Havana/After the capture of Nicolás Maduro, power in Venezuela has not been left in the air. As usually happens in highly centralized regimes, the replacement was planned. Delcy Eloína Rodríguez Gómez, until now executive vice president, took over as “president in charge” in a move that can be summarized as “a king dead… queen crowned.” For the Cuban audience, it is worth stopping to consider who this woman is who today administers the forced transition from Chavismo and why her name is not at all foreign to Havana.
Delcy Rodríguez was born in Caracas in 1969, into a family deeply marked by leftist militancy. She is the daughter of Jorge Rodríguez, historical leader of the Socialist League, who died in police custody in the 70s, and sister of Jorge Rodríguez, one of the most influential political operators of Chavismo. A lawyer by training, Rodríguez built her career not on charisma or popularity, but on ideological loyalty, party discipline and systematic confrontation with the West, virtues highly valued both in Caracas and Havana.
His rise was constant. Chancellor between 2014 and 2018, he became one of the most aggressive voices of Chavismo in international forums, especially before the OAS and the UN. Her sharp and militant rhetoric earned her personal sanctions from the United States and the European Union, but also established her as a trusted figure within Maduro’s inner circle. Since 2018 he has held the Executive Vice Presidency, a position from which he has controlled key areas such as economy, oil, foreign relations and, no less important, dialogue with strategic allies.
Delcy Rodríguez has not only visited the Island on multiple occasions, but has become one of the main managers of the Caracas-Havana axis
Among these allies, Cuba occupies a central place. Delcy Rodríguez has not only visited the Island on multiple occasions, but has become one of the main managers of the Caracas-Havana axis in recent years. He has met repeatedly with Miguel Díaz-Canel, has held meetings with delegations of the Cuban Communist Party and has participated in negotiations related to energy supply and bilateral cooperation. For the Cuban Government, Rodríguez represents a guarantee of continuity: a leader trained in the same political language, with the same distrust of pluralism and a deep understanding of the value of repression as a tool of stability.
That alignment became clear after the protests of July 11, 2021 in Cuba, when Delcy Rodríguez publicly expressed her support for Díaz-Canel and justified the repression against the protesters. At that time, he did not appeal to nuances or calls for dialogue, but rather unreservedly embraced the official Cuban narrative of an “attempted soft coup” and “foreign interference.” That position placed her, unambiguously, in the same political and moral field as the ruling Castro regime.
In Venezuela, his figure arouses mixed reactions. For the opposition, Delcy Rodríguez is neither a moderate nor a pragmatic technocrat, but one of the architects of the Chavista control system, involved in decisions that have deepened the country’s economic and social crisis. It has been singled out for its role in opaque financial operations, in the management of international sanctions and in the articulation of alliances with actors such as Russia, Iran and Türkiye. For the harshest sectors of Chavismo, however, it embodies the continuity of the Bolivarian project.
Its prominence after the fall of Maduro could not imply, therefore, an opening or a break, but rather a closing of ranks. This was quickly understood by Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, who this Saturday expressed his immediate support for the Venezuelan Government and Delcy Rodríguez, denouncing what he described as US aggression. The message was clear: Havana is betting on it as guarantor of its interests in Caracas.
However, President Donald Trump has made it clear that Washington will direct the Venezuelan transition and take care of the country’s oil management, a tutelage that no one knows how it will fit into the nationalist and anti-imperialist rhetoric that Rodríguez has maintained until now. The American president assured that his Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, had had a “long conversation” with the then vice president. In the words of the Republican, the Chavista leader was willing to collaborate with the United States.
Only in the next few hours will it be known whether the lawyer chooses to promote the dismantling of the US regime and administration in the oil sector or maintains her confrontational speech against the White House. Havana is very attentive to every nuance in his words, to every gesture of approach or rejection that Rodríguez makes towards Trump and to any statement that strengthens the alliance with Cuba or cools it.
On the other hand, Marco Rubio has made clear that he does not care about words, but about actions: Washington will work with the current Venezuelan Government if it makes the “appropriate decisions” and will evaluate those who currently exercise power in the country “by what they do”, not by what they say.
It could be the guarantee that, despite the blow suffered with the capture of Maduro, Chavismo does not dissolve, it is rearranged, and it does so under reliable figures for the Cuban apparatus.
For Castroism, the name of Delcy Rodríguez is more than just an institutional replacement. It could be the guarantee that, despite the blow suffered with the capture of Maduro, Chavismo does not dissolve, it is rearranged, and it does so under reliable figures for the Cuban apparatus, with guarantees of economic support and of prolonging the official missions that keep thousands of Cubans in the South American nation. It is no coincidence that Rodríguez has been one of the main defenders of maintaining oil cooperation with the Island, even in the moments of greatest economic asphyxiation for Venezuela.
In a Cuban key, the question is not only who Delcy Rodríguez is, but who she will be from now on. Everything indicates that she could behave as a crisis administrator, not a reformist; a manager of the liquidation of Maduro, not of a genuine democratic transition. Her record shows a leader prepared to negotiate from toughness, not from concession. But in a context like Chavista, where opportunism and simulation have been rewarded for decades, no one knows his true face.
For Havana, Delcy Rodríguez was until yesterday a known ally, but now she is beginning to be the great unknown that must be resolved as quickly as possible.
