‘It’s utter surrealism’: Venezuela’s Chavistas lament government’s embrace of Trump

Original article by Camille Rodríguez Montilla in Caracas and Tom Phillips in Rio de Janeiro

He was one of the most passionate propagandists for Hugo Chávez’s Bolivarian revolution: a feisty leftist TV personality who spent more than two decades singing the movement’s praises on his state-funded show, The Razorblade.

Mario Silva’s devotion was such that he often hosted his programme with Chávez’s portrait behind him and he had El Comandante’s curly signature tattooed on to his left wrist.

But nine months after Venezuela’s political landscape was scrambled by Donald Trump’s abduction of Chávez’s heir, Nicolás Maduro, Silva’s show has been cancelled, and its host is livid about the revolution’s direction under Maduro’s former deputy, Delcy Rodríguez.

“[I feel] a lot of disappointment – depressed … and sometimes I wake up and feel like the world is collapsing around me,” the 66-year-old said during a rare interview at his home studio in the mountains outside the capital, Caracas.

Silva has spent recent weeks railing against Rodríguez’s interim administration on YouTube, his home since his programme on state TV was axed, berating those he blames for Venezuela’s “shameful and utterly illegitimate surrender” to the US.

Since January, a parade of high-ranking US officials – including the head of the CIA, the chair of the joint chiefs of staff and the energy secretary, Chris Wright – have visited Caracas, while Trump recently trumpeted striking “the biggest oil deal in world history” with Rodríguez’s regime. Last week, Rodríguez and Trump met on the sidelines of the UN general assembly, posing for a smiley photograph that left diehard Chavistas such as Silva aghast.

“I thought it [the photo] was artificial intelligence or something like that. But it’s surrealism, utter surrealism … It’s impossible to understand,” Silva fumed on YouTube as a red flag emblazoned with the faces of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and Vladimir Lenin hung behind him.

“They have surrendered this country and surrendered it the most vile and despicable way,” Silva went on. “Honestly, they are dragging the country’s name through the mud. They are dragging Chávez’s name through the mud.”

In another broadcast, Silva seethed about the cosy post-Maduro relationship that has developed between one-time anti-imperialist flagbearers in Caracas and Trump officials: “Traitors and lackeys, you will have to answer for this!”

Silva is not the only Chavista loyalist struggling to comprehend the ideological U-turn being executed by Rodríguez, who was Maduro’s vice-president but has engineered a historic rapprochement with the US since his rendition on 3 January.

Elías Jaua, a vice-president and foreign minister under Chávez, is also up in arms, and claims the feeling is widely shared. “What I hear from comrades across the country is bewilderment, disagreement and indignation,” said Jaua, who believes Trump’s oil deal “amounts to an act of pillage against an entire nation”.

Juan Barreto, a former member of the ruling Socialist party (PSUV) and mayor of Caracas, said such an agreement would have been unimaginable when the Bolivarian revolution began after Chávez’s 1998 election. He said Chavistas, who had once vowed “Not a drop of oil to the empire if Venezuela is attacked!”, were now in effect saying: “All of the oil reserves [for the US], for as long as you want!”

“The current situation is one of tutelage,” Barreto said.

Rodríguez has defended the deal, claiming it will create more than $209bn (£158bn) in revenues that will help improve healthcare and education. “We are thinking of Venezuela’s future,” she said in a recent TV broadcast.

Héctor Rodríguez, another prominent Chavista politician, has sought to deflect criticism of Venezuela’s interim government by recalling how Chávez was forced to make a tactical retreat after his failed coup attempt in 1992. “No one can tell me Chávez was a coward. He understood that the balance of power had shifted … and decided to take a step backwards,” Rodríguez said recently.

​Last week as Delcy Rodríguez met Trump in New York, thousands of people ​joined a pro-government rall​y in Caracas, where supporters parroted the slogan “Delcy avanza, tú tienes mi confianza!” (“Move forward, Delcy. I trust in you!”).

“No matter how much they kick and scream, there’s nothing they can do to try to cover up the success of President Delcy Rodríguez’s visit to New York,” her interior minister, Diosdado Cabello, ​told the crowd. Unlike at previous marches, there was scant mention of Maduro and few calls for him to be released.

The depth and potential consequences of Chavista anger over Rodríguez’s embrace of Venezuela’s longtime foes in Washington remain unclear.

Orlando Pérez, a Latin America expert from the University of North Texas at Dallas, recognised there was indignation at what some considered a sellout of their anti-imperialist ideals. “There are Chavistas that are pissed off, there’s no question about it,” he said. “There are Chavistas who see this as a betrayal of Hugo Chávez and the betrayal of the movement.”

But Pérez believed that for many Chavistas who had remained in power after Trump’s invasion, the “pragmatic reality” was that working with Washington was “a necessary evil” if it meant keeping Venezuela’s opposition out of power.

“If that means negotiating with Trump, if that means dealing with the CIA etc, it’s fine,” he said. “Beyond whatever ideological position they might have … I suspect most of them are gritting their teeth and just going along with this process as long as they can stay in power and keep their jobs. I think for most it’s as simple as that: it’s about their material wellbeing.”

However, Pérez believed Rodríguez’s government would need to demonstrate to supporters “tangible benefits to the cooperation” with the US in order to avoid a backlash. “They’re going to have to show that these things have a material consequence to the lives of their social base … if you don’t deliver, then it is going to get very volatile,” he warned.

So far there has been no sign of significant resistance from outraged supporters of Chavismo. But Silva claimed the government’s new direction and economic policies could eventually trigger a social uprising and protests.

“Worsening economic conditions will degrade [people’s] quality of life, and that pressure is bound to explode. It has to explode – it’s not just wishful thinking. This isn’t a prediction born of desire, it’s an inevitability,” said the broadcaster, who has claimed he is facing investigation for alleged acts of “aggravated defamation and slander against the interim government”.

Silva lit one cigarette after another as he recalled the early hours of 3 January 2026 when, as US troops swept into Venezuela’s capital, he realised the revolution he had spent more than 20 years defending was not going to defend itself.

The Chavista broadcaster said he moved from one strategic point to another across Caracas before finally calling the commander at his assigned post. “I said: ‘Hey, what happened? Where are the weapons?’” Silva recalled, his face settling into a sad grin as he remembered the answer. “Go to sleep, Mario,” he was told.

Silva pauses. “You have no idea how disappointed I was.”