🇻🇪 Venezuela: Maduro's Mandatory Midnight Migration

🇻🇪 Delcy Rodríguez - A message from Venezuela to the world, and to the United States

Here is the entire text of the Instagram post, verbatim from the acting president’s Instagram account, with specific words and phrases highlighted for semiotic analysis below:

1️⃣ What is happening?

Nicolás Maduro has been Venezuela’s president since 2013. A former union leader, he served under the wildly popular socialist president Hugo Chávez, ascending to power after his death in 2013. Under Chávez’s rule, skyrocketing oil prices paid for several social programs, resulting in some change in quality of life in Venezuela. Following Chávez’s death and the cooling off of global oil prices, Venezuela under Maduro was not able to maintain the same social programs. Protests followed (which were severely dealt with under both Chávez and Maduro) resulting in increased poverty and mass migration.

Chávez was fiercely leftist, and is considered highly influential in bringing other left leaning governments to power in South America in the first decade of the new millennium (as of 2026, that tide has turned and now Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Honduras, and Panama have elected conservative governments into power).

This is all to say that Maduro was never the universally popular or admired leader that Chávez was, nor did he have the benefit of high oil prices to cushion his administrative failings. The UNHCR estimates that Venezuelan refugees number almost 8 million since 2015 (which is almost 30% of the entire population).

It’s worth noting that Venezuela is a founding member of OPEC, the global oil production organisation, and is also widely considered to have the highest amount of proven oil reserves in the world - over 300 billion barrels (for context, the world uses around 100 million barrels of oil per day). The oil industry in Venezuela is fully nationalised, and yet the country has one of the lowest per capita incomes in South America.

Maduro’s last election win in 2024 was declared a sham by most Western liberal democracies, leading to Venezuelan foreign policy being dominated since by relationships with Russia and Iran. In response, Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2025. Since then, U.S. president Donald Trump has accused Maduro and his administration of running, effectively, a narco-state by trafficking drugs into the United States to supplement their own income.

This led to weeks of escalating U.S. military action against Venezuelan ships and oil tankers towards the end of 2025. On 3rd January 2026, Maduro and his wife were abducted from their residence, before being shipped off to the United States to await trial on drug trafficking charges. In the interim, Venezuela’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, has taken over as acting president of the country, issuing this statement.

2️⃣ What was written, and to whom?

Rodríguez has been Venezuela’s vice president since 2018, but has played several roles in both Maduro’s and Chávez’s administrations. Like Maduro, Rodríguez has her own laundry list of sanctions against her from Western liberal democratic nations. She has now been thrust into the spotlight in this unique situation, and her message to the world and to the United States was read with fierce interest.

DECONSTRUCTING THE TEXT

🗝️ Unlocking Meaning

For a country that had its tankers captured, its capital city bombed, and its leader abducted in the dark hours of the morning, the message coming out of Venezuela is one of collaboration and compromise. Lots of mentions of ‘sovereign’, ‘non-interference’, ‘international law’, and ‘peaceful coexistence’. It reads as a surprisingly sober and deescalatory message.

While this isn’t a full on invasion like Russia into Ukraine, the U.S. has been significantly more successful than Russia when it comes to regime change. And perhaps it is that complete imbalance of raw military power that Venezuela admits to. And while countries, including U.S. allies, have condemned the actions of the Trump administration, including people within his own party, the fact that the U.S. was even able to pull off such a party trick goes to show just how unable Venezuela’s military defences are. The fact that the fiercely-loyal-to-Maduro military couldn’t protect their leader, there’s likely not much they can do to protect their country.

Rodríguez has clearly realised that there is nothing to be gained by appearing belligerent with the United States. Maduro’s forced removal from power has not resulted in the universal public support across Venezuela that Rodríguez might have hoped for. Therefore, her message to the U.S. is not one of ideology, but one of cooperation thickly coated in realpolitik pragmatism.

👑 Power Play

While the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq is widely considered to have been a U.S. play for Iraqi oil reserves, the reality is very different. Current licensing contracts of Iraqi oilfields are spread between companies from the U.S., China, U.K., and other countries. Even if Venezuela has the most oil reserves, the quality of that oil means that a lot of expensive and challenging refining has to be done to it first for it to be usable, let alone profitable. And with Venezuela’s crumbling oil industry infrastructure, it will take decades and tons of cash to rebuild. It’s questionable if American oil companies want to commit to something that is so high in effort and investment, when they can continue to make a lot more money in much easier ways.

So if not oil, then is this another ‘forever war’ that the U.S. has launched in South America? U.S. military has had limited success in Iraq. It has completely retreated from Afghanistan. And while U.S. intelligence correctly predicted Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, their track record in the 21st century has not been stellar. With Venezuela being another complex nation of contrasting loyalties and challenges, why was the high profile abduction of Venezuela’s president Maduro the only viable option for Trump? What does this achieve for Trump?

Let’s circle back to the phrase I introduced at the beginning of this newsletter — wag the dog. If this is another wag the dog scenario, and Trump has initiated military conflict as a means to distract media and the public from his own damaging political issue, what issue could that be?

I can only think of one thing we haven’t discussed since 3rd January. The Epstein files.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

Tell me your reasoning. In next week’s issue, I’ll highlight the most thought-provoking responses.

NEXT WEEK ON SIGNPOST

There may not be a Signpost next week as I’m moving house, but I will try to eke out an issue either way. Don’t hold your breath.

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