from the Party of the Radical Left showed me the burnt out shell of the Radio-Television Serbia headquarters, which was bombed by US/NATO forces in 1999, killing 16 people, including actors, journalists and an employee in the makeup department. With Iran’s public TV station bombed by Israel in 2025, I was reminded that the US police-state has no moral qualms about the murder of journalists.

Luckily for the people of Venezuela, however, things had now returned nearly to normal after the January 3 attack.

My first assignment was in Carlos Soulblette, a working class neighborhood adjacent to a naval academy in La Guaira which had been hit with US missiles. We watched repairs underway in one of the hundreds of thousands of ownership-based social housing buildings constructed by the Maduro administration, which had been directly hit, killing Rosa Elena Gonzales de Yanez, an 82 year old grandmother. I interviewed a middle aged woman named Maria Elena Carreno, the next door neighbor of the woman who had been murdered by the US government.

“When we managed to get out to the living room,” she said, “we saw that the door was gone. The wooden door had been completely blown away by the force, by the sound. I told my husband ‘Let’s calmly open the gate,’ because we didn’t know what could be waiting for us, since everything was full of dust. Thank God that we stepped out cautiously because we realized the wall was no longer there. If we had run out of the living room we would have plunged into the void.”

Two days later, I covered the first of 6 “free Maduro” protests I would report on during my month in Venezuela. Thousands of local residents had gathered in a favela in Antimano parish to march down to a main avenue and close it off, demanding the return of their President and First Lady.

A local resident named Ronny Camelo, told me, “Since the empire burst into the dreams of the Venezuelan people on January 3rd, crossing our border and violating all international laws, we demand that the will of the people is honored. We demand the return of our First Lady and our president Nicolas Maduro Moro, who was elected by the power of the people and the social movements. We pledge all of our support to comrade Delcy Rodríguez to bring back our president Nicolás Maduro Moro. Viva Independence and Viva our socialist homeland!”

Another positive thing I noticed in Caracas was the near absence of homeless people. During my month of traveling to the four corners of the city during news reporting and on my days off, I counted a total of 5 homeless people in a city of 3 million. As in any city, there were signs of poverty, but in terms of homelessness I can’t remember visiting any city in my home country of Brazil, the US or the UK in the last decade that had so few homeless people. This is undoubtably due in part to the Bolivarian government’s social housing program, which has seen construction of over 5 million social housing units in the last 15 years, in a country with a total population of 28 million.

Unlike the average month in Recife, where I live, there were no electrical blackouts while I was there. I commuted to Telesur by subway and bus. Although the subway operating speed was as slow as it is in US cities like Chicago and New York, they came every few minutes, even on Sundays, and at 17 cents US, the ticket price was a bargain compared to the $1 USD I am used to paying in Sao Paulo. The buses are old and raggedy looking, but they are run by cooperatives instead of outsourced private companies like in Brazil, and are dependable, especially with that 17 cent fare price.

I found grocery prices to be significantly higher than in Brazil, but the residents of poor and working class neighborhoods buy much of their weekly groceries at the government neighborhood markets which sell basic food stables at heavily subsidized prices for residents. Although I didn’t need this service, I understand that there is still a big problem with medical treatment in Venezuela, as after the Trump administrations criminal blockades kicked in and the national income plummeted by 90% between 2017 and 2020, there was an exodus of doctors out of the country, leaving many of the public health posts in working class neighborhoods woefully understaffed. In January, acting President Rodriguez announced plans to implement a new, universal public health system. Hopefully the increased oil revenue caused by relaxing the blockades can help transform this into a reality.

Caracas is still crippled by lack of parts for its water system caused by the US blockade and we went for 24 hours without water in our apartment one day, forcing us to take bucket showers with water from our reserve tanks. An end to the blockades would quickly solve this problem. When Hugo Chavez took office in 1999, Venezuela imported 80% of its food. Over the last 26 years, the nation has developed food sovereignty, with a record 94% produced nationally in 2025. The minimum wage, including the mandatory minimum bonus system established by the Maduro administration, hovers at around $160/month, compared to around $300 in neighboring Brazil. This is a weak point in the system that I heard many people grumbling about, which hopefully will improve as the economy continues to grow. With 19 consecutive quarters of positive GDP growth, the time seems right for revamping the minimum wage policy. When Lula first took office in 2003, Brazil’s minimum wage was under USD$50, and his 8 consecutive above inflation minimum wage increases are now cited as the most important factor in poverty reduction. This serves as a good example for the Rodriguez administration.

