A brief power vacuum had emerged in Venezuela in the sudden chaos and confusion after the abduction of President Nicolas Maduro by the United States.
But shortly after the US military rained strikes down on Caracas and other areas on Saturday, US President Donald Trump – in a surprise snub against Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who was awarded last year’s Nobel Peace Prize – noted that Vice President Delcy Rodriguez, 56, had been sworn in as interim president.
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The right-wing Machado – who had cosied up to Trump, especially after her October Nobel win, an honour that he himself coveted and she dedicated to him – was described by the US president as not having enough support or “respect” to be Venezuela’s leader.
Trump said Rodriguez had talked to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and was “essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again”.
“I think she was quite gracious,” Trump added. “We can’t take a chance that somebody else takes over Venezuela that doesn’t have the good of the Venezuelan people in mind.”
However, Rodriguez’s remarks soon after the strikes and abduction were diametrical: She criticised the US military action as “brutal aggression” and called for Maduro’s immediate release.
“There is only one president in this country, and his name is Nicolas Maduro,” Rodriguez said defiantly on state television as she was flanked by top civilian officials and military commanders.
Who, then, is the current acting president of Venezuela?
Revolutionary roots
A Caracas native, Rodriguez was born on May 18, 1969. She is the daughter of left-wing rebel fighter Jorge Antonio Rodriguez, who founded the Socialist League party in the 1970s. Her father was killed while tortured in police custody in 1976, a crime that shook many activists of the era, including a young Maduro.
Rodriguez’s brother, also named Jorge, also holds a key role in government as the head of the National Assembly.
She is an attorney who graduated from the Central University of Venezuela and rose rapidly through the political ranks in the past decade. Rodriguez has a long history of representing on the world stage what late President Hugo Chavez called his socialist “revolution” with those carrying on his legacy referred to as Chavistas.
She served as communication and information minister from 2013 to 2014, foreign minister from 2014 to 2017 and as the head of a pro-government Constituent Assembly, which expanded Maduro’s powers, in 2017.
Economic prowess
Rodriguez is sometimes perceived as more moderate than many soldiers who took up arms with Chavez in the 1990s.
Rodriguez’s roles as finance and oil minister, held simultaneously with her vice presidential post, have made her a key figure in the management of Venezuela’s economy and gained her major influence with the country’s withered private sector. She has applied orthodox economic policies in a bid to fight hyperinflation.
Maduro added the oil ministry to Rodriguez’s portfolio in August 2024, tasking her with managing escalating US sanctions on Venezuela’s most important industry.
Rodriguez developed strong ties with Republicans in the US oil industry and on Wall Street who balked at the notion of a US-led change in Venezuela’s government.
Among her past interlocutors were Blackwater security company founder Erik Prince and, more recently, Richard Grenell, a Trump special envoy who tried to negotiate a deal with Maduro for greater US influence in Venezuela.
A ‘tiger’
Despite being perceived as more moderate, Maduro has called Rodriguez a “tiger” for her die-hard defence of his socialist government.
When she was named vice president in June 2018, Maduro described her as “a young woman, brave, seasoned, daughter of a martyr, revolutionary and tested in a thousand battles”.
After Maduro’s abduction on Saturday, Rodriguez demanded the US government provide proof of life for Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, and minced no words in denouncing the US actions.
“We call on the peoples of the great homeland to remain united because what was done to Venezuela can be done to anyone. That brutal use of force to bend the will of the people can be carried out against any country,” she said in an address broadcast by the state television channel VTV.
The Constitutional Chamber of Venezuela’s Supreme Court later on Saturday ordered Rodriguez to serve as acting president.
The court ruled that Rodriguez will assume “the office of President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, in order to guarantee administrative continuity and the comprehensive defence of the Nation”.