To the victor belong Venezuela’s spoils: Delcy Rodriguez’s UNGA about-face

Venezuela’s interim President Delcy Rodriguez took to the stage yesterday at the United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York City to deliver a rather bland speech, in which she thanked United States President Donald Trump for resuming “diplomatic relations and cooperation” with Venezuela.

This was a different vibe, to be sure, than the one she opted for at the same venue in September 2019, when, as vice president under Nicolas Maduro, she accused the US of perpetrating “economic terrorism” that did not require the use of bombs “but rather through banks and insurance companies”.

Denouncing the global superpower’s militarisation of international relations and punishment of millions of innocent people “in order to apply regime change doctrines and steal other nations’ resources”, the Rodriguez of 2019 went on to cite Venezuelan economic losses to the tune of $130bn between 2015 and 2018 alone on account of US sanctions.

She additionally offered her opinion that the domination of the US political system by “plutocratic minorities” made the country unqualified to impose its model on other countries.

Seven years later, US plutocracy is going strong with Trump at the helm – the same Trump alongside whom a grinning Rodriguez appeared in a photograph taken in New York on Tuesday, less than nine months after he oversaw regime change in Venezuela by kidnapping Maduro .

The kidnapped president is now also in New York, albeit in jail, and is scheduled to stand trial in June 2027 . This despite his attempts to remind everyone that, as a sitting head of state, his prosecution in a foreign court contravenes international law.

Then again, abducting other countries’ presidents is also pretty glaringly illegal. But Trump has made it clear that he alone is in charge of deciding what is and is not permissible on any given day.

The abduction took place on January 3, when the US military launched air attacks on Venezuela, killing some 100 people and whisking Maduro and his wife away.