Venezuela’s unelected leader Delcy Rodríguez seeks lost legitimacy. Will she get it?

Ranu Abhelakh/Reuters

When she addresses the UN General Assembly on Thursday, Delcy Rodríguez will stand just a 20-minute cab ride from where her deposed predecessor Nicolás Maduro languishes in pre-trial detention.

Looking at the agenda she has followed during her trip to New York, Rodríguez appears to have allowed enough time ahead of her address to try to bring her country out of the isolation it has faced since 2018, when Maduro delivered the last speech at that forum by a Venezuelan head of state.

After landing in the United States on Monday, Rodríguez said she had arrived “with the firmness and hope of a people that believes in dialogue and unity among nations.” The same day, she met with UN Secretary-General António Guterres; Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) President Ilan Goldfajn; World Bank Group President Ajay Banga; and International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva.

It is unclear what benefits these meetings might bring Rodríguez, still bedeviled by questions of legitimacy because she was not elected to the position she holds.

But time’s passage is working in her favor.

While Donald Trump’s presidency ends in January 2029, there is still no date for Venezuela’s next presidential election. If she withstands pressure from the current US administration, which has many irons in the diplomatic fire, the Chavismo movement of which she is the current torch-bearer will be better positioned to face the future. It still controls the state apparatus, and there are no signs of that changing any time soon.

Rodríguez met with Trump on Tuesday on the sidelines of the General Assembly, during which the leaders “discussed strengthening the bilateral relationship between our countries and advancing a cooperation agenda in strategic areas such as energy, mining, and security,” Rodríguez said in a post on X, alongside a photo of the two.

Leonardo Fernandez Viloria/Reuters

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For now, Rodríguez has in Trump her main and unexpected backer.

Gone are the days when, as Maduro’s vice president in September 2019, she used a UN General Assembly address to accuse Washington of imposing “a new form of state terrorism without using bombs, but rather through banks and insurance companies.” She was referring at the time to US sanctions that prevented the South American country from selling its oil through the global financial system.

The acting president’s trip is also the next step in the process of relaunching diplomatic relations following Maduro’s capture by elite American Delta Force soldiers on January 3.

Since then, Venezuela has reactivated consular relations with Chile, Ecuador, Peru, the Dominican Republic and Israel, and has received visits from two Latin American presidents: Colombia’s Gustavo Petro before he left the Nariño Palace and, more recently, Paraguay’s head of state, Santiago Peña.

Trump has presented Venezuela as his great foreign-policy victory, and repeatedly emphasizes how he is overseeing the country after winning what he now describes as a war. The latest demonstration came Tuesday in his speech before the delegations attending the General Assembly.

“To the victor belong the spoils,” he said, referring to the agreement signed by the Pentagon with private energy company Nabep to gain access to 65 billion barrels of oil from Venezuelan reserves.

This display of dominance contrasts with the stalemate in the war with Iran and the inability to successfully mediate a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine, all amid the impact of rising fuel prices in the US and a decline in his popularity five weeks before midterm elections.

Rodríguez appears to be taking advantage of this situation to present herself as a reliable partner, willing to leave behind the image projected by Maduro’s government and to bolster the political survival of the Chavismo project at the expense of opposition leader María Corina Machado, who is currently stranded outside Venezuela. According to her spokesman , Machado made three attempts to return to Venezuela while Rodríguez was away, but was refused entry.

But is Washington’s support enough to overlook the fact that Rodríguez does not hold the presidency as the result of free elections? For Brazil’s president, it is not.

Earlier this week, in an interview with CNN, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was highly critical of the relationship Washington and Caracas have been forging in recent months. In his view, Trump has demonstrated that he plays a “very dominant role” over the South American country, while stating that “Venezuela’s sovereignty is over.”

During the interview, the Brazilian president said that, if he were in Rodríguez’s position, he would call national elections so that Venezuelans could decide the political direction of their country. In his address to the UN plenary, he once again invoked that same combative discourse and defense of the principle of sovereignty that he displayed in the interview, contrasting with the silence of the other countries in the region over the absence of a firm date for presidential elections in Venezuela.

Rodríguez will have her turn on Thursday, and there is considerable anticipation surrounding her speech at a forum where global concerns are routinely aired. For many years, Chavismo relied on the condemnation of imperialism to construct its political identity, and consistently invoked it on this stage.

Now, Washington’s imperial ambitions have been deployed much more forcefully through the revival of the Monroe Doctrine – and a fierce initiative to deport as many migrants as possible from US territory, which has particularly affected the Venezuelan community.

Before January 3, Chavismo would have railed forcefully against these policies. For Delcy Rodríguez, this is no longer the case.

