Sergio Rodríguez
Gelfenstein, 6/1/2026
Original español: Yo
soñé con aviones, que nublaban el día…
Translated by John Catalinotto
It is quite difficult to
express something new and different from what I have said and written in the
last three days. It seems to me that the most important thing has been that
Venezuela has managed to ensure constitutional continuity in the management of
the state and the government after the kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro.
This, much to the chagrin of the United States, has been verified.
The chain of events in
recent days reflects a solid rule of law and the existence of strong
institutions that guarantee the strength of a country that functions in strict
accordance with its National Constitution. Approved by popular referendum on
December 15, 1999, the Constitution sets out a political, legal, and social
contract that transcends individuals and leaders who are no longer physically
present.
We lost Commander Hugo
Chávez, but before that, on Dec. 8, 2012, he showed us the way. President
Maduro was kidnapped, but he, being foresighted, left us the Decree of External
Emergency so that, in the event of his absence, the country would continue to
function.
Since December 15, 1999,
this country, Venezuela, has been following the path of law and justice in
accordance with its Constitution. To interrupt this path, it is not enough to
assassinate Commander Chávez and kidnap President Maduro. Let's look at what
happened after January 3:
1. That same
day. Approval in the Constitutional Chamber of the temporary absence of
President Maduro. It should be clear that this is not a permanent absence. To
that extent, he remains the constitutional president of the Bolivarian Republic
of Venezuela. Delcy Rodríguez is the vice president and now in charge of the
presidency. Thus, the constitutional thread has been maintained.
This is very important
because European countries and the opposition attempted to argue that new
elections and a “peaceful and orderly transition” were necessary. There will be
no transition here because there has been no change in the regime or the government.
What has happened, I repeat, is legal and constitutional continuity. This is no
minor issue because it will influence the next steps and because, as President
Maduro himself pointed out in his first appearance before the judge in the
United States, he is—according to international law and even U.S. domestic
law—a sitting president who has been illegally kidnapped.
2. On January
3 itself. The Decree of External Emergency signed in advance by President
Maduro comes into force, anticipating a situation such as the one that occurred
in the early hours of that day. The decree restricts freedom of movement and
the right of assembly, provided that these measures are proportionate to the
seriousness of the situation. However, it does not limit the right to life, it
prohibits torture and incommunicado detention. The State continues to guarantee
the right to due process, to defense, and to access to timely information.
3. January 3. Meeting of the National Defense Council (State Public
Powers, Minister of Defense, Chief of the Strategic Operational Command of the
Armed Forces, Vice President of Citizen Security, Councils of Vice Presidents,
Foreign Minister, and some special guests). According to Article 323 of the
Constitution, this body is the highest authority on matters of defense.
4. January 5. The
new National Assembly for the 2026-2031 term was sworn in with the deputies
elected in the last legislative elections on May 25, 2025.
5. January 10. The Vice President, in her capacity as acting
president, will deliver the annual message to the National Assembly and the
country, reporting on the activities of the State during 2025. According to
what President Maduro had previously announced, the fundamental themes of the
message will be: Democracy and Participation; Community Strengthening; Economy
and Production; Security and Defense; and Training and Communication.
Of course, the return of
President Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores will be the top priority. I have
been able to gather some information about what happened. The attacks resulted
in around 80 deaths, including 32 Cuban allies of the president, and that was
just in Fuerte Tiuna. There are other casualties in different parts of the
country, but they have not been counted. Investigations are still ongoing to
detect security breaches. The loss of weapons was minimal because they
had previously been dispersed throughout the country.
President Trump is lying
when he says there were no casualties. There were casualties, but they took the
bodies away and hid them because, having carried out an illegal operation under
U.S. domestic law, he has no way of justifying the deaths of his country's
soldiers.
The U.S. elite have
no inhibitions against killing citizens of any other country in the world, but
they are highly sensitive to the casualties of their own people, in this case
it is in an unauthorized war. Their wounded were transferred in complete
secrecy first to Puerto Rico and then on a secret flight to a military hospital
in Houston, Texas.
