Many historical figures of Chavismo supported the interim government of Delcy Rodríguez after the extraction of Nicolás Maduro by the United States special forces. However, the months since January 3 have revealed a growing rift within the Chavista camp. From the original military Chavismo front, Francisco Arias Cárdenas, leader alongside Hugo Chávez of the February 4, 1992 coup, has raised his voice for the original Chavismo. “An agreement dictated by the United States and only with participants selected by the United States is worse than a capitulation,” he wrote on the social network X. The former governor of Zulia state and former ambassador to Mexico has called for direct dialogue between Delcy Rodríguez and María Corina Machado, a main opposition figure, instead of a negotiating cast entirely decided by Washington. Arias has said that Donald Trump should be “an ally and not a ‘predatory’ father for Bolívar’s homeland.” But Arias is far from the only discontented Chavista.
The voice of former Vice President Elías Jaua (Caucagua, 56 years old) has been strongly felt. In January, he condemned the “cowardly kidnapping” of Maduro and Cilia Flores by the United States, without uncritically joining the troika led by Delcy Rodríguez, her brother Jorge, and the strongman Diosdado Cabello. In fact, he has maintained some distance from the Chavista hierarchy in the last five years. In April, Jaua, who is sanctioned by the United States and the European Union, intensified his criticism using terms such as occupation, domination, colonialism, and coercive tutelage to denounce the political and economic subordination relationship that Donald Trump’s government has imposed on Venezuela. From the Center for Studies on Socialist Democracy (CEDES), he promotes a debate from the left to seek solutions to the current situation, based on building a plural democracy. However, the ghost of Chávez is not still.
Question: How do you define the moment Venezuela is living through and what is the main threat?
Answer: It is one of the most serious moments in national life. Why? Because since January 3 we lost our condition as an independent nation. The republican regime was overthrown by force — missiles, imposition over the administration of our resources, forced influence over our legislation, application of a political plan that does not correspond to a decision by Venezuelan men and women. The lack of national independence to decide its own destiny is the most serious threat to Venezuela at this moment.
Q: You have proposed a national agreement to recover that sovereignty. What would it have to recognize?
A: First, the capacity that we Venezuelans must have to democratically regulate a conflict incubated over decades. Second, to reach minimum consensus among all national factors that allow a project shared by the majority of political currents. And third, to recognize the harsh reality of coercive occupation, which will imply a long and complex negotiation process with the occupying power to recover our condition as a republic.
Q: What happened for Venezuela to lose the conditions of that democracy?
A: Due to the constant exclusion of one or several political actors. The representative democracy that emerged in 1958 excluded leftist factors from the Punto Fijo Pact. As bipartisanship developed, important sectors were left behind in their capacity to influence and feel part of the model. That led to the 1989 rupture with the Caracazo, then to military rebellions, and finally to Chávez’s victory in 1998. There began a process that aimed to be inclusive. A fundamental element of the 1996 Bolivarian Alternative Agenda was the inclusion of all factors. But since 2002, with the coup d’état, we have lived an aggression that made that exercise of total inclusion difficult. After Chávez’s death, there was a mistaken bet on consolidating a party-state model, which ended up overflowing democratic parameters. And there we collapsed: not only democracy but also the republic itself.
Q: When Chávez won re-election in 2006 with 63%, there was an expectation of a truce, but what happened was an accelerated deepening: from Bolivarianism to 21st Century Socialism. What could have been different?
A: After 1992, Chávez and much of our movement chose the democratic, peaceful, and electoral path against the thesis of military rebellion, and we tried to be consistent with that. But after the 2006 victory, we faced again, in 2007, violent aggression in the streets. From 2004 there was a negotiated agreement with the Carter Center that led to the recall referendum, and in 2010 the opposition returned to the National Assembly. On January 15, 2011, Chávez personally welcomed each opposition leader — María Corina Machado and Andrés Velásquez among them — and warned: if we continue without limits, we will lose the country. Look at Syria, look at Libya. Chávez called for a truce. There is an important self-criticism about the mistakes made by not having created a space for coexistence. Then came Chávez’s death, and by 2014 all constitutional parameters were exceeded, on both sides.
