Maduro won't go peacefully

Dear all,

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

In this issue, you will find:

• Trump and Machado have Maduro against the ropes

• The Iran-Venezuela terrorist affair

• Dina Boluarte incarnates Peru’s institutional collapse

• What We’re Watching

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Best,

The GCaM Team

María Corina Machado’s surprise win of the Nobel Peace Prize last week placed Venezuela’s opposition back in the global spotlight

In perspective. For her supporters, the award recognizes two decades of defiance against a regime that turned one of Latin America’s richest nations into a humanitarian tragedy. For her critics, especially on the global left, it exposes what they call “the hypocrisy” of honoring a woman who—openly and strategically—aligns with Donald Trump’s hardline stance on Venezuela.

• But both readings miss the deeper truth: the fight for Venezuela’s freedom has taken two paths. One is idealistic, civic, and democratic, led by María Corina. 

  
  

• The other is strategic, military, and ruthless, led by Trump.
  
  

• Both embody incompatible temperaments but serve a common goal: ending the world’s longest-standing dictatorship outside of Asia.

The ideal. MCM represents the moral conscience of Venezuela’s democratic resistance. Her rhetoric is one of institutions, elections, and reconciliation—a belief that tyranny can be dismantled by civic courage and international legitimacy. Since 2013, she has built her career on the promise of a democratic transition led by citizens, not soldiers; ballots, not bullets.

• Her Nobel Prize speech echoed that spirit. “We will rebuild Venezuela through freedom and truth,” she said, calling for international solidarity and denouncing the normalization of Maduro’s rule. 

  
  

• Her vision is profoundly liberal: democracy as redemption, freedom as rebirth.

The hard truth. But her movement has been consistently betrayed by the realities of authoritarianism. The 2024 elections—widely seen as fraudulent—crushed any illusion that Maduro could be ousted through conventional means. International observers, including the EU and the OAS, documented intimidation, censorship, and vote manipulation. Even then, MCM refused to abandon the moral high ground.

• Her movement remains, still, a symbol of resistance but lacks the coercive tools to alter the regime’s survival calculus. 

  
  

• The truth, uncomfortable but undeniable, is that Maduro cannot be voted out.

  
  

• The state, military, judiciary, and economy are fused into a single apparatus of control. Idealism sustains morale, but it does not shift power.

It’s realpolitik. Enter Donald Trump. His second administration’s approach to Venezuela is not one of diplomacy or moral outrage; it’s one of strategic internal collapse infusion. The policy’s core assumption is that authoritarian systems fall not by persuasion but by pressure: internal, economic, and military.

• Trump’s recent escalation—declaring an “armed conflict” with Latin American cartels and authorizing lethal operations in the Caribbean—has reshaped Venezuela’s crisis from a humanitarian issue into a matter of hemispheric security. 

  
  

• The U.S. has conducted several maritime strikes on what it claims are Venezuelan “narco-terrorist” vessels linked to the Cartel de los Soles, the criminal network that binds Maduro’s high command.

Hidden in plain sight. The symbolism is intentional. For Trump, Maduro’s downfall is a geoeconomic and psychological operation: cutting off illicit revenue streams, sowing mistrust within the armed forces, and signaling that the U.S. is willing to cross red lines the Biden administration never dared to touch. That pressure is already fracturing the regime’s elite. 

• Maduro’s assumption that Trump’s threats were bluffs has backfired; his inner circle now faces the real prospect of targeted strikes and indictments.

  
  

• It’s brutal, transactional, and effective. Where María Corina inspires, Trump destabilizes. One appeals to inspiration; the other to real results.
  
  

• While moral legitimacy is essential, history shows that few dictatorships collapse without the strategic coercion of a superior force.

Between the lines. These two strategies—idealism and realism—are not opposites but complements. The soft power of María Corina’s movement provides legitimacy, unity, and a political project for the day after. The hard power of Trump’s interventionism provides the leverage to make that day possible.

• Neither can succeed alone. The Nobel laureate’s democratic message needs Trump’s coercive machinery to translate moral clarity into structural change. 

  
  

• Conversely, Trump’s pressure campaign needs MCM’s vision to ensure that Venezuela’s transition is not a mere regime swap but a national reconstruction.

