By Roberto López Sánchez
The US attack on Venezuela in the early hours of Saturday, January 3, 2026, constitutes the greatest US empire aggression against a Latin American country in this century. Donald Trump has violated all international law in force since 1945 and has returned humanity to a scenario similar to that of 1936, when Adolf Hitler began his military aggression against European countries.
We reject this brutal and unjustifiable aggression, even considering the dictatorial nature of Maduro’s government, which stole the elections of July 28, 2024, and ruled as a de facto regime.
At the same time, the US aggression has led to a huge military defeat for the dictatorship. All the purported defense mechanisms that Chávez and Maduro boasted about failed in the most resounding manner. The “new Vietnam” that Maduro bragged about if the US attacked us lasted but a few minutes. The “tomb of the empire” that the gringos would face if they entered the land of Bolívar was reversed in a few hours.
As of today, Monday, January 5, the PSUV government has not given any public explanation for the failures that allowed and facilitated the entry of U.S. forces into Fuerte Tiuna (Venezuela’s main military headquarters), where between 10 and 15 foreign helicopters were observed landing. Those helicopters would have been the ones that carried out the capture of Nicolás Maduro and his wife.
The modern Russian and Iranian missile defense systems did not work, nor did the sophisticated Chinese military communications network. The country is still waiting for Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López to provide a detailed explanation of this attack and the causes of this shameful military defeat suffered by the Republic.
There is not even any official information on the number of Venezuelan military personnel killed in action, and their names, although their large number is known from photographs of corpses at Fuerte Tiuna that have circulated on social media.
Apparently, there were dozens of deaths in the elite battalions of the Bolivarian National Armed Forces (FANB) and the total elimination of the Cuban personnel who were supposed to be protecting Maduro (President Díaz Canel has acknowledged that 32 Cuban soldiers died in combat).
All of this is a clear expression of a disastrous military defeat, never before suffered in the history of the Republic’s armed forces. This defeat is equivalent to the defeat of the Argentine military in the Falklands. The remnants of the PSUV-military regime do not have much road ahead of them.
We may be witnessing the definitive collapse of the Chavista-Madurista regime, which has no choice but to subordinate itself completely to the dictates of the empire in order to survive. Trump has repeated several times in recent days that the United States has taken over the government of Venezuela. He has also warned Vice President Delcy Rodríguez that she will suffer a fate worse than Maduro’s if she does not obey his dictates (which are none other than the free and blatant plundering of our natural resources).
On Saturday, Trump suggested the immediate swearing in of Delcy Rodríguez as acting president, before the Supreme Court of Justice ruled on Saturday night. This is the first time in our history that a foreign president has determined who should lead Venezuela. On the other hand, in response to Trump’s threats, Rodríguez issued an extremely complacent statement in which she offered to maintain “cooperation for development” with the United States and made no mention of the attack or demanded the return of Maduro and his wife.
In short, Delcy Rodríguez is inviting the power that just bombed us to invest in Venezuela. From discursive anti-imperialism, the PSUV-military dictatorship has completed its destructive work on the Republic and the democratic Constitution of 1999, installing a regime completely subjugated to the empire. Trump even dismissed María Corina Machado and proposed (ordered) the swearing in of Delcy Rodríguez as acting president.
Now we have a pro-imperialist dictatorship, headed by Delcy Rodríguez. With an armed force that has been humiliated and completely subdued, which for now has not even been able to explain how Maduro was captured and why all the Russian, Chinese, and Iranian weapons that were supposed to guarantee the nation’s security failed.
This movie is not only not over, but it is just beginning.
It is necessary for other political actors to influence the course of events. We must demand the enforcement of the 1999 Constitution, which Maduro has violated over the last decade. We must demand the immediate release of all political prisoners and the annulment of the 10,000 political trials against citizens who have been released from prison. We must demand the immediate restoration of wages as remuneration for work.
Thus, we must build a minimum democratic platform or program, with many other points, such as the legalization of the parties that Maduro suppressed, the opening of the closed media, and others as important as those mentioned.
The moment demands public action by democrats, assuming all the risks, to try to save the Republic and prevent the US from turning us into a neocolonial protectorate.
Roberto López Sánchez, PhD in Political Science, Professor at Zulia University.
Maracaibo, January 5, 2026.
Venezuelan Voices 