The Latest Breaking News from Hugo Chávez

Since American forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, plunging the country into uncertainty, there have been hopes for a transition to democracy, the stabilization of its economy, a reduction in drug trafficking and conditions that might allow millions of Venezuelans abroad to return home.

From 1999 onwards, successive governments pursued a strategy linking foreign policy, state financing and the management of the country's main industry. The result was a network of bilateral alliances that channelled much of Venezuela's crude outside conventional buying and selling circuits.

President Donald Trump says American intervention in Venezuela will bring billions of dollars of investment in the country's infrastructure, a revival of its once-thriving oil industry and a new age of prosperity for the Latin American country

There is palpable tension: not because anyone trusts the president and the US, but because now there is opportunity for change, says historian Jesús Piñero

Donald Trump’s operation in Venezuela has shocked the world – but the news was greeted with cautious celebration by exiles from the Maduro regime in London

Though petro-giants have long sought lost assets in the South American country, they have reasons, for now at least, not to leap at Trump’s invitation to join his war on the climate and the international legal order.

Footage of a handcuffed Nicolás Maduro being escorted to a Brooklyn detention center will come as uncomfortable viewing for political leaders in Havana.

The United States military recently carried out a covert operation to capture and then remove Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, transporting them from Caracas to New York. The pair is accused of narco-terrorism, conspiracy, drug trafficking and money laundering.

The Cuban leadership has lost a critical economic ally in Nicolás Maduro, and likely US oil embargo could deepen the island's economic crisis. But according to an expert, it is unlikely to bring people to the streets.