Q: You were in government. From inside Chavismo, what would you self-criticize?
A: I should have made a greater effort to achieve that space for coexistence that would have avoided the tragedy the country suffers today. I was part of all dialogue processes: from 2014 with UNASUR, then with the Vatican and in the Dominican Republic, the last one I participated in. Unfortunately, that effort was lost. One is left with the bitterness of having been able to build more political strength to achieve it on the part of Chavismo.
Q: My assessment is that the real break happened between 2007 and 2009, when indefinite re-election was approved.
A: For Hugo Chávez, alternation was always a real possibility, according to what was decided in 1995. On several occasions, he said that losing an election was a possibility to grow or to review. I say this with political honesty.
Q: When he lost the 2007 referendum, he said it was “a shitty victory.”
A: He accepted it. He did not deny it. In the meeting on the day of the referendum — I spoke on behalf of the National Directorate — the position was that if we lost by one vote, we would recognize it. Chávez’s response was immediate: “I don’t want a victory like that. We will recognize it.” That is the historical truth.
Q: You put control of oil revenue at the center of sovereignty. What rules would you propose?
A: Without economic autonomy, no country can undertake any development model. One thing is to recognize problems of administration, corruption, and lack of effective control — a structural problem of all 20th-century Venezuela — which must be part of the national agreement. But it is absolutely inconceivable, within international law, that one country arrogates the right to administer another’s resources, under no context or pretext.
Q: Do you mean that today Venezuela does not control its own resources?
A: At this moment, Venezuela’s national income is in a sub-account of the Treasury Department, and only the United States decides over it.
Q: Trump says the war has already been “paid for” several times with Venezuelan oil.
A: A lot of money has been made, which constitutes theft. “The winner takes the loot” is the crudest expression used by Trump: pillage. And pillage is a fact overcome among civilized nations, prohibited by United Nations resolutions. That one country wins a war against another does not give it the right to loot it.
Q: Delcy Rodríguez says she has a “cooperation” relationship with the Trump government. Is it cooperation or vassalage?
A: That answer belongs to them. But from outside, it looks like a decision to cooperate in a concrete situation: the possibility of a bombing and responding militarily to that bombing.
Q: Are the Rodríguez family betraying Chavismo’s values? They also talk about restoring democracy.
A: First, there must be a full restoration of the Constitution’s validity to restore the republican regime and guarantee democratic exercise for all political actors. All of them.
Q: Does “all” include María Corina Machado?
A: María Corina Machado expresses a part of society that thinks like her, just as each leadership expresses a current of opinion. Excluding any of those currents is creating conditions for a new period of instability.
Q: She represents a fairly large sector: 93% of the opposition primary, perhaps 70% of the 2024 election.
A: One thing is electoral support in a conjuncture, and another is expressing the thought of the whole society. We, with Chávez, won 63% of the electorate, and that does not mean we represented all the country’s thought. This is not a right-wing or particularly liberal society.
Q: Nor did that 63% necessarily want “21st Century Socialism.”
A: But Chávez’s electoral offer that year was socialism. When people voted for him, they were voting for that proposal.
Q: When you talk about “democratically regulating the conflict,” what has to happen to recognize a result as legitimate?
A: The political will to recognize popular sovereignty, which has been lacking since 2002: in 2004 with the recall referendum, in 2006 when part of the opposition denied Chávez’s victory, in 2013 with Maduro — although Capriles finally recognized it. The one who won, won; the one who lost, lost; that has to be accepted. Secondly, pluralism. I am concerned that this dialogue prefigures bipartisanship, and that will not be the solution. Venezuela requires a multiparty democratic model, of multiple thoughts. Venezuelan society does not feel represented by the two factors that appear as the only relevant actors.
Q: Do you think neither María Corina’s opposition nor the sector sitting at the table represent the majority?
A: I say they do not represent “the majority” in the total sense. And there is no plurality within the ruling Chavismo either: it was born as a movement of diverse currents, and those currents are not being recognized today.
Q: With political prisoners, exiles, disqualified people, 200 blocked domains, 94 affected media outlets, what specific guarantees are needed to restore pluralism?
