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In 2017, as political outsider Donald Trump visited Washington, Delcy Rodríguez spotted an opening.
Then Venezuela’s Foreign Minister Rodríguez ordered Citgo – a subsidiary of the state oil company – to makea donation of $500,000 for the inauguration of the president. While Nicolas Maduro’s socialist administration struggles to feed Venezuela, Rodríguez bet on an agreement that would have opened the door to American investment. Around the same time, she found that Trump’s former campaign manager had been hired as a lobbyist for Citgo, that she had courted Republicans in Congress and tried to secure ameeting with the boss of Exxon.
The charm offensive failed. A few weeks after taking office, Trump, pressed by then-Sen. Marco Rubio has made the restoration of Venezuelan democracy his main goal in response to Maduro’s crackdown on his opponents. But the outreach paid off for Rodríguez, making her an important face in American political and business circles and paving the way for her own rise.
“She’s an ideologue, but a practical ideologue,” said Lee McClenny, a retired foreign service officer who was the top U.S. diplomat in Caracas during Rodríguez’s outreach period. “She knew that Venezuela needed to find a way to resurrect a moribund oil economy and seemed willing to work with the Trump administration to make it happen. »
Nearly a decade later, when he was Venezuela’s interim president, Rodríguez’s message — that Venezuela is open for business — appears to have won over Trump. In the days sinceMaduro’s superb captureOn Saturday, he alternately praised Rodríguez as a “gracious” American partner while threatening to suffer the same fate as his former boss if she does not control the ruling party and supply the United States“full access”to the country’s vast oil reserves. One thing neither mentioned was the elections, which, according to the Constitution, must take place within 30 days of the presidency becoming permanently vacant.
This account of Rodríguez’s political rise is drawn from interviews with 10 former U.S. and Venezuelan officials as well as businessmen from both countries who have had extensive dealings with Rodríguez and, in some cases, known her since childhood. Most spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation from someone they almost universally described as bookishly intelligent, sometimes charming but above all a relentless operator who did not tolerate dissent. Rodríguez did not respond to AP interview requests.
Father’s Murder Hardens Left’s Perspectives
Rodríguez entered late into the left-wing movement launched by Hugo Chávez – and in the wake of her older brother, Jorge Rodríguez, who, as head of the National Assembly, swore her in as interim president on Monday.
The tragedy during their childhood fueled a hardened left-wing outlook that would stay with the siblings throughout their lives. In 1976 – when, in the midst of the Cold War, American oil companies, American political image specialists and Pentagon advisers exercised great influence in Venezuela – a little-known urban guerrilla groupKidnapped Midwest Businessman. Rodriguez’s father, a socialist leader, was arrested and died in custody.
McClenny recalls that Rodríguez brought up the murder during their meetings and bitterly blamed the United States for being left without a father when he was 7 years old. The crime would radicalize another leftist of the time: Maduro.
Years later, when Jorge Rodríguez was a top election official under Chávez, he secured a position for his sister in the president’s office.
But she moved slowly at first and clashed with colleagues who viewed her as a haughty know-it-all.
In 2006, during a whirlwind international tour, Chávez kicked her off the presidential plane and ordered her to return alone from Moscow, according to two former officials who were on the trip. Chávez was upset because the delegation’s meeting schedule had fallen apart, sparking a feud with Rodriguez, who was in charge of the agenda.
“It was painful to see how Chávez spoke about her,” one of the former officials said. “He never spoke ill of women, but throughout the flight home he kept saying she was vain, arrogant and incompetent.”
Days later, she was fired and never again held a senior role with Chávez.
Political renewal and rise of power under Maduro
Years later, in 2013, Maduro revived Rodríguez’s career after Chavez died of cancer and took over.
A lawyer trained in Britain and France, Rodríguez speaks English and has spent considerable time in the United States. That has given him an advantage in internal power struggles within Chavismo — the movement started by Chávez, whose many factions include democratic socialists, hard-line military men whom Chávez led in a 1992 coup attempt, and corrupt actors, some with ties to drug trafficking.
His more worldly outlook and refined tastes also made Rodríguez a favorite of the so-called “Bolgarques” – a new elite who made their fortunes during Chávez’s Bolivarian Revolution. One of those insiders, media mogul Raul Gorrín, worked hand-in-hand with Rodríguez’s efforts to repair relations with the first Trump administration and helped organize asecret visitof Rep. Pete Sessions, a Republican from Texas, to Caracas in April 2018 for a meeting with Maduro. A few months later, US federal prosecutors unsealed the firsttwo indictments for money launderingagainst Red.
After Maduro promoted Rodríguez to vice president in 2018, she took control of large swathes of society.Venezuela’s oil economy. To help manage the petrostate, she brought in foreign advisors with experience in global markets. Among them were two former finance ministers of Ecuador who helped manage a dollarized, export-driven economy under fellow leftist Rafael Correa. Another key associate is French lawyer David Syed, who has been trying for years to renegotiate Venezuela’s foreign debt in the face of crippling U.S. sanctions that make it impossible to repay Wall Street investors.
“She sacrificed her personal life for her political career,” said a former friend.
As it gained more power, it crushed its internal rivals. Among them: the former Minister of Oil, Tareck El Aissami, imprisoned in 2024 as part of an anti-corruption campaign led by Rodríguez.
In her de facto role as Venezuela’s director of operations, Rodríguez has proven a more flexible and trustworthy partner than Maduro. Some have compared her to a sort of Venezuelan Deng Xiaoping, the architect of modern China.
Hans Humes, chief executive of Greylock Capital Management, said that experience will serve her well as she tries to revive the economy, unite Chavismo and protect Venezuela from tougher conditions dictated by Trump. Imposing an opposition-led government now, he said, could trigger bloodshed of the type that tore Iraq apart after U.S. forces toppled Saddam Hussein and formed an interim government including many leaders who had been exiled for years.
“We have seen how expatriates who have been out of the country for too long think things should be the way they were before they left,” said Humes, who has met with Maduro as well as Rodríguez several times. “You need people who know how to deal with things that aren’t the way they used to be. »
Democracy postponed?
It is unclear where Rodríguez’s more pragmatic leadership style will take Venezuelan democracy.
Trump, in his remarks after Maduro’s capture, said Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Corina Machado lacked the “respect” needed to govern Venezuela, although his hand-picked candidate won what the United States and other governments consider a landslide victory in the 2024 presidential election stolen by Maduro.
Elliott Abrams, who served as special envoy to Venezuela during the first Trump administration, said it was impossible for the president to achieve his goal of banishing Middle Eastern criminal gangs, drug traffickers and terrorists from the Western Hemisphere with the various factions of Chavismo sharing power.
“Nothing Trump has said suggests his administration is considering a rapid transition away from Delcy. Nobody is talking about elections,” Abrams said. “If they think Delcy is running things, they’re dead wrong.”
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
