For over two decades, Venezuela has been trapped in a slow-motion collapse — economic, social and democratic.
Nicolás Maduro’s regime is a totalitarian criminal enterprise wrapped in the tattered veil of electoral legitimacy. It steals elections, jails opponents and siphons national wealth while leaving millions to scavenge for food, medicine, and basic dignity.
Like a narcissistic child clinging to lies, it blames everyone else for the disasters it alone has caused. There is no pretense left: The regime neither respects the will of the people nor fears it.
Yet what makes the Venezuelan tragedy more painful is the long, failed experiment of peaceful opposition. For 20 years, exiled and domestic leaders urged their people to trust the vote, to queue at polling stations despite knowing the outcome was predetermined.
Their insistence on a democratic solution, in theory noble, became an alibi for paralysis. They had no Plan B. No contingency. No strategy beyond hoping the regime would one day crumble under its own weight, or the United States would intervene.
Last July, that illusion died. The farce of free elections was exposed again, and this time the population responded with resignation, not outrage.
The opposition fractured even further. Some dropped out of the fight altogether; others slipped into a dangerous neutrality. A few even found accommodation with the regime, trading silence for safety, or influence for access.
And the once-prominent figures? What happened to Henrique Capriles or Juan Guaido? And where is Edmundo González Urrutia — the man many inside and outside Venezuela believe actually won the 2024 election? They don’t matter. Not to the regime. Not to the outcome. Not anymore.
In January, Maduro was sworn in yet again, and new parliamentary elections are now scheduled for this month — another exercise in performance, not democracy. Everything appears calm. The world shrugs.
As far as the regime is concerned, all has returned to normal. The voice of the Venezuelan people has been silenced so completely, it no longer matters whether they speak at all.
Policy papers, presentations, short YouTube or TikTok videos and endless virtual conferences arm what remains of the opposition. They have ambitious plans to rebuild the oil sector, overhaul public infrastructure, and restore Venezuela’s crippled health and education systems.
But there is still no credible plan to actually unseat Maduro, and without that, all other blueprints are fantasy.
There is one exception, a single figure who still dares to lead with principle and courage: María Corina Machado. She has stood against the regime with clarity and defiance, refusing to bow or retreat.
But she is alone. The support she deserves is exiled, imprisoned, co-opted, or simply too afraid. Heroism without an army is poetry, not power. And while her moral authority is undeniable, the machinery to turn it into change is nowhere in sight.
The hard truth is this: What would have been a Herculean challenge 10 or 15 years ago has now become a near impossibility. The regime has fused with the state and the criminal underworld, forming a structure so interwoven and self-protective that no internal reform seems plausible.
Venezuela has become a cautionary tale not of revolution, but of decay — the kind that happens slowly, painfully and in plain view. And no one wants to do anything about it.
Neither the U.S. nor regional powers like Colombia or Brazil are eager to get involved. They understand the reality: Once you break it, you own it.
A post-Maduro Venezuela would require decades of rebuilding, not just of institutions and infrastructure, but the very fabric of civil society. That is a burden no other nation wants to shoulder.
The humanitarian crisis is already monumental. Reconstructing the country would cost tens of billions and require political will that simply doesn’t exist in Washington or anywhere else.
So the strategy — if it can be called that — is one of containment. Isolate the regime. Target its worst actors with sanctions. Support civil society at the margins. And hope, one day, for a miracle.
But that miracle isn’t coming. Because after 20 years under this regime, the people of Venezuela have not only endured, they’ve adapted. They’ve learned survival tactics: how to barter, how to navigate black markets, and how to live in silence.
But they haven’t been taught the skills necessary to flourish in a modern democracy. Who is going to teach them that? Who will invest in political education, civic rebuilding and cultural healing that actual change would require?
The answer, sadly, is no one.
And perhaps the most damning indictment of this crisis is the one no one wants to say out loud: If Venezuelans themselves aren’t willing to fight for a different future, why should anyone else do it for them?
This isn’t a case of foreign abandonment alone. This is a nation that has, in part, surrendered.
In the land of Simón Bolívar, the cradle of revolutions that once inspired a continent, the guns have gone silent — not because justice prevailed, but because resistance exhausted itself. The proud regional tradition of patriots rising up against tyranny has been replaced by millions just leaving rather than demanding change.
And so, Venezuela is left to rot in a kind of suspended animation. Too broken to be a threat, too messy to be fixed. The world will continue to send food parcels, issue statements and condemn abuses.
But the calculus is clear: minimize the damage, keep the refugees flowing elsewhere and wait for something, anything, to change.
But that change won’t come from above. It won’t come from Washington or Brussels. NGOs or envoys won’t deliver it. It must come from within. Until then, the world watches. And Venezuela drifts, orphaned by its history and betrayed by both its rulers and its would-be saviors.
Long after Bolívar, the fight for liberty has become a long silence that no one seems ready to break.
Ron MacCammon, Ed.D., is a retired U.S. Army Special Forces Colonel and former political officer at the U.S. State Department who has written extensively on security, governance and international affairs. He has lived and worked in Latin America for more than 20 years and was assigned to the U.S. Embassy, Caracas, Venezuela, from 1999 to 2002.