On February 2, while sitting in the journalist’s apartment kitchen during our nightly round of food and political conversation, I asked what the point of the free Maduro protests was. Did anyone really think that street protests were going to influence a US decision to drop its fabricated charges against Nicolas Maduro and First Lady Cilia Gomes, whose only “crime” appeared to be standing next to President Maduro when the kidnapping goons arrived?

My roommate, and fellow TeleSur correspondent Osvaldo Zayas said, “A CIA team has just arrived in Caracas and they are certainly going to try to start Gen Z revolution-style protests. The point of tomorrow’s protest is to show a sign of force by the organized left to send a signal to them that things won’t be as easy as they think. If it flops, they will move forward quickly.”

On February 3, tens of thousands of people marched through downtown Caracas for the largest free Maduro protest yet. Although no official crowd size estimate was generated, at it’s height, I observed a dense, moving crowd fully occupying 4 city blocks of a four lane road. One of the marchers, Miladros Rinconez, told me, “We are demanding the release of Cilia and Nicolás. Exactly one month ago, the US. government, represented by the pedophile Trump, invaded Venezuelan soil, killing over 100 compatriots. We are mobilized, and we will not leave the streets until they return our presidential couple to us. And we reaffirm our support for Acting President Delcy Rodríguez Gómez.”

The next day, we headed two hours down from the mountains to the city of Maracay, in Aragua state,for a rally commemorating the 34th anniversary of the Bolivarian Revolutionary Movement 200 rebellion, led by Hugo Chavez against IMF-imposed austerity cuts. Maracay was the city where the rebellion kicked off, and although it was eventually crushed, Lieutenant Colonel Chavez emerged from prison 5 years later and was elected President in 1999.

We expected this to be a show of force by “the machine”, the nickname given to the working class left political network of communes, government workers, cooperatives, citizens militias, union workers and local party officials that forms the base of the ruling PSUV party, and turnout proved to be larger than expected. The crowd that was easily twice, possibly even three or four times the size of the February 3 march in Caracas, in a city with less than 1/3 of its population.

After racing back and forth through a moving crowd for two hours, my cameraman and I arrived at the end point of the march, only to discover that we had only been filming a small portion of it in front of the first sound car. Tens of thousands of people of all ages continued to stream in for another hour. This march was larger than the largest campaign rally I covered during the 2022 elections in Brazil, the massive Lula rally on final day before the election on Paulista and Augusta avenues in Sao Paulo. We doubled back and found my co-worker Osvaldo interviewing Diosdado Cabello, who participated in the 1992 rebellion as an army Captain and is currently Venezuela’s Minister of Interior, Justice and Peace.

“Today is very important,” he said, “you can see the people here on the streets. The people remember Chávez, he is the guide. It was his leadership and it’s his legacy, but moreover, it is his revolution. This is Chávez’s revolution. And we will always come out every February 4th to remember our commander and remind the world why these people rose up.”

One thing that stands out in the marches I have covered in Venezuela compared to those in Brazil is that the crowds exercise more discipline. Marches in Brazil are typically accompanied by dozens of beer cart vendors and drum groups and can have a carnaval-like atmosphere. I didn’t see that kind of alcohol consumption in Venezuelan marches. Obviously one factor is that public drinking is illegal in some places, but even the bars along the routes didn’t seem very crowded. In Maracay, in addition to the kinds of social movements and organizations associated with the “machine”, entire families were out on the street. There were thousands of students and signs and banners calling for freedom for Nicolas Maduro and Cilia Flores were everywhere.

On February 12th, 1814, when Spanish forces attacked the city of Caracas thousands of students joined the battle. After a day of fighting the Royalists fled to the mountains. It was a key victory in the war of Independence, and in memory of the students who fought, the day is now a holiday known as National Youth Day. On February 12, 2026, high school and university students were gathering on Plaza Venezuela to march 6 kilometers through downtown Caracas.