A: Overcoming all that, plus eliminating the conditions that alter the country’s economic life: sanctions, restoring the management of sovereign income. The one who governs also has the right to govern. There must be political conditions for everyone.
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Q: What would you add to what is on the table?
A: First and most importantly, the recovery of independence; second, the inclusion of all non-disqualified political factors; third, that this agreement leads to a long-term national project decided among Venezuelans, and not under the tutelage of any foreign power. Because one does not know if what is under discussion is a development by both parties or a document that Mr. Marco Rubio puts on the table.
Q: What would you do if you were on the other side of the table?
A: I would propose to all currents a route of democratic, peaceful, and electoral regulation of the conflict, and I would speak to the international community so that Venezuela is supported without any type of intervention. I know they will say that international law does not exist today, that Trump does not recognize any principle of coexistence, but Trump will not last forever. The most serious thing right now is that this political will is not seen: most actors are trying to win the favor of whoever exercises the tutelage.
Q: Is it possible to recover part of sovereignty through that negotiation?
A: You have to have the political will to try; if no one tries, it cannot be known if it is possible. What we see is a widespread acceptance of the “three-phase plan”: there is no one, neither in the government nor in the opposition, who contradicts it or dares to propose a negotiation process to restore sovereignty. It will not be easy, it will be complex, it may outlast Trump, but it has to be proposed. Today, statesmen capable of putting aside their aspirations would be required to propose, based on a national agreement, a struggle to recover the independence of the State.
Q: What would be the three minimum sovereigntist conditions that Venezuela should demand from the United States?
A: First, the right to political self-determination: the plan must be developed by Venezuelans. The most serious thing today is that, by accepting the Rubio plan without discussing it, the leadership recognizes that it does not have the capacity to agree among themselves. Beyond Trump’s aspirations over oil, that was a fertile ground for tutelage. Second, the full restoration of our national income under the fiscal controls of the Constitution. Third, autonomy in international relations: I am concerned that the United States pushes us toward its geopolitics in the Middle East: recognition of Israel, deterioration of relations with Iran, withdrawal from the International Criminal Court. Venezuela should preserve itself from a foreign geopolitical conflict. Then there are more operational aspects: if the fundamental interest of the United States is energy, let’s talk without harming national sovereignty.
Q: You were his vice president. What do you think Hugo Chávez would do if he were facing this negotiation today?
A: I will not do an exercise of imagination. I refer to the speech of January 15, 2011, in the National Assembly, in the context of the civil wars in Syria and Libya [that were brewing then]. Chávez feared that Venezuela would be taken to such a situation. I believe he would have made every effort to avoid the rupture of the democratic space, even if it had been pulled by the extreme right. In that speech he says: the nation comes first; we can think differently, but not kill each other or break the democratic game. But the essence of that speech is to preserve the nation.
Q: What was lost of that spirit in Maduro’s government?
A: I vindicate in Chávez his ability to understand democracy as agonistic conflict, not existential. He knew how to maneuver the conflict within parameters of coexistence, and when he felt those spaces were overflowing, he made efforts to rectify any authoritarian drift in time.
Q: And that did not happen later, because — as Diosdado Cabello said — Chávez controlled “the crazies”?
A: Yes, after 2014 they took the ropes off the ring, there was no referee, and we went at each other without heeding Chávez’s warning about caring for the nation’s integrity above differences.
Q: You belong to a generation that founded and managed the Bolivarian process. What historical responsibility should it assume for institutional deterioration?
A: The narrative must be segmented: it is not “Chavismo” as a single block, but different stages of Chavismo. In the first, with Chávez at the helm, we fulfilled the Bolivarian Alternative Agenda, our program: a constituent process, democratization “downstream,” participatory inclusion, renationalization of privatized industries. There were management errors, yes, but we achieved new institutionality and broad social inclusion processes. And yes, within the framework of polarization, we also generated exclusion policies toward sectors that could have been handled differently.
Q: Chavismo has witnessed very large, well-documented corruption. What would you criticize?
