Venezuela's interim President Delcy Rodriguez at a press conference in Caracas, April 13. Juan Barreto/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Is Venezuelan dictator Delcy Rodríguez, Washington's woman in Caracas, as the Trump administration claims? Or is she a chavista stand-in for former strongman Nicolás Maduro, intent on preserving the socialist dictatorship?
Every day the latter looks more plausible. President Trump can still do something about it. But time isn't on his side.
Ms. Rodríguez told the nation in an April 8 economic speech that to fight inflation she will approve only a "responsible" minimum wage increase on International Workers' Day, May 1. Coming from a communist, that seems like a courageous step toward common-sense reform. But don't get too excited. What matters to Ms. Rodríguez is her survival, and for that she needs the backing of the criminal insiders who run the country. She continues to nurture them.
After the U.S. military captured Mr. Maduro in January and brought him to New York to face drug-trafficking charges, Mr. Trump approved Mr. Maduro's deputy, Ms. Rodríguez, as interim head of state. The goal was to preserve the chain of command in law enforcement and the military and avoid chaos. But Mr. Trump was emphatic that the U.S. would run the country.
More than 100 days into Ms. Rodríguez's new job, freedom is still a dirty word for the government. According to Foro Penal, a Venezuelan nongovernmental organization that monitors the criminal-justice system, the regime holds 477 political prisoners, including 187 members of the military. Many of those who have been released are under gag orders. The amnesty law passed by the National Assembly in February is a fraud. Opposition leader María Corina Machado is under threat of arrest if she returns to her country. Even if American policymakers don't care about human rights, civil liberties or democracy, the risks to U.S. security interests posed by a regime with a record of working to destabilize the Western Hemisphere can't be denied.
Ms. Rodríguez mouths some of the right lines about the importance of oil and gas and mining and cutting red tape. But talk is cheap, and the cancer of collectivism has metastasized throughout the economy. The country needs an overhaul of regulation, labor law and the central bank. Ms. Rodríguez, who was a major player in the repressive Maduro regime and was subjected to sanctions by the first Trump administration in 2018, is part of the problem, not the solution.
In January Secretary of State Marco Rubio proposed a three-phase strategy for Venezuela: stabilization, recovery and transition to democracy.
Phase one has been all upside for Ms. Rodríguez. The U.S. decision to lift its ban on Venezuelan oil exports has sent hard-currency revenue flowing back to Caracas, albeit under U.S. control. The economy is forecast to grow 4% this year.
The recovery phase, now under way, requires a meaningful change of personnel. But so far there are no signs that Ms. Rodríguez is on board. Quite the opposite. Her new defense minister is a former head of the shadowy intelligence agency responsible for untold human-rights violations. The former defense minister, a Putin ally, has been tapped to run agriculture. Diosdado Cabello, who is under U.S. indictment for drug trafficking, remains interior minister. The paramilitary, known as the colectivos, still roam the streets as Bolivarian enforcers. The best Ms. Rodríguez could do at the central bank, which generated 475% inflation last year, was replace the president with the vice president.
Last week Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control eased sanctions when it issued a new general license to let U.S. persons engage in dollar transactions with some Venezuelan state financial institutions. Venezuela has made almost no political concessions in return.
Ms. Rodríguez gets along well with Chevron, which has a history of lobbying the Trump administration for special licenses to work with the dictatorship. The American oil company stayed in Venezuela in 2007 after other big players left, and it's pouring more capital into the country. But most investors are holding off until they see real reform.
In her April 8 speech, Ms. Rodriguez acknowledged the economic collapse that led to the mass emigration of both the Venezuelan professional class and the poor. But did that have anything to do with the confiscation of private property and independent media, central-bank incompetence, the politicization of the national oil company, gross corruption, rampant crime or the government's use of food as a political weapon?
Not in her narrative. The late dictator Hugo Chávez fought for social justice but his project came undone as a consequence of U.S. sanctions, she explained. The blame lies with "the blockade," the term Cuba uses for sanctions. She demanded all be lifted.
Ms. Rodríguez recognized that hyperinflation has destroyed Venezuelan living standards. Two cheers for that. But if the leader of the "recovery" continues to parrot socialist bromides and surround herself with other thugs, there's not much hope for the future.