Hours after an audacious US military operation removed Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro from power early Saturday, President Donald Trump said the United States would temporarily run Venezuela and tap its vast oil reserves to sell to other nations. Maduro and his wife were reportedly aboard a US warship en route to New York to face prosecution on a Justice Department indictment accusing them of participating in a narco-terrorism conspiracy.
In response, Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez insisted that Maduro remains the country’s only president, contradicting Trump’s claims that she had been sworn in. She spoke on state television from Caracas alongside her brother, National Assembly head Jorge Rodriguez, Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello, and the country’s foreign and defence ministers.
Rodriguez called for calm and unity to defend Venezuela amid what she described as Maduro’s kidnapping, and vowed to defend the nation’s resources.
Maduro has previously called Rodriguez a “tiger” for her staunch defence of his socialist government. She works closely with her brother and has been a central figure in Venezuela’s political and economic management for more than a decade.
Caracas native Rodriguez, 56, was born on May 18, 1969, and is the daughter of left-wing guerrilla fighter Jorge Antonio Rodriguez, founder of the revolutionary Liga Socialista party in the 1970s.
Rodriguez’s roles as finance and oil minister, held alongside her vice-presidential post, have made her central to Venezuela’s economic strategy and influential in the private sector. She has implemented orthodox economic policies to combat extreme inflation.
She has also called on the US government to provide proof of life for Maduro and his wife, though her exact whereabouts outside the broadcast were previously uncertain.
An attorney who graduated from Universidad Central de Venezuela, Rodriguez rose quickly through the political ranks, serving as Communication and Information Minister from 2013 to 2014. Known for her designer fashion tastes, she was foreign minister from 2014 to 2017, during which she attempted to attend a Mercosur trade bloc meeting in Buenos Aires after Venezuela was suspended.
In 2017, Rodriguez became head of a pro-government Constituent Assembly, which expanded Maduro’s powers. She was named vice president in June 2018, with Maduro describing her as “a young woman, brave, seasoned, daughter of a martyr, revolutionary and tested in a thousand battles”.
In August 2024, Maduro added the oil ministry to her portfolio, tasking her with managing escalating US sanctions on Venezuela’s most important industry.
(FRANCE 24 with Reuters)