The bottom line. Venezuela’s liberation will not resemble the fall of a dictatorship through elections nor the chaotic regime changes of military coups. It will be a hybrid transition, born of external force and internal legitimacy—of collapse imposed from above and reconstruction led from within. Maduro’s regime is running out of room. 

• The economy is hollowed out, the military fractured, and international patience thin. But he has survived longer than anyone predicted precisely because his enemies have fought on separate fronts: the moral and the strategic.

  
  

• The Nobel Peace Prize recognized the first. The naval strikes represent the second.

  
  

• If Chavismo is to fall, both will be necessary. María Corina Machado gives the cause its soul; Donald Trump, its force. Only together can they end a dictatorship that long ago proved it will not fall to ballots alone.

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Following the recent ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas in Sharm el-Sheikh, the conflict entered a phase of tentative pacification. Hezbollah—a strong ally of Hamas—supported the war effort through a financing scheme rooted in Iranian and international criminal-finance structures operating in Latin America.

In perspective. These networks pose a unique threat to global security dynamics, particularly due to the intertwined involvement of left-wing government officials and unlawful non-state actors. Iran provides roughly 70–80% of Hezbollah’s total funding, while the remaining 20–30% comes from complementary criminal activities—especially in South America.

• The relationship with Tehran, one of Venezuela’s main allies, has deepened amid U.S. efforts to counter terrorism and narcotrafficking through financial and military mechanisms.
  
  

• Consequently, Venezuela has served as an operational and logistical hub for Hezbollah, while Iran facilitates supplies for underground operations such as passport forgery and transportation networks.

  
  

• Hezbollah has thus established narcotrafficking and money-laundering circuits across the region to sustain its overseas war effort.

What’s essential. Within Maduro’s government, a structure of public and private actors functions as intermediaries for Hezbollah in Latin America. In 2008, the U.S. designated Venezuelan businessman Fawzi Kan’an as a Hezbollah financier and facilitator in Caracas and former congressman Adel El Zabayar as a narco-terrorist.

• Through these key figures, Maduro’s regime has acted as an Iranian incubator for insurgent agents abroad, serving as a logistical springboard for arms and newly trained personnel.

  
  

• The anti-U.S. geopolitical alignment between Caracas and Tehran has created a logistics chain enabling illicit financing and narcotrafficking systems to consolidate further.

What follows. Financial networks have become a geopolitical instrument, reshaping incentives for transnational crime and influencing the dynamics of the conflict in Gaza.

• The Venezuelan regime has outsourced political support through the highly profitable narcotrafficking value chain to deepen its alignment with Iran, creating political-logistical synergies for Islamist actors tied to the Axis of Resistance.

  
  

• Narcotrafficking networks have, in turn, found protection and logistical services within Islamist groups and local intermediaries—indirectly supporting war efforts and heightening insecurity across South America.

  
  

• The Trump administration’s military expansion in Latin America responds to a dual challenge: narcotics entering the United States and liquidity flows funding belligerent parties in Gaza.

In conclusion. Venezuela has opened the door for left-wing governments outside the free world to provide political shelter to Islamist and criminal networks in the region. These states now exert a destabilizing influence on the Middle East by supporting, protecting, and promoting transnational crime.

• Narcotrafficking in Latin America has evolved into a profitable geopolitical instrument, enabling foreign actors to pursue their strategic interests while undermining regional stability and global security.

The removal of Dina Boluarte exposes Peru’s enduring governance crisis.

In perspective. The removal of President Dina Boluarte once again highlights the institutional fragility of the Andean nation and a governance crisis that seems to have no end. In a unanimous vote (122–0), Peru’s Congress dismissed Boluarte, declaring her “permanent moral incapacity” to govern. The decision came after a week of national outrage over an armed attack at a cumbia concert in Lima and growing perceptions that the state had lost control in the face of organized crime.

• Boluarte, who assumed the presidency in 2022 following the ouster of former president Pedro Castillo, thus becomes the sixth head of state removed or imprisoned since 2016.

  
  

• Congressional president José Jerí was sworn in as interim president until general elections scheduled for April 2026, although in the current climate of tension and legislative opportunism, he is expected to have little margin to complete his term.

Why it matters. The fall of Boluarte is a symptom of a state that has lost its capacity to govern itself. In a country once seen as a model of macroeconomic stability and market openness, politics has degenerated into a succession of fragile alliances, short-lived leaderships, and a political class detached from ordinary citizens.

