A brief power vacuum had emerged in Venezuela in the sudden chaos and confusion after the abduction of President Nicolas Maduro by the United States.<\/p>\n
But shortly after the US military rained strikes down on Caracas and other areas on Saturday, US President Donald Trump \u2013 in a surprise snub against Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who was awarded last year\u2019s Nobel Peace Prize \u2013 noted that Vice President Delcy Rodriguez, 56, had been sworn in as interim president.<\/p>\n list of 4 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n The right-wing Machado \u2013 who had cosied up to Trump, especially after her October Nobel win, an honour that he himself coveted and she dedicated to him \u2013 was described by the US president as not having enough support or \u201crespect\u201d to be Venezuela\u2019s leader.<\/p>\n Trump said Rodriguez had talked to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and was \u201cessentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cI think she was quite gracious,\u201d Trump added. \u201cWe can\u2019t take a chance that somebody else takes over Venezuela that doesn\u2019t have the good of the Venezuelan people in mind.\u201d<\/p>\n However, Rodriguez\u2019s remarks soon after the strikes and abduction were diametrical: She criticised the US military action as \u201cbrutal aggression\u201d and called for Maduro\u2019s immediate release.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is only one president in this country, and his name is Nicolas Maduro,\u201d Rodriguez said defiantly on state television as she was flanked by top civilian officials and military commanders.<\/p>\n Who, then, is the current acting president of Venezuela?<\/p>\n A Caracas native, Rodriguez was born on May 18, 1969. She is the daughter of left-wing rebel fighter Jorge Antonio Rodriguez, who founded the Socialist League party in the 1970s. Her father was killed while tortured in police custody in 1976, a crime that shook many activists of the era, including a young Maduro.<\/p>\n Rodriguez\u2019s brother, also named Jorge, also holds a key role in government as the head of the National Assembly.<\/p>\n She is an attorney who graduated from the Central University of Venezuela and rose rapidly through the political ranks in the past decade. Rodriguez has a long history of representing on the world stage what late President Hugo Chavez called his socialist \u201crevolution\u201d with those carrying on his legacy referred to as Chavistas.<\/p>\n She served as communication and information minister from 2013 to 2014, foreign minister from 2014 to 2017 and as the head of a pro-government Constituent Assembly, which expanded Maduro\u2019s powers, in 2017.<\/p>\n Rodriguez is sometimes perceived as more moderate than many soldiers who took up arms with Chavez in the 1990s.<\/p>\n Rodriguez\u2019s roles as finance and oil minister, held simultaneously with her vice presidential post, have made her a key figure in the management of Venezuela\u2019s economy and gained her major influence with the country\u2019s withered private sector. She has applied orthodox economic policies in a bid to fight hyperinflation.<\/p>\n Maduro added the oil ministry to Rodriguez\u2019s portfolio in August 2024, tasking her with managing escalating US sanctions on Venezuela\u2019s most important industry.<\/p>\n \u201cThis high profile within the government is what has likely made the negotiation attractive to the United States,\u201d Caracas-based journalist Sleither Fernandez told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n Rodriguez developed strong ties with Republicans in the US oil industry and on Wall Street who balked at the notion of a US-led change in Venezuela\u2019s government.<\/p>\n Among her past interlocutors were Blackwater security company founder Erik Prince and, more recently, Richard Grenell, a Trump special envoy who tried to negotiate a deal with Maduro for greater US influence in Venezuela.<\/p>\n Despite being perceived as more moderate, Maduro has called Rodriguez a \u201ctiger\u201d for her die-hard defence of his socialist government.<\/p>\n When she was named vice president in June 2018, Maduro described her as \u201ca young woman, brave, seasoned, daughter of a martyr, revolutionary and tested in a thousand battles\u201d.<\/p>\n After Maduro\u2019s abduction on Saturday, Rodriguez demanded the US government provide proof of life for Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, and minced no words in denouncing the US actions.<\/p>\n \u201cWe call on the peoples of the great homeland to remain united because what was done to Venezuela can be done to anyone. That brutal use of force to bend the will of the people can be carried out against any country,\u201d she said in an address broadcast by the state television channel VTV.<\/p>\n The Constitutional Chamber of Venezuela\u2019s Supreme Court later on Saturday ordered Rodriguez to serve as acting president.<\/p>\n The court ruled that Rodriguez will assume \u201cthe office of President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, in order to guarantee administrative continuity and the comprehensive defence of the Nation\u201d.<\/p>\n According to Fernandez, certain constitutional guarantees may be restricted for the time being, which implies that the acting president\u2019s public powers may be limited.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n A brief power vacuum had emerged in Venezuela in the sudden chaos and confusion after the abduction of President Nicolas Maduro by the United States. But shortly after the US military rained strikes down on Caracas and other areas on Saturday, US President Donald Trump \u2013 in a surprise snub against Venezuelan opposition leader Maria […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7488,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latin-america-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7487\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
Revolutionary roots<\/h2>\n
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![\"(FILES)](\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/afp_695a4406b7d4-1767523334.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C513&quality=80\")
A \u2018tiger\u2019<\/h2>\n
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