Venezuela quake tragedy threatens to set back democratic transition

CARACAS – Venezuela’s devastating earthquake threatens to set back momentum for a democratic transition, with the United States under President Donald Trump even more set on prioritising stability over elections.

Just a week before the powerful double-earthquake, which has killed more than 3,800 people, the US spearheaded a long-awaited step toward power-sharing, with an opposition figure meeting in Caracas with the National Assembly chief who is the brother of interim President Delcy Rodriguez.

That June 18 meeting now feels like long ago, and Trump has appeared peeved that the most visible opposition leader, Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Corina Machado, had hoped to return to Venezuela in the disaster’s aftermath.

The Caracas talks were meant to herald the second stage of what US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has called a three-part strategy – stabilisation followed by recovery and then transition. Venezuela, it appears, is now back on the stabilisation phase.

The US is “100 per cent focused on this response to the devastating earthquakes in Venezuela and in advancing the Trump administration’s three-phase plan for Venezuela, which remains intact,” said John Barrett, the top US diplomat in Caracas.

Trump ordered a deadly raid in Caracas on Jan 3 that snatched president Nicolas Maduro, a firebrand leftist and US nemesis. Rodriguez, who was Maduro’s vice-president, quickly took over with the support of Trump, who has threatened her with violence if she does not cooperate on his key priorities, starting with working with US oil companies.

“Trump is taking advantage of the situation so American companies can win contracts and gain access to resources” in the country with the world’s largest oil reserves, a former Venezuelan senior official said.

The US has sent in quake rescue teams boosting the humanitarian response as Venezuelans have jeered the efforts of Rodriguez’s government.

One US official blamed the poor Venezuelan response on Maduro, whose “regime pillaged the country for decades.” Rodriguez and other interim authorities, the US official told AFP, “have been fully cooperative” with the US.

David Smilde, an expert on Venezuela at Tulane University, said that Trump primarily cares about Venezuela’s oil and other natural resources and forcing it to take back migrants.

“Trump doesn’t really care about democracy,” Smilde said, while adding that others in the administration such as Rubio had more nuanced takes.

“There is a real danger that the Trump administration just works perpetually with Delcy Rodriguez or whoever can provide stability.”

Machado plots return

The US for years had imposed stringent sanctions on Venezuela and, along with many Latin American and European countries, championed the opposition, which many observers say won a fraudulent 2024 vote in which Maduro gained another term.

But after ousting Maduro, Trump marginalised opposition chief Machado, even though she physically handed him her Nobel Peace Prize.

Machado has insisted she will return.

“I am absolutely convinced that my presence would help advance the transition process. And even more since the June 24 tragedy, my presence would bring stability,” she told a group of international journalists including AFP.

“This tragedy is further evidence of what we all know, which is that Venezuela has become a failed state,” she said.

Juan Manuel Trak, a Venezuelan professor and analyst based in Mexico, said that for Washington, Machado’s return “puts at risk the stabilisation phase and raises the risk of political instability.”

“Machado could, in a way, serve as a catalyst for discontent,” Trak said.

Remaking region

Rodriguez has attacked Machado for seeking to return, saying, “I don’t understand how in this moment of sadness and national mourning... some dare plot social unrest. Here, we will not have a social unrest.”

Trump’s embrace of Rodriguez has stunned some members of his Republican Party, especially in southern Florida, Rubio’s political base and a bastion of opposition to Latin America’s leftists, notably in Cuba.

Florida Senator Rick Scott said that Rodriguez remained an illegitimate ruler and that the US should ensure that no aid is channelled through her.

“She sits at the top of a brutal criminal regime responsible for years of repression, corruption and suffering. A natural disaster does not change that,” the Republican lawmaker said in a statement to AFP.

But for the Trump administration, a country that had been a thorn in the side of Washington for three decades is suddenly cooperating.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that Delcy Rodriguez is attempting to use this tragedy in order to further the status quo,” said Geoff Ramsey, a senior analyst at intelligence firm Recorded Future.

He said the US is working so closely with Rodriguez because it “has an opportunity to bring Venezuela under its geopolitical influence in a way that seemed unthinkable just six months ago”. AFP