RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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Acting President of Venezuela Delcy Rodríguez on June 16, 2026 at the Miraflores Palace. —Fabiola Ferrero for TIME
Delcy Rodríguez, the acting president of Venezuela, conducts the nation’s business out of the Miraflores Palace, a 19th century neoclassical mansion in the heart of Caracas. Gilded portraits of Simón Bolívar and Hugo Chávez gaze down on the ornate halls. Birds chirp in the manicured gardens. An unusually tight security detail shadows Rodríguez’s every step. The caution is understandable: Not long ago, the U.S. sent a Delta Force unit into her predecessor’s residence on a nearby military base to seize the man she had served for years.
Which may help explain Rodríguez’s careful manner. She speaks regularly with President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio , and her English is nearly flawless. Yet when she sits down with TIME for a rare interview with an American media outlet, she summons a translator. I suggest it would be easier to speak in English.
“When I do interviews, I like to do them in Spanish,” she says.
“I’m not sure that’s best for this one,” I say.
“It is best for me,” she replies with a faint smile.
It’s easy to understand her strategy. Speaking through an interpreter slows the conversation and gives Rodríguez greater control over the words that ultimately reach the page. It is the instinct of a disciplined operator who has spent decades in one of the world’s most unforgiving political systems—and who is now navigating an extraordinary diplomatic moment.
A socialist stalwart who rose through Chávez’s inner circle before serving for years as Nicolás Maduro’s second-in-command, Rodríguez, 57, was among the most recognizable faces of a movement largely defined for decades by its hostility toward the U.S. Today, she is the steward of a remarkable rapprochement with Washington. In exchange for U.S. support, she has allowed Trump and Rubio to turn Venezuela into a de facto vassal state, giving them an unprecedented degree of influence over her country.
In an hour-long interview, Rodríguez insists she is not surrendering Venezuelan sovereignty but opening the country’s economy in the best interests of its people. “I’m starting out by acting in good faith and trusting that these relationships can develop in good faith,” she tells me. “My current and future strategy has always been to ensure peace and tranquility in the country—tranquility and social and economic well-being.”
The nation Rodríguez now governs is not the same country that existed before the raid that captured Maduro. Before his fall, Venezuela was in stark decline: riddled with corruption, teetering on economic collapse, and ruled by an authoritarian who the U.S. and independent international observers say stole his 2024 election. Hyperinflation had wiped out citizens’ savings. Oil production, the lifeblood of the economy, had plummeted after years of graft, underinvestment, and sanctions. Nearly 8 million Venezuelans had fled, fueling the largest migration crisis in the history of the western hemisphere. Rolling blackouts, water scarcity, crumbling hospitals, and shortages of food and medicine had become routine. Once among Latin America’s wealthiest nations, Venezuela had devolved into one of its poorest.
Since Rodríguez’s ascension in January , signs of recovery have begun to emerge. Construction cranes have reappeared over parts of Caracas. Store shelves are fuller. Dormant oil fields are stirring back to life. American companies—including ExxonMobil , ConocoPhillips, Halliburton, and GE Vernova—have returned or begun negotiating new investments. Commercial flights between the U.S. and Venezuela have resumed for the first time since 2019. The dollar circulates openly. Foreign executives, diplomats, and investors are filling hotels—the lobby of the JW Marriott is now a gathering place for oil executives, while at the more exclusive Cayena Caracas, impeccably dressed financiers and government officials mingle amid polished marble and soft jazz, discussing exploration rights, infrastructure contracts, and Venezuela’s future.
All this has come at a price. Under an arrangement overseen by Rubio , the U.S. has become deeply involved in Venezuelan state affairs. In an arrangement described to TIME by three senior U.S. and Venezuelan officials, the U.S. Secretary of State supervises the framework governing Venezuela’s oil revenues and public finances, effectively administering a joint fund that gives Washington influence over everything from how the country’s export earnings are allocated to the reopening of the energy sector to preferential treatment for American companies. Rubio and Rodríguez are in near daily contact through phone calls and WhatsApp messages, officials say. Rodríguez consults him on domestic appointments, including her selection of a Defense Minister, according to three officials familiar with the arrangement. “Basically, you have what they call the Rodrígato operating,” says James Story, a former U.S. ambassador to Venezuela under Presidents Trump and Biden, describing an arrangement in which Rodríguez’s government remains in power while carrying out Washington’s strategic priorities. “They are doing everything that we ask them to do.”
Washington and Caracas now cooperate on intelligence and counternarcotics operations too. In June, the partnership resulted in the killing of Niño Guerrero, the leader of the transnational criminal organization Tren de Aragua, at his compound in Venezuela’s Bolívar state. Rodríguez says Venezuela supplied the intelligence that located Guerrero and deployed forces on the ground, enabling the U.S. airstrike. “The important thing is that there are opportunities for joint cooperation,” she tells me. “Against drug trafficking, for example, and against transnational organized crime. That is very important to us.” Thousands of political detainees have been released under an amnesty framework encouraged by the U.S., while negotiators contin...
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