At this moment, in
Venezuela, there is territorial control by the people together with the Armed
Forces throughout the country and a military deployment across the entire
national territory. Today, the country is battered and hurt by the kidnapping
of the president and his wife, but in strategic terms, the United States'
action cannot be considered a victory. Even if the operation had a tactical
purpose of achieving certain objectives, the United States did not achieve them
either.
1. It did not succeed in
changing the regime or the government. It was unable to install a friendly
puppet government in Venezuela’s national territory.
2. It did not succeed in
fracturing the Armed Forces, which remain united around the acting president.
3. It did not fracture the
government or the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), which is the
backbone of the political process initiated by Commander Chávez.
4. Nor did it succeed in
seizing Venezuela's natural, energy, and mineral resources.
As [author of “The Art of
War”] Sun Tzu says, “if a strong contender fails to defeat the weak, then he
loses, regardless of the damage he has inflicted.”
The institutional
framework of the state remains strong. This was already evident on the
afternoon of Jan. 3, following the solid and forceful intervention of Delcy
Rodríguez, who has taken on her new responsibility with integrity.
On Monday the 5th,
in an event that received little coverage but was of the utmost emotional,
spiritual, and moral importance, the acting president, after taking the oath of
office before the National Assembly, went to the Cuartel de la Montaña, where
the remains of Commander Chávez rest, to pledge before him to continue his work
and his thinking.
She then went to the
General Cemetery of the South to perform the same ceremony at the tomb of her
father, Jorge Antonio Rodríguez, a brilliant revolutionary leader who was
assassinated in July 1976 after being captured and brutally tortured by the
repressive forces of the representative democracy that ruled Venezuela for 40
years.
It has become clear that
if the United States eventually dares to invade the country, defense plans will
be put into action to repel the aggressor. Not only is the Bolivarian
Revolution active in the streets, but the resistance will continue, even if it lasts
for many years and produces many losses, and the struggle will be fought with a
strategic geopolitical vision. Therefore, the fundamental elements to guarantee
resistance are:
1. Political
unity to defeat the enemy's attempts to divide the Bolivarian Revolution.
2. A people in arms, in a
popular-police-military fusion.
3. Strategic patience, as
reaffirmed by Vice President Delcy Rodríguez in her speech.
4. Nerves of steel, calm
and sanity, so as not to fall for the provocations of the United States, or its
lies and its threats.
5. Maximum awareness that
emerges from political training and organization.
Now, a new battle has
begun, a legal one in the United States. Initial reports from New York indicate
that President Maduro is well prepared and politically strengthened to wage
this new fight in which life has placed him. He has very good lawyers, but above
all, he has the conviction that—even in conditions of extreme adversity—his
cause is just and belongs to the people.
In the last three days,
encouraging events have taken place that could signal a different course from
that outlined by the imperial forces. Given the lack of consistency in the
charges, the U.S. government has been forced to withdraw the accusation that the
president led a non-existent drug trafficking organization called the “Cartel
of the Suns.” It is one thing to construct a farce that the media is eager to
reproduce and quite another to present evidence to prove it.
Likewise, the displays of
solidarity with Venezuela and with President Maduro and his wife, the mass
marches, the statements by political and social organizations, governments, and
leaders from all corners of the globe, could be signaling that, without our
having intended it, the cause of Venezuela and the freedom of President
Maduro—especially given the integrity and dignity he displayed in his first
appearance before the judge—could become an instrument of struggle and
organization for millions of citizens around the world who love justice,
freedom, and independence.
Similarly, we must be
alert to the threat of the United States taking over Greenland.
It is not that I
wish the same fate on the noble Inuit people as we have suffered, but given
that the largest island on the planet is Danish territory and therefore part of
the European Union and under NATO control, it remains to be seen what would
happen under all these circumstances if Trump carries out his threat. Will
European countries judge him in the same way they now judge Venezuela?
Even without
carrying out his intimidation and extortion, Trump is forcing European powers
to take a stand on what would be another clear outrage against what was once
called international law and even today, when this law no longer exists, states
cling to it like an umbilical cord that provides them with a hypocritical
attachment to life.
