Picture from February 2019: Then-Senator Marco Rubio greets a crowd of migrants in the border with Colombia the day the Guaidó-led opposition tried to move humanitarian aid into the country

Venezuela is a case study in many things, but one on which our nation seems to show specific particularities is the rugged pattern drawn by our crests of hope and our valleys of despair. 

We can fall from a widespread feeling of certainty that things are about to change for good—as the one that filled the hearts of a good deal of the population in the morning of April 11, 2002; or in Venezuela and abroad in January 2019—to a state of apparently irremediable frustration that forces us to turn our backs on collective affairs, as happened at the end of 2016—before the explosion of popular ire a few months later—or the beginning of 2023, when it seemed impossible to think that a mass phenomenon like Maria Corina Machado would reignite the drive to vote, to the point of humiliating chavismo in July 2024.

Since 2025, we have a specific indicator to observe that pattern, and ideally, to measure it: the expectations about what the Trump administration will do for us. 

In the eyes of North Americans, expectations about the impact of Trump’s decisions on one’s life would tend to be aligned with someone’s personal decision to admire or despise the president; in Venezuela, that spectrum is different. 

From ardent MAGAzuelans to chronic skeptics

Yes, there are Venezuelans who (still) admire Donald Trump, but they are not necessarily US citizens registered to vote for the Republican Party, as tends to happen with most Trump supporters; on the contrary, they might be living in the US but with no citizenship, or elsewhere, in Venezuela, Spain, or Canada, for example. They are the famous “magazuelans.”

On the other side, there are people who do not like Trump but who are convinced that there’s no other way to get rid of chavismo—after almost three decades of demonstrations, State terror and stolen elections—than with the White House menacing the remaining chavista elite with a fate similar to Maduro’s. 

And finally, there was an apparently minority group totally hostile to the idea of a foreign intervention, and a lot of people who don’t bother to have a stance towards Trump but are aware of the US’ economic and military might, and at this point just want anyone, no matter who it is and how it does it, to take the regime out of the way.

Uncharted waters and red skies

That’s the basic catalogue of attitudes towards Trump and the US government we had one year ago, when the first “kinetic attack” threw us in the wagon to start a new ride on the hope-and-despair rollercoaster. 

That event opened a fresh range of unprecedented possibilities, uncharted waters where the impossible was no longer unthinkable. Those who had asked for years for a foreign intervention, like Machado, began to be heard because what they claimed as the solution had just withdrawn from the realm of wild speculation. Along with dozens of experts, journalists and content creators with different varying levels of ethics, we started to consider scenarios, and more and more people began to consider a spectacular invasion that would destroy the dictatorship and install democracy in a matter of days.

The Department of State reacted to growing criticism in Venezuela and abroad by announcing a first round of talks between the opposition-controlled Delegate Commission and the acting chavista legislature.

The red dawn on January 3 changed Venezuelan history and the way we think… to a certain point. The mere fact that the dictator had been taken but the dictatorship left in place limited our optimism, even if there was, and there is still, some basis to think things will improve: big money is surveying the grounds, the local business community is talking investments and watching the tax police become more civilized, hundreds of people went out of jail and some others were allowed to come back from exile… except Machado and many of her aides. 

But days turned to weeks that turned to months. Venezuelans saw that inflation and blackouts remained the same, and that Trump continued to praise Delcy Rodríguez, even after Machado went to the Oval Office to give him the Nobel Prize gold medal. Delcy was playing the Leopard’s playbook. The shine of the January hopes started to fade. 

Then the earth shook under our feet. 

Bad company, bad news

People were being relatively patient about the Americans’ relationship with the post-Maduro regime until the earthquakes of June 24. Then, the footage of US high officers meeting the civilian and military heads of the Rodríguez regime—and especially John Barret’s comments about him trusting the competence, cooperation and transparency of that zombie State that left the survivors on their own—just became too hard to swallow. Precisely when many people were awaiting Machado’s return as a turning point that would give the final stroke on the incapable regime, Trump administration officials told Axios that they had pressured Panama and Curaçao to block Machado’s attempts to reenter Venezuela. Thousands of comments on the social media posts of the US embassy in Caracas started to demand presidential elections and that Washington allow Machado’s return immediately.

