The communications minister holds a phone up to a microphone before a gathering of regime-friendly influencers.
On speakerphone is Venezuela’s acting president, Delcy Rodríguez, who claims that when US forces captured the dictator Nicolás Maduro, she and other members of his cabinet were given 15 minutes to decide whether to comply with Washington’s demands – “or they would kill us.”
Rodríguez, the former vice-president who assumed power after the US attack – and has since been praised by Donald Trump for playing along with his demands – says she was doing so only because the “threats and blackmail are constant”. She also concedes that her priority was “to preserve political power”.
Her remarks appear in a leaked recording of the nearly two-hour meeting, which was held in Venezuela seven days after the US attack.
The video, first reported by the local journalism collective La Hora de Venezuela, gives a rare glimpse into the workings of Venezuela’s Chavista regime, and reveals how the country’s rulers rushed to regain control of the narrative after Washington removed its figurehead.
Amid reports that Rodríguez and other cabinet members held talks with the US and its envoys before the attack. , the recording reveals the surviving regime figures’ concerns that they would be branded traitors – and their efforts to prevent their political movement from fracturing from within.
“The only thing I would ask for is unity,” Rodríguez says in her call to the group.
Before putting her on speakerphone, the then communications minister, Freddy Ñáñez, seeks to defend Rodríguez, calling for “gossip, rumours, intrigues and attempts at discrediting” her to be shut down. He argues that she is “the only guarantee we have that … we can bring back the president and the first lady – but also turn the page and reconfigure our forces”.
Rodríguez, who spoke on speakerphone for six minutes, said it “hurt … to have to assume responsibilities in these circumstances”.
She then referred to the US military operation: “The threats began from the very first minute they kidnapped the president. They gave Diosdado [Cabello, the interior minister], Jorge [Rodríguez, the acting president’s brother and congressional president] and me 15 minutes to respond, or they would kill us.”
Rodríguez said that at first US troops allegedly “told us [Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores] had been assassinated, not kidnapped”, and that she, her brother and Cabello replied that they “were ready to share the same fate”.
“And I tell you, we stand by that statement to this day, because the threats and the blackmail are constant, and we have to proceed with patience and strategic prudence, with very clear objectives, brothers and sisters,” she added, before listing three goals: “to preserve peace … to rescue our hostages … and to preserve political power”.
The meeting appears to have been recorded on a videoconferencing platform – most of the influencers were in the room, but others joined online – and it remains unclear how it was leaked. Neither the Venezuelan nor the US governments responded to requests for comment.
Rodríguez has not repeated the allegation of a US death threat, and this week officials in Washington said she would soon visit the US capital.
“We are in a process of dialogue, of working with the United States, without any fear, to confront our differences and difficulties … and to address them through diplomacy,” said Rodríguez on Wednesday.
Since the capture and rendition of her predecessor, Rodríguez has walked a fine line, voicing defiance at home but signalling to Washington that she is ready to cooperate with the Trump administration.
The historian and political analyst Margarita López Maya, a retired professor at the Central University of Venezuela, said it was difficult to know whether there had even been a death threat.
“It may be a narrative Rodríguez herself is constructing to hold the base together, because everyone knows that Maduro’s removal could only have happened with internal complicity,” said López Maya.
At the meeting, the communications minister urged influencers to be “careful” with “purists” who “will come out saying we are handing over the country, the revolution, betraying” Chavismo.
Ñáñez also claimed that “everything happening today”, including US control over Venezuelan oil, “is simply the plan that Maduro put on the table”, adding: “It’s not a concession, a gift or a defeat; selling oil to the US has always been our plan.”
Since the US strike, the regime has maintained a seemingly contradictory rhetoric, flooding social media and Telegram channels with harsh-sounding language against the US while complying with all of Trump’s demands.
“I think what the [Venezuelan] government is really negotiating is how to save its own skin,” said López Maya.
Days after the video was leaked, Ñáñez was named as the environment minister in a cabinet reshuffle.
One of the first moves by his successor, the writer Miguel Ángel Pérez Pirela, was to create a social media account purportedly aimed at “defending the truth about Venezuela against fake news campaigns”, a move that is being seen as another example of how, even without Maduro and amid a rapprochement with the US, the regime remains fundamentally unchanged, marked by repression, hundreds of political prisoners and no timetable for new elections.
“We have two broad options: one is that the country opens up to a democratic transition,” said López Maya. “The other is the one Chavismo is clearly playing with: obeying the US, but trying to buy time to see whether, along the way, they can remain in power through an authoritarian option with some economic openings,” she added.
