Maduro Wants Out

Dear all,

We welcome you to the Greater Caribbean Monitor (GCaM).

In this issue, you will find:

• Maduro Wants to Escape Trump. Here’s How it Could Happen

• The Silent Chinese Colonization of Peru

• A Razor-Thin Election: Honduras’s High-Stakes Transition

• What We’re Watching

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The GCaM Team

Maduro spent years insisting he would outlast every foreign attempt to remove him. But the events of the past weeks show a president who has finally begun negotiating the terms of his own political afterlife.

In perspective. The turning point was the short, blunt phone call he placed to Donald Trump on November 21, 2025. Maduro asked for a full legal clean slate before leaving power: immunity for himself and his family, the removal of all U.S. sanctions, protection for more than 100 senior officials, and even an end to his case at the International Criminal Court. He also proposed that Vice-President Delcy Rodríguez run an interim government while new elections were organized.  

• Trump rejected almost everything. He offered only a one-week window for Maduro to flee Venezuela with his family. That deadline passed without movement. 

• Washington responded by closing Venezuelan airspace — a symbolic but unmistakable sign that the United States was preparing to escalate pressure.

Between the lines. The conversation leak revealed Maduro’s desperation, but the Telegraph reporting published days later exposed the full extent of it. In that call, Maduro not only asked for amnesty but allegedly requested USD 200M as part of his proposed exit package—money he claimed would be used for “security,” but which U.S. intelligence officials interpreted as a personal safety fund for exile. Maduro is not negotiating political reforms, but preparing for permanent departure and personal protection.

• Behind the scenes, diplomats in Bogotá, Brasilia, Mexico City and Madrid say Maduro’s representatives have quietly tested possible asylum routes. 

• Turkey and Qatar have signaled willingness to receive him; Spain is cautious but not dismissive; Russia remains a rhetorical ally but an impractical refuge. 

• Lula and Sheinbaum have little appetite to defend him, and Petro remains a rhetorical ally—or more a U.S. critic—but he wouldn´t go as far as to defend him. The regional shield chavismo relied on for years has faded dramatically.

Why it matters. If Maduro is looking for an exit, the question becomes what kind of exit he has in mind and what kind Washington is prepared to accept. Maduro’s ideal scenario is a negotiated exile that preserves the political and economic ecosystem he built. In practice, that means a successor aligned with chavismo —most likely Delcy Rodríguez—and a transitional arrangement that keeps loyalists embedded across security institutions, PDVSA contracts, border control, and intelligence services. 

• Maduro would leave, but the system would continue to operate in a form recognizable to the political class that has governed Venezuela since 2013.

• The United States envisions something very different. The Trump administration has positioned Maduro’s departure not as a negotiation but as a condition. Safe passage is on the table, immunity is not. 

• Washington prefers a transition that excludes the top tier of chavismo and creates a government with genuine distance from the security and financial networks that Maduro has nurtured. 

What could happen. The airspace closure, the terrorism designation applied to the Cartel de los Soles, and the raised bounties serve this strategy. They are meant to shrink the negotiation space, not expand it. Between these two visions lies a hybrid possibility: Maduro leaves the country, but chavismo survives through institutional footholds. This is the scenario many Venezuelan analysts quietly consider the most realistic. 

• The security establishment would negotiate guarantees that protect mid-level officers; PSUV would rebrand itself for a post-Maduro environment; and a transitional authority would organize elections.

• Loyalists have already been shifted into less visible but more durable posts; state-linked companies have begun moving assets abroad; intelligence units have been repositioned under operators personally loyal to Maduro rather than to the party; and diplomatic intermediaries have increased their outreach to Qatar, Turkey and Spain. 

• None of this looks like a project of long-term governance. It looks like contingency planning.

In conclusion. The most reasonable interpretation is that Maduro has accepted he will leave power. The uncertainty now lies in how and under what terms. A full amnesty deal is unlikely, and a chaotic ouster is possible but not the default. What remains most plausible is a negotiated departure without immunity, followed by a transition in which chavismo struggles to retain relevance while the U.S. pushes for a break from the system Maduro built.

• For the first time in a decade, Venezuelan politics feels suspended between an ending and an unknown. Maduro is not negotiating his mandate anymore. He is negotiating his landing.

