This week, Nicolás Maduro’s regime in Venezuela worked overtime to manufacture relevance and resilience. The news cycle began with diplomatic chest-beating: as the opposition’s María Corina Machado pressed her advantage ahead of a possible challenge, Maduro’s government announced a resumption of consular services with Uruguay, turning bureaucratic paperwork into a PR parade.
Yet the real theater is always energy. As US sanctions continue to bite, major Western firms like Chevron and Repsol quietly wind down operations in Venezuela—a shift the Maduro government is spinning as proof of “imperialist failure.” Meanwhile, state media insist that, sanctions or not, Venezuela remains open for oil business, and Maduro is quick to blame Washington for every layoff and power cut.
If oil is the engine of Chavismo, international posturing is its fuel. Caracas condemned Israeli airstrikes on Iran, reaffirming “unconditional solidarity” and using the Middle East crisis to cast itself as a defiant pillar in the axis of sanctioned states. The regime also seized on regional news—like Colombian president Petro’s accusation of a US-backed coup plot—to stoke its well-worn narrative of external threats and “Bolivarian resistance.”
Meanwhile, domestic challenges fester. As Uruguayan and Venezuelan officials traded smiles for the cameras, Venezuelans themselves remain mired in blackouts and shortages, caught between Maduro’s diplomatic pageantry and the grinding reality of everyday authoritarian decay. International press, from the Miami Herald to The Globe and Mail, highlighted the gap between the regime’s “resurgence” and the grim facts on the ground.
The Bolivarian experiment endures, but only as a pageant of defiance, paranoia, and desperate spin. In Maduro’s Venezuela, global crises are content for state TV, oil is always political, and every handshake is another claim that the revolution is still alive—even if everyone knows the lights are flickering.