🎙️ Podcast: How Trump’s Venezuela play reshapes South America’s risk map

In Latin America, 2026 quite literally got off to an explosive start. Just before sunrise on January 2, the city of Caracas was violently awoken by the noise of bombs, as US forces launched a sudden, high-intensity strike on the Venezuelan capital. Within hours, President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were in American custody — flown out of the country and headed to New York to face criminal charges.

The Venezuelan government has provided no official death count from the strikes, but they are believed to be in the dozens — at least 40, per some accounts.

Even by Washington’s standards, this was extraordinary. US President Donald Trump later described the operation as being like a TV show. And in many ways, it was. 

According to US officials, intelligence agencies had tracked Maduro’s movements for months. The planning was meticulous and secretive. The US Congress wasn’t briefed and lawmakers weren’t consulted. Once the details were locked in, senior military officials waited patiently for the right moment to strike.

What followed was a 2-hour-and-20-minute operation involving air, land and naval forces — a level of coordination and precision that stunned officials in many countries, sending shockwaves across the globe. In scale alone, it was something Latin America hasn’t seen in decades.

Maduro’s capture didn’t come out of nowhere. Since September, the US had been steadily escalating pressure, carrying out dozens of strikes against vessels accused of trafficking drugs across the Caribbean. Analysts say the military buildup was the most significant in the region since the Cuban Missile Crisis.

And it aligns neatly with Washington’s new worldview. In its latest National Security Strategy, the US no longer frames Latin America as a partner. Instead, the US describes it as a buffer — a region expected to stop migrants, narcotics and Chinese influence before they reach US shores.

Shortly after the operation, US Attorney General Pam Bondi released an unsealed indictment accusing Nicolás Maduro and his wife of narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine trafficking and weapons offenses.

Hours after Maduro’s arrest, Trump said the United States would “run Venezuela” — offering no details, no timeline and no explanation of what that would actually mean.

Venezuela is home to the world’s largest oil reserves, and Trump put oil at the center of his Venezuela operation.

As Vox’s Eric Levitz commented: in the past, critics denounced US wars of choice as imperialist schemes to seize foreign oil — while the president insisted they were really attempts to spread democracy. Now, critics denounce such wars as attempts to spread democracy, while the president insists they are really imperialist schemes to seize foreign oil.

But Venezuela hasn’t updated its pipeline network in 50 years, and the country’s oil is particularly dense and sticky. Its reservoirs haven’t been maintained, and processing tar-like sludge is tough. Some believe it would take nearly a decade and dozens of billions of dollars in investment to make it profitable. And with the current oil prices, that becomes more challenging.

Back in Caracas, the Venezuelan Supreme Court moved quickly, naming Vice President Delcy Rodríguez as interim head of state. At first, Rodríguez struck a defiant tone, insisting Venezuela remained in control — rhetoric US officials dismissed as being aimed at a domestic audience. 

They seemed vindicated when, soon after, Rodríguez floated the idea of a “cooperative agenda” with Washington. And that’s where things get murky.

Right now, far more is unclear than settled. It could take days, weeks, or even months before the regional consequences fully come into focus.

To help us make sense of it all — and especially what this means for Brazil, at home and abroad, our guest is Thiago Vidal, director at Prospectiva, a Brazilian political consultancy. He is a political scientist specializing in Latin America and has a master's degree in policies and public management for development. 

In this conversation, he unpacks the impacts of the United States’ actions in Venezuela on: