By Yael Tangir, Business Editor
Before you explain Venezuela to me, let me explain it to you.
I’m Venezuelan. Before you start with the “it’s all about oil” claims, ask yourself if you could even point to Venezuela on a map. If your entire understanding of my country comes from a 30-second news clip, you’re wrong. And if you think what happened on January 3rd was simply a “regime change,” you’re missing the point entirely.
For years, we lived in a stalemate of decay under the rule of a dictator. Then, a few weeks ago, the world woke up to the news that Nicolás Maduro, a man who hasn’t been a legitimate leader in the eyes of the world for a long time, was snatched in a targeted operation in the capital city of Caracas. If you’re asking yourself who this man is or why this happened now, don’t worry, most people talking about us online don’t know either. The reality is far less poetic than “liberation.”
Venezuelan criminal organizations, operating under the direct protection of the state, became key players in international drug trafficking. When the drugs no longer stayed in the Caribbean and started flooding the streets of Miami and New York, the U.S stopped viewing Venezuela as a humanitarian tragedy. It started treating it as a direct threat to their national security.
To understand Maduro, you have to understand Chavismo, a populist ideology that began with Hugo Chávez. Chávez was a charismatic former lieutenant colonel who entered the public eye through a failed military coup in 1992. By 1998, he rode a wave of populism straight to the presidency. Once there, he dismantled democratic institutions and turned Venezuela’s oil wealth into his personal credit card, buying influence abroad while importing repression techniques from Fidel Castro in Cuba.
Before Chávez died in 2013, he handpicked a successor based on loyalty rather than talent: Nicolás Maduro. People laugh at the fact that he was just a “bus driver,” but that is not the full reality. Maduro was politically groomed in Cuba and trained directly by the Castro regime. Chávez chose him because he was a cadre, someone ideologically molded by Havana, a shorthand for the Cuban government, chosen to preserve the system and protect the interests shared by both regimes.
Maduro inherited Chávez’s power but none of his legitimacy. To survive, he turned the country into a haven for anyone the West hated. He cultivated relationships with Russia and China for money and weapons, but he went further, opening the door to Iran and terrorist-linked groups like Hezbollah in Lebanon. These weren’t just ideological friendships; they were partnerships in money laundering, intelligence, and gold smuggling, turning Venezuela into a strategic hub for anti-Western activity in the Western Hemisphere.
This shift toward alignment with these groups is the main reason you can’t look at the Venezuelan government like a normal country’s leadership; it has essentially turned into a criminal operation run by “El Cartel de los Soles” (the Cartel of the Suns). Unlike the cartels you see in movies, with a single all-powerful boss at the top, this one functions as a network rooted within the state itself. It is a state-run system where high-ranking military officers command the drug trade. The cartel gets its name from the “sun” insignia on the epaulettes of Venezuelan generals.
What began in the 1990s as small-scale border corruption was institutionalized by Chávez and later perfected by Maduro into a powerhouse. By allowing his generals a literal piece of the cocaine trade moving from Colombia to the U.S., Maduro didn’t just fund his regime; he bought the absolute loyalty of the armed forces, a reality that ultimately led to the U.S. indicting him for narcoterrorism.
Many Americans didn’t know we existed until we showed up on their news feed. But Venezuela sits on the largest proven oil reserves in the world. Oil is why Venezuela mattered yesterday, matters today, and will continue to matter tomorrow.
Venezuela’s oil industry wasn’t a solo project; it was built with American investment starting in 1914. For decades, Venezuela was the U.S.’s favorite ally. They supplied the oil that fueled the Allies during World War II and remained anti-communist during the Cold War. Venezuela was the “model democracy” of Latin America. Then came 1998, and Venezuelans made the decision to elect Chávez. Their divorce from the U.S. was soon underway. Chávez used oil as a weapon. He toured OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) nations to hike gas prices for Americans, visited Saddam Hussein, and fueled the left across South America.
Since 2014, Venezuela has existed in a state of prolonged instability. As conditions deteriorated, an estimated seven to eight million people have left the country, creating one of the largest migration crises in the world, not caused by war.
Maduro stayed in power for years largely because the military backed him and because corruption tied the armed forces directly to drug money, but by 2025 the U.S. government took a very different approach. Under President Trump, the so-called “Cartel de los Soles” was designated as a terrorist organization, and Nicolás Maduro and his inner circle were linked to the cartel. Then, the U.S. expanded sanctions and even offered a large reward for information leading to his arrest, treating him less like a foreign head of state and more like a fugitive wanted for narcoterrorism.
On January 3, 2026, Nicolás Maduro was removed from power in a U.S. operation and brought to the United States, where he is now being held in federal custody in Brooklyn awaiting trial on charges of drug trafficking and narcoterrorism. Venezuela has now entered a transition period, with provisional leadership and unresolved debates about its political and economic future.
But this moment should not be mistaken for an ending or a simple victory. Venezuela’s story was never just about oil, and it was never just about drugs. It is about how a country with immense wealth was hollowed out by ideology, corruption, and international indifference until it became both a humanitarian disaster and a security threat.
For years, Venezuela only mattered once its collapse crossed borders when drugs reached American cities and migration overwhelmed neighboring countries. That selective attention is part of the tragedy. Venezuela did not suddenly become important in 2026. It has always mattered. The difference is that now the world can no longer pretend it didn’t know where we were on the map.
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