• Boluarte’s approval rating fell to just 3%, making her the world’s most unpopular president.

  
  

• Yet Congress, which has become both arbiter and executioner, also lacks legitimacy, with a disapproval rate exceeding 90%.

  
  

• Peru now lives under a democracy without stable leaders or reliable institutions, where political incentives are shaped by survival and electoral calculation rather than national interest.

Historical lens. Peru’s recent history has become a succession of presidents deposed, imprisoned, or exiled. From Pedro Pablo Kuczynski to Pedro Castillo, passing through Martín Vizcarra and Alejandro Toledo, all have fallen due to a combination of corruption, populism, and institutional fragmentation.

• Boluarte, who came to power promising order and continuity, ended up caught in the same cycle: repression, scandal, and political isolation.

  
  

• Her “Rolexgate” corruption scandal and her salary increase amid an economic crisis symbolized a complete disconnect from the population.

  
  

• Even more serious was her inability to confront rising violence. The expansion of transnational gangs and the exponential increase in extortion and murder—more than 2000 cases per month—became the final evidence of a state in decomposition.

Between the lines. Boluarte did not fall solely because of her own mistakes, but because of the perverse incentives of Peru’s political system. Since the 1993 Constitution, Congress has retained broad powers to declare the “moral incapacity” of a president—an ambiguous mechanism that has turned into a permanent tool of political blackmail.

• The absence of solid parties, populist hyper-presidentialism, and a fragmented Congress have produced a de facto parliamentary regime in which no one governs and everyone conspires.

  
  

• Each administration rests on temporary agreements between rival factions that turn against one another at the first political setback.

  
  

• Added to this is a political culture corroded by clientelism and short-termism, where the short life expectancy of any government pushes presidents to seek personal enrichment as quickly as possible.

On the watch. Peru has spent nearly a decade trapped in a structural power vacuum, where the economy survives by inertia and politics sinks into mistrust. Its crisis is not ideological but institutional: a weak state without real parties, an independent judiciary, or elites willing to assume political costs in defense of stability.

• The main danger now is not only instability but also democratic fatigue. When the population stops believing that rules work, populism and authoritarianism start to look like attractive and “viable” solutions.

  
  

• With a discredited Congress and an interim executive without political capital, strategic decisions will likely remain postponed, while real power continues to shift toward informal actors—the armed forces, local strongmen, and organized crime.

  
  

• Without a deep reform that reorganizes political incentives and rebuilds the authority of the state, Peru will remain caught in a cycle of functional instability: not collapsing entirely, but without the capacity to govern effectively.

What We’re Watching 🔎 . . .

Exclusive: US revokes visas of over 50 Mexican politicians in new drug war front [link]

Diego Oré, Emily Green and Stephen Eisenhammer, Reuters

The Trump administration has revoked the U.S. visas of more than 50 Mexican politicians and government officials, most of them from President Claudia Sheinbaum’s ruling Morena party, as part of an expanded anti-cartel strategy. The move represents an unprecedented use of visa policy as a geopolitical tool.

The U.S. is not required to provide reasons for revocations, but officials cited activities “contrary to America’s national interest,” including drug trafficking, corruption, or aiding illegal immigration. While Washington says cooperation with Sheinbaum’s government remains strong, the measure could strain bilateral relations amid trade talks and growing U.S. pressure to take tougher action against cartels operating inside Mexico.

Trump Administration Authorizes Covert C.I.A. Action in Venezuela [link]

Julian E. Barnes and Tyler Pager, The New York Times

The Trump administration has secretly authorized the CIA to conduct covert operations in Venezuela, marking a sharp escalation in Washington’s campaign to oust Nicolás Maduro. The new authority allows the CIA to carry out lethal missions inside Venezuela and across the Caribbean, either independently or alongside U.S. military forces. It comes as the Pentagon drafts plans for potential ground strikes.

President Trump confirmed the authorization Wednesday, saying the U.S. was now “looking at land” after securing control of the seas. The move underscores a strategy led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and CIA Director John Ratcliffe, aimed at collapsing Maduro’s regime through pressure and coercion. Venezuela condemned the action as “a grave violation of the U.N. Charter,” accusing Washington of using the drug war to justify regime change.