拉努·阿贝拉克/路透社

周四，当德尔西·罗德里格斯在联合国大会上发表讲话时，她距离被罢黜的前任尼古拉斯·马杜罗在审前拘留所受苦的地方只有 20 分钟的出租车车程。

从罗德里格斯此次纽约之行的行程安排来看，她似乎在发表讲话之前留出了足够的时间，试图让她的国家摆脱自 2018 年以来一直面临的孤立状态。2018 年，马杜罗作为委内瑞拉国家元首在该论坛上发表了最后一次讲话。

罗德里格斯周一抵达美国后表示，她带着“一个相信各国间对话与团结的人民的坚定信念和希望”来到这里。当天，她会见了联合国秘书长安东尼奥·古特雷斯、美洲开发银行行长伊兰·戈德法恩、世界银行集团行长阿贾伊·班加以及国际货币基金组织总裁克里斯塔利娜·格奥尔基耶娃。

目前还不清楚这些会面能给罗德里格斯带来什么好处，她仍然受到合法性问题的困扰，因为她并没有被选举担任现在的职位。

但时间正在对她有利。

尽管唐纳德·特朗普的总统任期将于2029年1月结束，但委内瑞拉的下一次总统选举日期仍未确定。如果查韦斯能够顶住美国现任政府的压力（该政府在外交上可谓步步紧逼），那么她所领导的查韦斯主义运动将更有能力应对未来。该运动目前仍然掌控着国家机器，而且短期内没有任何改变的迹象。

罗德里格斯周二在联合国大会期间与特朗普会面，罗德里格斯在X网站上发帖称，两位领导人“讨论了加强两国双边关系，并在能源、采矿和安全等战略领域推进合作议程”，并附上了一张两人的合影。

莱昂纳多·费尔南德斯·维洛里亚/路透社

美国石油协议有望为委内瑞拉带来大量投资。委内瑞拉人民何时才能感受到这些好处？

目前来看，罗德里格斯的主要支持者是特朗普，这出乎她的意料。

2019年9月，她作为马杜罗的副总统，曾在联合国大会上指责华盛顿“不使用炸弹，而是通过银行和保险公司，实施一种新型的国家恐怖主义”。她当时指的是美国对这个南美国家实施的制裁，这些制裁阻止了该国通过全球金融体系出售石油。

代理总统的此次访问也是在马杜罗于 1 月 3 日被美国精锐三角洲部队士兵抓获后，重启外交关系进程的下一步。

此后，委内瑞拉重新恢复了与智利、厄瓜多尔、秘鲁、多米尼加共和国和以色列的领事关系，并接待了两位拉丁美洲总统的访问：哥伦比亚总统古斯塔沃·佩特罗在离开纳里尼奥宫之前访问了委内瑞拉，以及最近的巴拉圭国家元首圣地亚哥·佩尼亚访问了委内瑞拉。

特朗普将委内瑞拉问题视为其外交政策上的重大胜利，并反复强调他是在赢得他现在所称的“战争”后才开始掌控该国的。最近一次是在周二他向出席联合国大会的各代表团发表讲话时。

“胜利者将获得战利品，”他说道，指的是五角大楼与私营能源公司 Nabep 签署的协议，该协议旨在获取委内瑞拉 650 亿桶石油储备。

这种强势表现与伊朗战争的僵局以及未能成功调解俄罗斯和乌克兰之间的和平协议形成鲜明对比，而这一切都发生在美国燃料价格上涨以及中期选举前五周他的支持率下降的影响之下。

罗德里格斯似乎正利用这一局面，将自己塑造成一个可靠的合作伙伴，她愿意抛弃马杜罗政府塑造的形象，并以牺牲目前滞留在委内瑞拉境外的反对派领导人玛丽亚·科琳娜·马查多的利益为代价，来巩固查韦斯主义的政治地位。据马查多的发言人称，在罗德里格斯不在委内瑞拉期间，马查多曾三次试图返回委内瑞拉，但均被拒绝入境。

但是，华盛顿的支持是否足以让人忽略罗德里格斯并非通过自由选举当选总统这一事实？对巴西总统而言，答案是否定的。

本周早些时候，路易斯·伊纳西奥·卢拉·达席尔瓦在接受CNN采访时，对华盛顿和加拉加斯近几个月来建立的关系提出了严厉批评。他认为，特朗普已经表明他对这个南美国家扮演着“非常强势的角色”，并声称“委内瑞拉的主权已经终结”。

在采访中，巴西总统表示，如果他处在罗德里格斯的位置，他会举行全国大选，让委内瑞拉人民决定国家的政治走向。在联合国全体会议上，他再次援引了采访中展现的那种强硬言论，捍卫国家主权原则，这与该地区其他国家对委内瑞拉总统选举日期迟迟未定保持沉默形成了鲜明对比。

罗德里格斯将于周四发言，人们对她在这个经常讨论全球性问题的论坛上的演讲充满期待。多年来，查韦斯主义一直依靠对帝国主义的谴责来构建其政治身份，并始终在这个论坛上援引这一观点。

如今，华盛顿的帝国野心通过复兴门罗主义得到了更强有力的体现，并大力推行将尽可能多的移民驱逐出美国领土的举措，这尤其影响了委内瑞拉社区。

在1月3日之前，查韦斯主义者会强烈反对这些政策。但对于德尔西·罗德里格斯来说，情况已经发生了变化。