US President Donald Trump insisted that the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has removed the “kingpin of a vast criminal network,” but it will not upend the Venezuelan government’s permissive stance toward organized crime.
Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, also snatched in the US raid, are facing trial in New York, but Vice President Delcy Rodríguez has stepped up, and many other top leaders remain. This means the Chavista regime retains its power and will likely use its ties to organized crime to cling to it.
However, continued threats from the United States mean Venezuela is likely to see an evolution of the system of hybrid criminal governance instituted by Maduro to retain his hold on power amid economic collapse.
New Leader, Same System
More pragmatic and capable than Maduro, Rodríguez is a formidable operator with ironclad socialist credentials. Her father was a Marxist guerrilla who died in the custody of state forces in the 1970s. During Hugo Chávez’s presidency, her brother Jorge took on senior positions, and she soon followed in his footsteps. But it was under Maduro that she took a seat at the regime’s top table.
After a career in Venezuelan foreign policy and several years as foreign minister, Rodríguez rose to the vice presidency in 2018 and went on to hold multiple important economic posts. During her tenure, she has helped Maduro weather some of the most serious challenges of recent years, from the economic crisis to international sanctions. Together with her brother Jorge, who became Maduro’s chief political adviser, they represent the civilian face of the regime.
The military, a key pillar of the regime’s stability, remains in the hands of Defense Minister General Vladimir Padrino López, who has held the post since 2014. Another of the most powerful regime figures, Diosdado Cabello, who as a lieutenant participated in Chávez’s failed coup, is still untouched and remains Interior Minister.
The opposition has been sidelined. It is headed by Nobel Prize winner Maria Corina Machado, who, despite being banned from the 2024 presidential elections, still garnered huge support. Her fellow party member, Edmundo Gonzalez, who ran in her place, secured around 60% of the vote, according to voting machine tallies the opposition were able to gather.
Trump described Machado as “a very nice woman” but insisted she does not have the “respect within the country” to lead — in other words, she lacks influence over the military and Chavista machinery through which she would have to govern. The United States seems well aware that, at the moment, the only way to avoid chaos and potential civil conflict is to keep a Chavista leader in place. Trump appears to have little appetite for state building, and it is unlikely that his political base would accept a significant and long-term deployment of US troops and the resources needed to provide security for any non-Chavista government.
In a press conference on January 3, Trump announced that Washington will temporarily “run” Venezuela, and that Rodríguez had already agreed to carry out orders. “She said, ‘We’ll do whatever you need,’” Trump insisted. “I think she was quite gracious. But she really doesn’t have a choice.” This, however, is likely wishful thinking, since Rodríguez has denounced Maduro’s detention as a kidnapping and demanded his return.
New Criminal Charges
After the capture of Maduro and his wife, US Attorney General Pam Bondi announced a new indictment containing additional criminal charges against them. It is notably different from the 2020 indictment, where Maduro was listed, along with Diosdado Cabello, as the head of the Cartel of the Suns.
In this indictment, Maduro’s wife is mentioned for the first time in connection with drug trafficking, along with his son, Nicolás Ernesto Maduro. Diosdado Cabello is mentioned again, and for the first time, Nicolás Maduro is linked directly to the head of Tren de Aragua, Héctor Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, alias “Niño Guerrero.”
Tren de Aragua was founded as a prison-based gang in Venezuela and went transnational off the back of the millions of Venezuelan migrants, not the drug trade. To date there is little evidence of the gang being involved in major drug trafficking.
SEE ALSO: Tren de Aragua: Fact vs Fiction
The new indictment notably leaves out Padrino, who has run the military for the last 11 years and presided over its deepening involvement in the drug trade. He already faced a separate indictment and has a $15 million reward offered for his capture by the US State Department.
Potential Fallout
All of the cocaine trade and much of the criminal dynamics in Venezuela are linked to Colombia.
And the US action against Maduro sent shock waves through Colombia. Trump has been in a social media war with Colombian President Gustavo Petro since he took office. He threatened to cut off aid to Colombia, Washington’s most loyal and long-serving ally in the region in the war on drugs, and sanctioned Petro, yanking his US visa.
During the press conference on the Maduro operation, Trump reiterated his warning to Petro’s government, describing him as “a sick man who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States … And he’s not going to be doing it very long. Let me tell you.”
Yet there is unlikely to be any move against Petro beyond the current war of words. This is an election year in Colombia, and Petro will be gone by August. What we may see is Trump seeking to influence elections towards the right, as he did in Honduras.
On the criminal front, there have been suggestions that Colombia’s biggest rebel group, the National Liberation Army (Ejército de Liberación Nacional – ELN), which has a significant presence in Venezuela, has been moving troops from Venezuela into Colombia, apparently worried about US missile strikes.
The ELN is today a Colombian-Venezuelan group, with its forces divided between the two nations. While in Colombia it is an insurgent force, in Venezuela it has acted as a pro-regime paramilitary force and offered direct support to Maduro. This support will likely remain as long as a Chavista governs the country. And while the Venezuelan military has so far been unable to offer much resistance to US armed forces, the ELN has resisted everything the US-backed Colombian government has been able to throw at it over the last six decades.
SEE ALSO: Peace Never Had a Chance: Colombia’s ELN in Venezuela
We predict that there will be few significant changes to criminal dynamics in the aftermath of the Maduro snatch. Colombia continues to produce record amounts of cocaine, the Venezuelan military and senior Chavista figures continue to regulate drug smuggling through Venezuela, and the agreement between Chavista figures and criminal groups like the ELN remains in place.
Rodríguez now has to play a careful game balancing US demands and the expectations of the radical Chavistas, who will not want to see any bowing and scraping to Washington. She will likely pressure corrupt Chavista elements to hide any criminal activity. And as long as the US flotilla remains in the Caribbean, one of the main drug trafficking routes from Venezuela will remain restricted. But the drug trade is the most agile in the world. It already started making shifts before the Maduro snatch. And so far, despite boasts by President Trump to the contrary, there is little evidence that the flow of cocaine to the United States has been interrupted, let alone stopped.