A: Yes, that is true, and we must recognize it as an unfulfilled line, despite efforts to contain it. It has to do with aspirations for wealth accumulation. Our mistake, as a party, was not being effective enough to establish ethical controls. The structural scourge of corruption is linked to oil revenue and also to a corrupt private sector. The problem will continue if we do not attack it at its root.
Q: Was there not, within the oil model and the single party, a structural incentive for corruption?
A: There was always a firm decision to fight it. But the massiveness of public policies sometimes overwhelmed the State’s fiscal control capacity: “we must meet the population’s demands” prevailed over fiscal rigor, and things slipped in.
Q: Chavismo founded its legitimacy on elections, participation, and the Constitution. Does it still retain that legitimacy today?
A: In the last PSUV party congress, we expressed divergences between those who have governed and those of us who believe that the viability of a democratic revolution rested on broad popular participation with public freedoms. Chávez himself, in his message of December 8, 2012, before leaving for Cuba, pointed out that the revolution had to continue its democratic path, with full freedoms. That was our original current. Since 2018, that was replaced by a state of greater control that argued external aggression. But we believed that the response had to be more democracy.
Q: What would you have done before Juan Guaidó?
A: I would have made every effort to sign the Dominican Republic agreement, which was a good agreement. We, by vetoing some actors, contributed to it not being signed; but the opposition was divided and also had vetoed some, besides not agreeing on a candidate. That is the truth.
Q: On July 28, 2024, the CNE proclaimed Maduro the winner without publishing the records. The Carter Center concluded that the election did not meet democratic standards. Do you recognize that Maduro lost legitimacy and that this break left Venezuela more exposed to external tutelage?
A: Maduro’s legitimacy problem did not begin in 2024. Not publishing the records generated reasonable doubt, but previously, when the records were published, there was also denial of the elections. Only the constitutional decision of the Supreme Court remained, which gave legality to Maduro’s mandate.
Q: So there was no fraud?
A: That is a tricky question because there have been no records: I also did not have access to them.
Q: But the government was in control of the CNE and the Supreme Court.
A: Those elections should not have taken place under those conditions because they were not preceded by a political agreement that guaranteed recognition of the result, whoever won. They were done “haphazardly.” But I do not think the explanation for the military intervention lies in the July 2024 elections: it is deeper and depends on the obvious interest of the United States in Venezuela’s energy reserves.
Q: Before January 3, there was a negotiation in Qatar between Miraflores and the White House that did not reach an agreement. Could there have been another outcome?
A: Speculating is the last thing I would do. I believe there should have been a political agreement that prioritized the revolution’s integrity and prevented Venezuela from being attacked and militarily subjected.
Q: Do you accept that Venezuela will not recover sovereignty vis-à-vis the United States while it does not recover internal legitimacy — elections, human rights, pluralism, accountability?
A: My position against repression has been public, clear, and declared, always. As revolutionaries, we cannot endorse excessive repression. The state has the right to exercise authority — there were insurrectional processes at this time, attacks against Maduro’s life — but a revolutionary state is obliged to respond preserving the integrity of human rights. Saying that Chavismo, as a political model, violates human rights is not true. Everyone must assume their individual responsibility.
Q: The DGCIM, SEBIN, National Guard were activated: institutions used to repress the people.
A: During Chávez’s government, there was, as state policy, respect for human rights. There were specific excesses, but they were always corrected, punished, and even publicly denounced by the president himself.
Q: What are you willing to do to contribute to that internal legitimacy?
A: Internal legitimacy is necessary but not sufficient: a new electoral process will not solve the tutelage issue by itself. It will be solved by a broad national agreement. Venezuela cannot look to its future as a country whose resources are managed by another, that has to ask permission to make political decisions, that legislates with a gun to its head in favor of interests contrary to its own, that is permanently humiliated by the statements of another president. That cannot be Venezuela’s future. On that, I believe the vast majority of Venezuelans agree.
Q: Debate is important and that respect begins.
A: It is important that the international community knows that thinking of Venezuela only as two opposing actors, “the government” and “María Corina Machado,” is a mistake. They are the main ones today, but not the only ones, and in the future they will not necessarily be the most important.
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