Trump's Maduro Capture Campaign: Less Change Than Expected in Venezuela

When Ángel Linares heard a strange explosion in the early hours of January 3, he thought it was New Year's fireworks. But shattered windows, shaking walls, and a torn-open apartment front threw him into a pile of debris. His mother, 85-year-old Jesucita, thought the northern coast of Venezuela had been devastated by an earthquake.

Next door, Elizabeth Herrera jumped out of bed in her pajamas and realized something more serious when the silence after the blast was broken by gunfire. "A coup? I can't believe 'Papá Trump' would dare to invade," her husband speculated as residents panicked. They were all wrong: Donald Trump had ordered an incursion into Venezuela, a lightning raid to kidnap President Nicolás Maduro.

Their neighborhood became the focal point as air-to-ground missiles rained down on defense systems and radar along the Caribbean coast, while Delta Force troops landed by helicopter and advanced on the capital. "Ten minutes felt like an endless hour," Herrera said, losing two elderly neighbors in the attack targeting a military base on a nearby hill.

More than four months after Operation Absolute Resolve, Herrera and her neighbors are not the only ones trying to understand Trump's intervention and its impact on the future of a country already exhausted by poverty, hunger, and repression. Across Venezuela, citizens, opposition activists, diplomats, businesspeople, and members of the Maduro movement are struggling to decipher the new era after the dictator's capture and Trump's surprising decision to recognize Vice President Delcy Rodríguez.

"Everything is so confusing... Sometimes it feels like an illusion," said Jesús Armas, a former political prisoner and ally of exiled opposition leader María Corina Machado, who had hoped to take power but was sidelined.

Changes have certainly occurred since the two-and-a-half-hour raid that killed dozens of Cuban and Venezuelan soldiers and at least three civilians. After years of authoritarian rule, deepened after Maduro was accused of rigging the 2024 election, a nascent political thaw has emerged. Graffiti of Maduro has been painted over, his portraits removed from government offices, and foreign journalists allowed into the country for the first time since the 2024 vote. Hundreds of political prisoners have been released, and dissidents have emerged from hiding or returned from exile.

Recently, hundreds gathered outside Venezuela's most notorious political prison—the shopping center turned torture hub El Helicoide—to protest for new elections and the release of about 500 remaining detainees. "People have lost their fear," said human rights activist Jeisi Blanco, as colleagues chalked the names of those still imprisoned on the sidewalk under police watch.

US officials hailed the "new political moment" sparked by Trump's bold raid, even if illegal to many. "The president likes action, he likes deals, and he likes progress, and we're seeing all of that in a very short time," said Jarrod Agen, director of Trump's National Energy Dominance Council, after arriving in Caracas on the first US commercial flight to the oil-rich nation in over seven years.

But alongside the excitement is confusion and anxiety that Maduro's capture did not lead to full regime change or democratization, but a strange rapprochement between the former dictator's fallen allies and Washington's long-time foe. Trump has repeatedly praised Rodríguez as a "wonderful" partner, while Venezuela's new leader has shown no signs of holding new elections. "I don't know, sometime," she evaded when asked.

Diplomats in Caracas expressed astonishment at the political about-face of Maduro's successors, who once professed anti-imperialism but rolled out a red carpet for Trump officials and allowed Venezuela to become what is called a "US protectorate" with little explanation. "It's theater of the absurd, like Beckett," one foreign diplomat said, comparing it to Emperor Hirohito's call for citizens to "endure the unendurable" after World War II.

Analysts say this improbable marriage stems from Trump's desire to access Venezuela's vast oil reserves and score a foreign policy "win" amid the Iran disaster, alongside Rodríguez's determination to hold power and save the Chavismo movement. "The goal is not to be a US lackey but to sustain the Bolivarian revolution," said Tom Shannon, a US diplomat who worked on Venezuela from the 1990s. "She finds herself in a politically complex but historically significant position."

For those opposing the movement, which they blame for the economic and humanitarian catastrophe that drove about a quarter of the population abroad, the detente and incomplete transition leave a bitter aftertaste. Sitting outside her home next to a memorial for victims of the government's attack, Herrera recalled her initial excitement. "I thought it was over... thank God we'd be free from this choking situation," she said. But joy turned to disappointment. "On the news, they talk about how much oil and gold they take... while we're still stuck... I feel hope but also fear."

Jesucita Linares, sitting on a sofa next to a portrait of Simón Bolívar with shrapnel lodged in it, said her main fear is a repeat attack. She has turned a shopping cart into an emergency bag with clothes and medicine. "I've prayed to God that this never happens again," Linares said. "But you never really know."