China is building a quiet maritime empire off Peru, and the map makes it visible. A dense wall of vessels hugged the entire Peruvian coastline in 2024, concentrating on one of the most productive fishing grounds on the planet.

• Of the boats plotted, 525 are Chinese-flagged—more than all Peruvian vessels combined—turning Peru’s EEZ frontier into an offshore industrial belt dominated by a single foreign power.

Why it matters. This isn’t normal competition. China operates the world’s largest distant-water fleet, responsible for roughly half of global industrial fishing. In the South Pacific jumbo flying squid fishery—the largest squid fishery on Earth—Chinese jiggers account for the bulk of effort.

• Peruvian squid landings have fallen by around 70 percent, while local fishers report Chinese ships “fishing day and night” along the 200-mile line, often with tracking systems switched off.

• Squid that once cost four soles per kilo now sells for six times that, pricing poor households out of what used to be their cheapest protein.

Between the lines. The imperial dimension lies in how Beijing combines economic muscle, regulatory arbitrage, and political influence. When Peru briefly tightened controls—requiring foreign vessels to carry Peruvian satellite devices—Chinese ships simply re-based to Chilean ports, keeping their presence on the fishing grounds while avoiding Peruvian monitoring. At the same time, Chinese fleets re-flag vessels under local registries, gaining “nearshore supremacy” inside national quotas while the catch still flows back to China. What looks on the map like “other flags” is, in many cases, Chinese capital wearing a local disguise.

• Inside Peru, the pattern is even more troubling. The navy’s shipyards service Chinese vessels that have been caught or suspected of illegal fishing elsewhere, and naval officials have publicly defended the fleet, echoing talking points from the Chinese embassy that blame El Niño—not overfishing—for the collapse of squid.

• Senior officers have signed cooperation agreements with China’s coast guard, while dismissing domestic complaints as “imaginary.” In practice, Peru’s own guardians of maritime sovereignty have become service providers for the very armada that is emptying Peruvian waters.

In conclusion. The result is a de facto monopoly over a strategic food resource. Chinese companies secure cheap access to protein for their own market and for re-export, while Peruvian artisanal fleets are pushed into deeper poverty or out of the sector altogether.

• What the map shows is not just fishing effort; it is a projection of power—an informal colonial perimeter at sea, built not with bases and troops, but with steel hulls, AIS-dark squid jiggers, and captured local institutions.

The Honduran elections have drawn unusually high international attention. President Trump’s public endorsement of National Party (PNH) candidate Nasry Asfura, coupled with the political shockwaves of his recent pardon of former president Juan Orlando Hernández—convicted on drug-trafficking charges in a U.S. federal court—has sparked debate about the administration’s antinarcotics narrative.

• The race itself has tightened into a scenario where decimal points matter, feeding uncertainty at home and scrutiny abroad. Amid this tension, the credibility of Honduras’s electoral institutions once again sits at the center of regional concern.

In perspective. The erosion of Libre mirrors the same structural weaknesses that once undermined the National Party. Libre’s decline stems from replicating the very practices it previously condemned—political capture, internal factionalism, and governance failures—eroding the contrast it offered against the PNH and collapsing its reformist narrative.

• The National Electoral Council (CNE), the election’s umpire, has become the strategic arena where parties attempt to shape or contest the rules of the game, turning administrative procedures into political weapons—especially Libre, the socialist ruling party.

• The TREP rapid-count system has emerged as a focal point of mistrust. Its limited functionality and perceived illegitimacy trace back to the obstruction of minimal consensus within the CNE, driven largely by Marlon Ochoa, Libre’s key political operator inside the institution.

The electoral race. A contest defined by volatility has now exposed the ruling party’s internal fractures. Libre entered election night already weakened, but its collapse accelerated when multiple government officials publicly conceded defeat—directly contradicting candidate Rixi Moncada, who insisted in her post-electoral press conference that a thorough vote review would lift her numbers due to what she described as systemic inconsistencies.

• The official tally to date shows Nasry Asfura at 40.20% (1,129,597 votes) and Salvador Nasralla at 39.65% (1,109,371 votes)—a razor-thin gap of fewer than 21,000 votes—while Moncada remains a distant third with 19.31% (542,455 votes), making any pathway to victory mathematically implausible.