If this were not the case,
how can we explain how one of the two most obsequious allies of the United
States in the world, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, demanded that Trump
provide explanations for his operation in Venezuela? As the old saying goes,
“when you see your neighbor's beard on fire, put yours in water.
These are events that are
beginning to emerge in a world that was shaken on Jan. 3. Since Aug. 19, I have
stated countless times that an invasion of Venezuela by large units of the U.S.
armed forces did not seem possible.
However, I also said on
several occasions, such as in September during the Workers’ Party (PT) seminar
in Mexico, that: “Notwithstanding the above, we cannot rule out the possibility
that the United States will carry out some other type of terrorist action
against Venezuela. In this context, its big problem is how to get out of the
conflict it [the U.S.] got itself into with a ‘victory’ that allows it to
demonstrate to its public opinion that the action taken made the United States
safer. That is not so difficult in the face of public opinion that has been
dumbed down by the media.”
On Oct. 12, I said: “What
we are seeing is the parallel development of a psychological war that is
reaching all parts of Venezuela and the world. This psychological warfare aims
to create division and panic, to try to cause some kind of chaos that will provoke
internal confrontation and thus be able to take advantage of the disorder to
kidnap and/or assassinate leaders and officials with special tactical
operations.”
I have also always said
that this situation will be resolved in Venezuela and the United States. It
will not be China or Russia or anyone else who will resolve this confrontation.
These and other countries have been sincere allies and friends of Venezuela. We
appreciate that, but beyond statements of condemnation and rejection and
Security Council meetings whose resolutions are useless because the United
States vetoes them, they will do nothing more. They have their own problems and
their own issues. Venezuela does not seem to be one of them.
We will resolve it
ourselves if we are able to resist, but the real decision will be made in the
United States, where almost 70% of citizens reject Trump's declared war against
Venezuela, even repudiating his decision to override the authority of Congress,
as he himself has said, when he also proposed as a new mission to assassinate
the president in charge of Venezuela.
Just two weeks ago, I
wrote an article in which I characterized the U.S. government as Nazi. Some
considered it an exaggeration. In it, I gave the disputes, among them that
“...Nazi ideology is characterized by ultra-nationalism and supremacism, which
establish the existence of a superior race that must expand based on hatred
against so-called ‘inferior beings’; totalitarianism that imposes absolute
control of the state, as Trump seeks to do by minimizing and undermining
Congress, the courts, and other branches of power; militarism that involves the
exacerbation of military force and aggression as instruments of expansion and
war; and finally, anti-communist and anti-liberal ideology in opposition to
socialism and democracy…”
Today, not only the U.S.
people, but also a large part of the media that retains some semblance of
decency, and even the elite, repudiate Trump for the events of Jan. 3. They do
so not out of love for Venezuela or President Maduro. They do so because Trump
is on track to destroy the political system of the United States and, with it,
the hegemonic system of world domination that the U.S. rulers have built since
the end of World War II.
That does concern them,
and they will take extraordinary measures to save it. Citizens will have to
wait until November to express their opinion at the polls. If Trump is
defeated, his base of support will weaken and the Republicans will have to take
a position. These 11 months will be extremely dangerous. It is not only the
fate of Venezuela or Latin America that is at stake, but the future of
humanity.
During World War II,
humanity united against Nazi-fascism. Today, part of the planet, including some
major powers, seems comfortable coexisting with the Nazi government of the
United States. They seem preoccupied with their own problems while accepting that
Latin America and the Caribbean are the “backyard” of the United States.
Many things will happen in
the coming years. We must be prepared for them. Contrary to what one might
assume, I am optimistic because I learned from Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro
that a revolutionary, when he believes in the people, always is one. And I feel
confident because, as that extraordinary phrase from Cuban popular dialectical
thought says, “The good thing about this is how bad it is getting.”
In the early hours of Jan.
3, as I woke my son to move him to a safer room in the house, given the
proximity of the place where the democratic missiles of the United States were
striking, I don’t know why, but I remembered Silvio’s words:
“I dreamed of planes that
clouded the day, just when people were singing and laughing the most...” and
immediately I saw the end of his poem, which becomes a song of struggle for the
peoples of Our America: “...if I capture the perpetrator of so much disaster,
he will regret it...”
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