Since some analysts weave a narrative that Latin American working class, organized left movements are aging and the only people who still support the socialist cause are over the age of 50, this would be a good test. I was pleasantly surprised to see tens of thousands of youth on the streets, demanding freedom for Nicolas Maduro and Cilia Flores.

Natasha Coronado, a teenager from the Miranda chapter of the Venezuelan High School Students Federation, told me, “Today, our greatest battle is not with a rifle—it is in books, it is in the historical consciousness of our youth, and in defending our peace. That is why today we students march with joy, but at the same time we march to demand the prompt return of our constitutional president, our builder of victories, Nicolás Maduro, and our first combatant, Cilia Flores. Today, the youth supports them, and we also march with the same spirit as José Félix Ribas and Robert Serra. Let the students go forth, let the student organizations go forth, and let the Venezuelan High School Student Federation go forth!”

The international media had been disseminating state department-friendly disinformation all month. Caution in issuing visas to journalists from international media organizations that support the blockade, run continual fluff pieces about right wing multi-millionaire Maria Corina Machado and label Nicolas Maduro immediately after the bombing was spun as “authoritarian repression of journalists.” A story that Venezuela had sent an oil tanker to Israel was immediately debunked by the government, but few media outlets ran corrections. On February 12, the international media both sidesed the student march, insinuating that an opposition protest, the second I had seen since arriving in Caracas, was equal in size, despite photo and video evidence showing there were only a few hundred people there.

My observations of these and other “free Maduro” protests that I witnessed during my month in Venezuela have led me to conclude that the base level support for the Bolivarian transformation to socialism remains strong. The Trump administration’s decision to not challenge the PSUV’s hold on political power in the country, instead merely claiming victory and moving on to their next media circus act, has been at least partially due to the fact that, as in Iran, regime change seems beyond its reach due to the strength of base level support for the government. Whereas large street demonstrations clearly aren’t reflective of the opinions of the entire population, in the case of Venezuela they seem to have been large enough in February, to complicate or at least delay any attempts to trigger a social media fueled “Gen Z rebellion” like the one that recently flopped in Mexico.

This could change depending on how the relationship between Acting President Delcy Rodriguez and the US government develops. For the last month, I have been disappointed to see some analysts on the left repeat the narrative spread by expanded state actors like the New York Times and BBC that acting President Rodriguez has been totally co-opted by the US government, with some pretending it is their own original analysis. This simplistic, social media-friendly narrative avoids a lot of nuance, including the push-back from the Bolivarian government within its adaptation to what appear to be US demands.

I covered the preliminary ratification, two popular consultations and the final ratification of Venezuela’s partial hydrocarbon reform law. Although there are questionable elements to it, it looks like continuity with Nicolas Maduro’s anti-blockade law of 2020, which partially liberalized sectors of the economy, that Steve Ellner framed in Leninist terms as “defensive economic measures”, and an expansion of the government’s long relationship with Chevron. The new reforms maintain state petroleum company PDVSA under 100% public ownership, enabling public private partnerships in the form of 30 year leases on oil fields which can be canceled at any time for breach of contract. This resembles the lease contracts that were ratified in limited form for Brazil’s Pre-Salt reserves during the Dilma Rousseff administration and expanded after the 2016 coup. In a similar manner to Rousseff’s move, acting President Delcy Rodriguez has announced the creation of funds guaranteeing that the royalties will be exclusively used to fund infrastructure, health and education projects. One key difference is that, whereas the Brazilian contracts route 15% of the royalties to the government, the Venezuelan law calls for 30%, including 15% in taxes and 15% in royalties, with exceptions enabled that could bring the total amount down to 25%. After illegitimate coup President Michel Temer took power in Brazil, exceptions were opened up that lowered royalties to 5.9% in a deal struck between the government and BP during the last year of Jair Bolsonaro’s mandate. The biggest red flag in the new petroleum reforms is that the US government is calling for the royalties to be held in a fund in Qatar, under supervision of the US government, which raises the worry that the US will merely steal them as it stole Venezuela’s CITGO gas station chain in the US. Time will tell, however, how this plays out. The US is demanding that these partnerships only apply to US companies, but during her refreshingly short speech to thousands of petroleum workers on the night that the law passed its first parliamentary hurdle, acting President Rodriguez announced that they plan to work with companies from Asia and Europe as well, and said they were closing a natural gas deal with a company from Indonesia. During her speech, Rodriguez also announced that she had been working on the hydrocarbon law reforms for months with President Maduro before his kidnapping, and presented it as an extension of the 2020 anti-blockade law.