• The congressional map reveals a structural reconfiguration since the last election: the National Party rises from 44 to 50 seats, the Liberal Party from 22 to 40, and Libre collapses from 50 to 34, with minor but not decisive gains and losses among smaller parties in a 128-seat Congress. This distribution signals a return to constrained bipartisanship, offering a clearer—though not frictionless—governance path for whichever candidate secures the presidency.

Between the lines. The real confrontation now shifts from the public arena to the granular mechanics of the vote. The next phase will center on acta-by-acta challenges—the unit of counting—a labor-intensive process in which both major coalitions will attempt to secure marginal gains through meticulous scrutiny of contested tally sheets.

• Nasralla’s pressure to accelerate the count—underpinned by memories of his 2017 mass mobilizations—introduces a destabilizing element: while intended to protect his narrow lead, it risks undermining an electoral process that has, thus far, operated with unusual fairness and institutional discipline.

• The CNE now carries the institutional burden of advancing the count at maximum speed without yielding to political pressure, whether from Nasralla’s increasingly assertive demands or from Rixi Moncada, whose unusually subdued posture contrasts sharply with her historically combative style.

Regional echoes. The international landscape quietly shapes the stakes of Honduras’s election aftermath. The United States maintains a structural interest in Honduran stability through the Palmerola air base—its power-projection platform in Central America—at a time when Daniel Ortega’s unusually muted posture in Nicaragua may reflect concerns about a potential domino effect following Venezuela’s looming military escalation.

• U.S. attention is also anchored in the ZEDEs—Honduras’s special economic zones—where figures tied to American strategic industries, including investor Peter Thiel, a heavyweight in AI and national-security circles, hold significant stakes.

• For Washington, political turbulence in Tegucigalpa intersects directly with broader competition over technological, logistical, and territorial influence in the region.

What lies ahead. The post-electoral phase will hinge on how power reconfigures itself around the next president. If Asfura secures the presidency, partisan discipline inside the National Party will be tested by the eventual return of Juan Orlando Hernández: even after the party’s deliberate narrative distancing, the former president’s gravitational pull raises questions about whether Asfura would govern autonomously or under the shadow of a power broker capable of tugging internal strings from behind the curtain.

• If Nasralla wins, the challenge is equally complex. His long-standing anti-corruption and anti-narcotrafficking platform would logically demand action against the former president.

• Doing so, however, risks antagonizing both Washington’s strategic calculus and the PNH bases he would need to stabilize governance. His first dilemma would be whether to prosecute—and how to survive the political shockwave that would follow.

What We’re Watching 🔎 . . .

Sheinbaum has high approval ratings, but her government’s troubles are starting to take a toll [link]

Ernesto Núñez, El País

President Claudia Sheinbaum still enjoys remarkably high approval—74%—but her first major month of crises has punctured the sense of invulnerability that defined her first year in office. According to the Enkoll poll for EL PAÍS, her approval dropped four points after a sequence of shocks: the assassination of Uruapan’s mayor, Gen-Z–driven protests, and unrest among transport workers and farmers. Younger voters show the sharpest disillusionment, with approval falling to 61% among those aged 18–24.

Public perception of national progress also hit its lowest point since December 2014, with 34% now saying the country is worsening. Her strongest areas remain social programs and women’s rights, but insecurity, corruption, and economic anxiety are eroding confidence. The poll suggests Sheinbaum retains dominant political capital, yet the honeymoon is ending—and governance risks are beginning to accumulate.

How the U.S. Focus on Fentanyl Helped Fuel the Cocaine Trade’s Resurgence [link]

Maria Abi-Habib, The New York Times

The U.S. decision to prioritize fentanyl over all other narcotics has inadvertently fueled a historic resurgence of the cocaine trade across Latin America, with Ecuador emerging as the epicenter. As Washington redirected resources toward opioids, Mexican cartels, Colombian guerrilla remnants, European mafias and Ecuadorian gangs built a transnational alliance that transformed the country into what U.S. officials now call a “cocaine superhighway,” moving up to 70% of global supply.

Ecuador, which does not produce cocaine, has become the world’s largest exporter and is now overwhelmed by car bombs, mass killings and cartel rule that recruits children and outguns the state. The Trump administration has escalated maritime strikes on suspected traffickers, but officials acknowledge the build-up is also aimed at pressuring Venezuela. Meanwhile, Ecuador’s navy and security forces remain outmatched, corruptible and under-resourced—illustrating how U.S. strategic blind spots can destabilize entire regions.