WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said he held a “long call” with Venezuela’s interim leader Delcy Rodriguez, the first known direct contact between the two since the ouster of Nicolas Maduro, signaling a new phase in U.S.-Venezuela relations that blends cautious engagement with continuing pressure over human rights.
“We just had a great conversation today, and she’s a terrific person,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. In posts on social media, he said the pair discussed “many topics,” including oil, minerals, trade and national security, adding, “We are making tremendous progress.” He has suggested the United States could maintain oversight of the Caribbean country for years.
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Rodriguez, who has been attempting to steer a fraught transition while navigating factions aligned with Maduro’s security apparatus and paramilitaries, described the exchange as “productive and courteous” and marked by “mutual respect” in a message on Telegram. She said they discussed a “bilateral work agenda for the benefit of our people, as well as outstanding issues in relations between our governments.” Earlier, in her first press conference as interim president, Rodriguez said Venezuela was entering a “new political era” with more room for ideological diversity.
The call comes as Venezuela continues a trickle of political prisoner releases that Washington has demanded for months. Under U.S. pressure, dozens have been freed in the past week, though rights groups say hundreds remain behind bars. Rodriguez claims a total of 406 political prisoners have been released since December in a process that “has not yet concluded.” Foro Penal, a legal rights organization representing many detainees, offered a much lower estimate of about 180. An AFP tally based on data from NGOs and opposition parties recorded 70 releases since Maduro’s fall; the former president was taken to the United States to face trial on alleged drug trafficking charges.
The latest releases included 17 journalists and media workers, among them Roland Carreno, a prominent opposition activist detained in August 2024 after post-election unrest. Carreno, a leader in the Popular Will party who was previously jailed from 2020 to 2023 on a terrorism charge frequently used against government critics, called for “peace and reconciliation” in a video posted by another freed journalist.
Authorities have moved to avoid jubilant scenes outside detention centers that could energize the opposition, quietly freeing detainees at alternate locations. Carreno was released at a shopping mall; former presidential candidate Enrique Marquez, one of the first to be freed, was driven home in a police patrol car. Relatives of detainees have continued to wait outside facilities in Caracas’ Boleita district for word of additional releases.
A U.S. State Department official confirmed that American citizens were among those released, without specifying how many or from which facilities.
Trump is also scheduled to meet Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, whose pro-democracy movement he has largely sidelined in recent months. Machado, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last year for her activism, collected the award in Oslo after fleeing Venezuela by boat. She has not returned home.
Trump has publicly complained about not receiving the prize himself, calling the decision a “major embarrassment” for Norway, and suggested Machado might offer to share her award during their meeting. “I understand she wants to do that. That would be a great honor,” he said in a recent Fox News interview. The Nobel Institute has reiterated that the prize cannot be transferred from one person to another.
The emerging diplomacy — a direct presidential call, measured prisoner releases, and an opposition leader’s high-profile meeting at the White House — underscores the delicate, high-stakes recalibration underway in Caracas and Washington. For Rodriguez, the task is to meet U.S. conditions for normalization without provoking a backlash from Maduro loyalists who remain embedded in the state. For Trump, the promise of “tremendous progress” hinges on tangible human rights gains and a credible path to stability, even as he signals that U.S. oversight in Venezuela could endure for years.
What happens next will be measured less by rhetoric than by numbers: how many more prisoners walk free, how quickly institutions are opened to political competition, and whether the early gestures on both sides lead to durable changes in a country emerging from years of repression and crisis.
By Abdiwahab Ahmed
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
