JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Secretary of State Marco Rubio says talks to begin a process of democratic transition in Venezuela could start as soon as next week. The talks would involve members of Interim President Delcy Rodríguez's government and some opposition politicians, but not Maria Corina Machado, the Nobel Prize winner who is widely considered to be the main leader of the Venezuelan opposition. Here to help us learn a little more about how this process might unfold is Laura Cristina Dib. She's the Venezuela Program Director for the think tank Washington Office on Latin America, or WOLA. Welcome.
LAURA CRISTINA DIB: Thank you so much for your invitation.
SUMMERS: So just to start, what do we know about this democratic transition process and who's involved?
DIB: I think it's important to kind of take a step back and see how we got here. So first in May, members of the opposition, including Maria Corina Mattel (ph), met in Panama, and they issued the Panama Manifesto, saying that Maria Corina Mattel was open to a negotiation as long as the opposition that won the 2024 elections was a part of it. However, then the June earthquakes took place, and that created a crisis that I think pushed for a democratic process because the opposition, and I think the U.S. also, realized how Venezuela did not have institutions able to actually protect its citizens.
And then it was in July when this process was announced with the National Assembly of 2015 and the National Assembly of 2025, which was not democratically elected, and it's led by the brother of Delcy Rodríguez. In this process that was immediately backed by the United States, Maria Corina Mattel is not a part of this process. So they issued a statement over the weekend saying, we were not a part of the design of this process. We will not be a part of the negotiation, but we won't be an obstacle for the process.
SUMMERS: OK. I want to talk here about the role that the U.S. is playing. The U.S. and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are said to effectively control Venezuela at the moment. Is this Rubio's plan?
DIB: I think that's pretty accurate. In fact, in the negotiation process, the U.S. is the one not only pushing for the process, but kind of the owner of the circus, as we would say in Spanish. And that is problematic in the sense that the U.S., at the same time, is backing Delcy Rodríguez, who is part of an authoritarian government. The government still holds over 500 political prisoners. The media is not free in Venezuela. There are no conditions yet for free and fair elections. So I think part of the question is, yes, the U.S. is supporting a process of negotiation, but will it lead to a free and fair election? That is the question that we are all wondering.
SUMMERS: Why do you think it is that Maria Corina Machado is being left out of this process? Is it because she's now on the outs with the Trump administration?
DIB: I do. I think she has been critical of the approach of the administration. I think having Maria Corina Mattel as part of the process is a nonstarter for the members of the interim authorities. And let us remember that the relationship between the U.S. and the Venezuelan interim authorities is very much mediated by economic interests. So the U.S. is playing its cards and trying to hold a good relationship with a government that, as I've mentioned before, is authoritarian and very much corrupt.
SUMMERS: By my count, it's been nearly seven months since U.S. troops swept into Venezuela in the middle of the night, arrested then-President Nicolás Maduro. Did you expect it to take this long, this many months for some sort of transition talks to take place?
DIB: Not at all. I actually do think that both the U.S. and the interim authorities have dragged their feet, and that's why I mentioned the earthquakes of...
SUMMERS: Yeah.
DIB: ...June 24. The discontent of the Venezuelan people calling for institutions that could actually protect them, I think that has created an opportunity and a push towards this. Jorge Rodriguez, the head of the National Assembly, said after the earthquakes, we don't have any headspace to think about elections, and a week later, this process of negotiation was announced, and I think the U.S. has a lot to do with that.
SUMMERS: As we watch this moving forward, I wonder, how do you think we'll know whether this is a realistic attempt at a democratic transition or whether this is the U.S. and the current government in Caracas just paying lip service to the idea of a democratic transition?
DIB: I think you just hit a nerve. How will we know if this is a genuine process? The unconditional release of political prisoners. Second, you need a new National Electoral Council. You still have the National Electoral Council that conducted the fraud of 2024. You need an update of the electoral registry; mechanisms for all candidates to be able to participate, meaning lifting the bans that have been imposed on some members of the opposition; actual international observation. I mean, there's just a series of steps that civil society has put forth, as well as the opposition. And those are benchmarks that should be the benchmarks also for the U.S. administration.
SUMMERS: That was Laura Dib, Venezuela Program Director for the Washington Office of Latin America. Thank you.
DIB: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