The same kind of push-back is clearly visible in the Amnesty law, which is enabling the release of thousands of political prisoners from parole and incarceration, but clearly lists a series of exceptions in article 8, which exempt a series of crimes including murder, human rights violations, and public support for the murderous blockade and US invasion of Venezuela. According to the new law, neither Edmundo Gonzalez nor Maria Corina Machado, the most ridiculous example of a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate since Henry Kissinger, would qualify for amnesty. Acting President Rodriguez made this clear in her February 12 interview with NBC when, asked about Maria Corina Machado, she said, “with regards to her coming back to the country, she will have to answer to Venezuela. Why she called upon a military intervention, why she called upon sanctions to Venezuela, and why she celebrated the actions that took place at the beginning of January.”

During the interview she also made it clear that she does not consider herself to be President of Venezuela. “I can tell you President Nicolás Maduro is the legitimate president,” she said. “I will tell you this as a lawyer, that I am. Both President Maduro and Cilia Flores, the first lady, are both innocent.”

The morning of the kidnapping, a State Department-friendly narrative immediately viralized that someone at the top level of the Venezuelan government had betrayed Nicolas Maduro. “Why was it so easy? It went, “why didn’t anyone fight back.” On social media, it took wings, with Pepe Escobar making yet another of his typically fantastic claims that a (non existent) Russian battalion had rushed to the scene only to be driven back by a group of Venezuelan bodyguards. This theory was immediately debunked when it came out that 32 Cubans and dozens of Venezuelans had been killed during the kidnapping. Why didn’t the much hailed Russian anti-aerial defense system work? One possibility is that the US and France aren’t the only countries that pawn off outdated military equipment to their allies. But reports have surfaced that the US jammed the phone, radio and internet communications systems minutes before the attack. Trump has bragged about using a secret weapon in the attack and eye witness accounts suggest that artificial intelligence was used in the helicopter gunships as they illegally encroached onto Venezuela’s sovereign territory. TeleSur correspondent Osvaldo Zayas spent the second half of February interviewing friends and family members of victims of the US attack. He told me that one of the victims, a 19 year old Venezuelan soldier, was hit with a missile within seconds of firing his first shot at a US helicopter. “His friends told me it seemed like an automated response that immediately pinpointed the location of the gunfire. His body was carbonized with his arms still locked in the firing position.”

To date, no evidence has surfaced of any betrayal at top levels of the Venezuelan government, and the behavior of Venezuelan leadership indicates that they are united. These leaders include Congressman Nicolas Maduro Guerra, son of the kidnapped President, who regularly appeared in public alongside Delcy Rodriguez, congressional president Jorge Rodriguez, and Diosdado Cabello. The alliance between Maduro Guerra with the acting President and Bolivarian government can be interpreted as evidence against the “betrayal” narrative.

In closing, I would like to emphasize that I am not a Venezuela specialist. I am a just a journalist who has spent a few months in Venezuela over the past 5 years. This story is the result of my observations covering Venezuelan politics between January 23 and February 22, 2023. For more leftist analysis of what is happening in Venezuela I suggest not giving too much credence to people who have made careers for themselves as “ex-chavistas” and triangulating sources with different Venezuela-based news and analysis outlets including TeleSur, Mission Verdade, and Venezuela Analysis. Although the signs of push-back give me hope for the future of the Bolivarian government, it’s clear that the imperialist United States has deeply encroached on the sovereignty of the Venezuelan people. As Kawsachun News’ Camila Escalante tells me, “Venezuela is being robbed at gunpoint while trying to negotiate a hostage crisis.” As I left Venezuela on February 22, I noticed that the wanted signs for Edmundo Gonzalez were still on display in the Caracas airport.

This first appeared on Brian Mier’s Substack, De-Linking Brazil.