The Department of State reacted to growing criticism in Venezuela and abroad by announcing a first round of talks between the opposition-controlled Delegate Commission and the chavista legislature, which in theory started the process to appoint new justices of the Supreme Court with a higher participation of the civil society. As expected, Rubio started to point to that development as proof that his office was doing something about the transition to democracy, instead of just getting used to dealing with Delcy and Co., as his boss actually loves to boast about.

Harvard professor Ricardo Haussman, went beyond being the Trump’s administration critic he’s always been, zeroing in on the Secretary of State in a merciless prophecy: “it will come to haunt you.”

Now, since late July, we have a new stage in the emotional roller coaster about the US intervention in Venezuela: the deal that Trump’s aides on Axios and the president himself sold as “historical” and that involves a part of the nation’s oil reserves, a very sensitive matter for generations of Venezuelans, and a businessman who the public associates with the problem that worries Venezuelans the most right now: the catastrophic state of the national electricity network. 

The bitter controversy about Alejandro Betancourt, his company NABEP and the enthusiastic support of the Rodríguez regime is a triple scandal. First, it’s been presented as something that takes out the riches of the nation to benefit the Americans and for a long time, by order of two actors deprived of any legitimacy to decide that: a foreign government and an interim president that no one elected. Second, it touches the most painful spot for most Venezuelans at the moment: electricity (or rather, the lack of it); Betancourt is known as the head of a scheme that wiped out billions allocated by Chávez to repair the power network. Third, the deal raises, as anything before, the suspicion that Trump has no interest in removing chavismo, or in fact, it has all the motivation to keep it there, because the permanence of the regime means the permanence of their control over 65 billion barrels of oil. 

This is why so many people from different backgrounds are venting out disappointment, dread and rage, and why some who used to support Trump’s measures in Venezuela, and to trust Rubio’s knowledge about our situation, are leaving the zone of tense patience and wondering if they were expecting from them a transition that was never in their plans.

The most influential Venezuelan economist abroad, Harvard professor Ricardo Haussman, went beyond being the Trump’s administration critic he’s always been, zeroing in on the Secretary of State in a merciless prophecy: “it will come to haunt you.”

The commentary abroad also raised the tone. Like Haussman, The Washington Post declared that Rubio has lost the Venezuelan’s trust. The Economist sentenced that the deal would block democracy. The Cato Institute said that everything about the deal was troubling. In The New York Times, Julie Turkewitz wrote that “The new deal could bring major investment. But many Venezuelans want overall economic and political change. The accord guarantees neither and could deepen the relationship between Mr. Trump and Ms. Rodríguez, further entrenching her in power.” 

The US may continue eroding its prestige among Venezuelans with more signs of coziness with Delcy. Or it can interrupt this descent into despair by escorting Machado back to Caracas or forcing the Figuera-Rodríguez working table to produce an election date. 

Rubio attempted to do some damage control by giving an interview to Sergio Novelli, a Venezuelan journalist in the US with a huge audience. The Secretary of State explained in Spanish that the deal was with a private company, not the chavista regime, and insisted that Betancourt had no pending accounts with the US courts. 

Novelli is part of a group of popular Venezuelan journalists abroad who usually share Machado’s views. He even took part in a video thanking Trump for taking Maduro, as part of Machado’s effort to counteract the global backlash about the incursion of January 3 and its implications in international law. Now, that group of very well-known journalists is voicing concern. Along with social media, and what we are talking about on WhatsApp or having dinners with our friends and families, the hope that began to crack after the earthquakes is being erased as more people are aware of the oil deal.  

On September 8, Atlas Intel-Bloomberg released a new Pulse on Venezuela, the monthly survey many of us are following as the most comprehensive study on the country’s moods, and included a glimpse into the effect of the NABEP deal. 67% of participants knew about the deal, and 37% were against it. Opinions were divided about whether the deal is more positive for Americans than for Venezuelans, but 47% said that the government had no legitimacy to sign it, and 38% thought that it was giving too much in exchange for too little. Rubio’s approval rate among Venezuelans went from 54% in the previous report to 30%. 

That survey, made with a particular methodology that involves the use of social media, was conducted from August 30 to September 3. The next few weeks will tell how this climate might evolve. The Trump administration may continue eroding its prestige among Venezuelans with more signs of coziness with Delcy. Or it can interrupt this descent into despair with some spectacular U-turn, like escorting Machado back to Caracas or forcing the Figuera-Rodriguez table to produce an election date. 

Odds don’t look good, but, hey, it’s 2026, the year of surprises.