Jan 4 (Reuters) – A top Venezuelan official declared on Sunday that the country’s government would stay unified behind President Nicolas Maduro, whose capture by the United States has sparked deep uncertainty about what is next for the oil-rich South American nation.
Maduro is in a New York detention center awaiting a Monday court appearance on drug charges, after U.S. President Donald Trump ordered his removal from Venezuela and said the U.S. would take control of the country. But in Caracas, top officials in Maduro’s government, who have called the detentions of Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores a kidnapping, were still in charge.
“Here, the unity of the revolutionary force is more than guaranteed, and here there is only one president, whose name is Nicolas Maduro Moros. Let no one fall for the enemy’s provocations,” Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello said in an audio shared by the ruling PSUV socialist party on Sunday as he urged calm.
Images of the 63-year-old Maduro blindfolded and handcuffed on Saturday stunned Venezuelans. The action is Washington’s most controversial intervention in Latin America since the invasion of Panama 37 years ago.
Vice President Delcy Rodriguez — who also serves as oil minister — has taken over as interim leader with the blessing of Venezuela’s top court, though she has said Maduro remains president.
Because of her connections with the private sector and deep knowledge of oil, the country’s top source of revenue, Rodriguez has long been considered the most pragmatic member of Maduro’s inner circle. But she has publicly contradicted Trump’s claim she is willing to work with the United States.
Trump said Rodriguez may pay a bigger price than Maduro “if she doesn’t do what’s right,” according to an interview with The Atlantic magazine on Sunday.
The Venezuelan government has said for months Trump’s pressure campaign is an effort to take the country’s vast natural resources, especially its oil, and officials have made much of his comment on Saturday that major U.S. oil companies would move in.
“We are outraged because in the end everything was revealed — it was revealed that they only want our oil,” added Cabello, who has close ties to the military.
Venezuela’s state-run oil company PDVSA is asking some joint ventures to cut back crude output by shutting down oilfields or groups of wells amid an export paralysis, three sources close to the decision told Reuters.
The OPEC country’s oil exports halted after the U.S. last month announced a blockade on sanctioned tankers moving in and out of Venezuelan waters and seized two oil cargoes.
Once one of the most prosperous nations in Latin America, Venezuela’s economy nosedived further under Maduro, sending about one in five Venezuelans abroad in one of the world’s biggest exoduses.
MUTED STREETS
Maduro opponents in Venezuela have been wary of celebrating his seizure, and the presence of security forces seemed, if anything, lighter than usual on Sunday.
Despite the nervous mood, some bakeries and coffee shops were open and joggers and cyclists were out like a normal Sunday morning. Some citizens were stocking up on essentials.
“Yesterday I was very afraid to go out, but today I had to. This situation caught me without food and I need to figure things out. After all, Venezuelans are used to enduring fear,” said a single mother in oil city Maracaibo, who said she bought rice, vegetables and tuna. “If this is necessary for my son to grow up in a free country, I’ll keep enduring the fear.”
The owner of a small supermarket in the same city said the business did not open on Saturday after strikes on military installations in Caracas and elsewhere and U.S. Special Forces swooped in on helicopters to seize Maduro.
“Today we’ll work until noon since we’re close to many neighborhoods. People have nowhere to buy food and we need to help them,” the shop owner said.
To the disappointment of Venezuela’s opposition, Trump has given short shrift to the idea of 58-year-old opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Corina Machado taking over, saying she lacked support.
Machado was banned from standing in the 2024 election but has said her ally Edmundo Gonzalez, 76, who the opposition and some international observers say overwhelmingly won that vote, has a democratic mandate to take the presidency.
It is unclear how Trump plans to oversee Venezuela and he runs the risk of alienating some supporters who oppose foreign interventions.
While many Western nations oppose Maduro, there were many calls for the U.S. to respect international law and resolve the crisis diplomatically. Questions also arose over the legality of seizing a foreign head of state. Democrats said they were misled at recent Congress briefings and demanded a plan for what is to follow.
The U.N. Security Council planned to meet on Monday to discuss the U.S. attack, which Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described as a dangerous precedent. Russia and China, both major backers of Venezuela, have criticized the U.S.
Maduro was indicted in 2020 on U.S. charges including narco-terrorism conspiracy. He has always denied any criminal involvement.
(Reporting by Reuters bureaux worldwide and Susan Heavey and Jana Winter in New York; Writing by Lincoln Feast, Andrew Cawthorne, Julia Symmes Cobb and John Kruzel; Editing by Andrew Heavens, Cynthia Osterman and Sergio Non)
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