Venezuela: Is Delcy Rodriguez really in control?

www.americanthinker.com

It's good news to hear that President Trump will be meeting with Nobel laureate Maria Corina Machado this week, the clear winner along with Edmundo Gonzalez, of Venezuela's last stolen election in 2024.

It may signal a welome change of course.

Shortly after the raid to extract Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro for drug dealing, Trump dismissed Machado as weak and not having the 'respect' of the people, which, directed against someone who was able to prove she won 70% of the vote, was hard to hear. He said the Chavista vice president, Delcy Rodriguez would be more effective running the country, and by some analyses, including mine, there seemed to be a kernel of truth in the idea. Delcy, after all, would be more likely to be able to issue orders to the Chavista military, and control the odious interior minister, who controlled the motorcyle goons, Diosdado Cabello, She was tough, she ran the torture chambers and secret police, and would probably be appropriately ruthless as would likely be necessary.

No one could picture Maria Corina sending out the motorcycle goons or ordering the army to quit dealing drugs.

But the passage of a week seems to require a little revising.

Delcy doesn't seem as tough as advertised, actually. She was subject to a first-strike coup of drones at the palace, which she was able to get rid of.

But she hasn't accomplished much on freeing political prisoners. It would seem logical that if she ordered them released, the other Chavistas would jump to the job.

But actually, only a few have been let out, somewhere between nine and 14, and under bad conditions, requiring them to be silent. There are 900 to go. The release has been very muted despite President Trump making his issued orders very clear -- empty the political prisons and get rid of the Helicoides torture center in Caracas.

The Washington Post has one explanation as to why this seems to be happening:

Inside the prison, [former political prisoner Víctor] Navarro said, political prisoners often ask each other a chilling question: Who is your jailer? — the powerful figure believed to have ordered their detention. It is widely believed among political prisoners that different factions within the government maintain their own lists.

“Everyone has their prisoner. Nicolás Maduro has some. Cilia Flores has some. Delcy Rodríguez has hers,” Navarro said. “And that weighs heavily, because these are political decisions that lead to people being detained based on the interests of each of the repressive actors.”
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The U.N. Fact-Finding Mission on Venezuela concluded that orders for torture and abuse frequently came from the highest levels of government — naming Maduro and his inner circle as the “main architects” of a system designed to silence, discourage and quash dissent.

So a lot of these powerful thugs are thumbing their noses at Trump's demand to Delcy that she free the political prisoners. They aren't doing it. That puts the heat on Delcy because Trump demands results.

One big problem is that Cabello remains in hiding; no one, including Delcy, seems to know where he is. But he is commanding his goons to thug around Caracas and terrorize the Venezuelans. That suggests a loss of control, too.

There are rumors that the other problematic Chavista, generalissimo Vladimir Padrino, has been poisoned, which rather gives another indicator of the toxic atmosphere Delcy is operating from, Chavista savages trying to kill each other.

Again, no control. A third bad indicator is that she's hired economists from the buffoon-leftist government of Rafael Correa's Ecuador (think about that: Ecuador) to fix Venezuela's economy. Good luck with that one.

So to say she'd be better than Maria Corina is probably worth a second look. Machado does indeed have the support of the people and a reputation for honest dealings and good free market economics. That may be useful sooner than supposed.

Machado, according to my Venezuelan sources, was blackballed by Venezuelan businessmen upset about her support for Trump's sanctions on Venezuelan business. Some of them reportedly caught special envoy Richard Grenell's ear, and he may have been the one who soured Trump on her. If so, it was a bad call.

Now that they're seeing what Delcy's governage is like, they may be retreading their position. If they do, that's a good sign that Venezuela might really recover from its long socialist nightmare.

Image: Screenshot from X video