Eduardo Gamarra Americas Insights

Venezuela Under U.S. Tutelage:  A Transition Designed for Control, Not Democracy Eduardo A Gamarra   The January 3, 2026, removal of Nicolás Maduro by U.S. forces marked one of the most consequential and controversial U.S. interventions in Latin America in decades. Framed by the Trump administration as a decisive strike against a narco-terrorist regime, the operation has since evolved into something far more complex: a U.S.-managed political transition in which sovereignty is conditional, democracy is deferred, and stability is prioritized above all else. The result is not a clean break from authoritarianism but a precarious experiment in external tutelage whose long-term consequences for Venezuela—and for U.S. policy in the hemisphere—remain deeply troubling. From the outset, Washington made a deliberate choice that defines the current moment: rather than empowering Venezuela’s democratic opposition, the United States opted to work through the existing regime’s institutional ...

Washington’s Venezuela “Compromise” Is Not Solomon's. It Is a High-Risk Transaction. Eduardo A. Gamarra The Trump administration’s Venezuela endgame is described by some as a Solomonic resolution: a clever compromise between two competing imperatives in U.S. policy. On one side stood the maximum-pressure camp, closely associated with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, which insisted that Nicolás Maduro was not a legitimate head of state but a narco-terrorist presiding over a criminal enterprise. On the other stood a transactional, energy-first approach—often linked to Richard Grenell’s worldview—that sought to avoid an open-ended war while securing U.S. oil interests through leverage and deal-making. In the administration’s telling, both objectives have now been met. Maduro is in U.S. custody, treated not as a sovereign president but as a criminal defendant in a transnational organized crime case. Simultaneously, Washington has signaled a willingness to work with Delcy Rodríguez—Madur...