CARACAS—The lush green Ávila mountain range that looms over the city is as imposing as ever, but the political landscape is shifting beneath everyone’s feet. I arrived in Caracas just days before US President Donald Trump and Venezuelan interim President Delcy Rodríguez met face-to-face in New York, at a moment when, after years of economic crisis and authoritarianism, real change suddenly felt possible.
The meeting came and went without resolving the question of when, and under what conditions, Venezuelans would vote for a president again. Rodríguez has since pledged that elections will take place, but no date has been set. With government and opposition negotiators expected to return to the table for a third round in mid-October, the answer may depend in part on whether the progress I saw taking shape in Caracas can hold.
I have visited Venezuela regularly since 2014, speaking with civil society representatives and stakeholders across the country’s political spectrum, and exploring opportunities to advance a peaceful, negotiated transition. Throughout this time, the idea of a democratic transition emerging from political talks has been treated with skepticism at best by foreign-policy analysts in Washington. I’ve often shared this skepticism. But for the first time in over twelve years of studying this country, I walked away from this latest trip hopeful that a negotiated transition is now in reach.
The opening
Venezuela today is not the same country it was just nine months ago, when Nicolás Maduro, after claiming victory in the contested 2024 presidential election and kicking off a brutal repression campaign, still ruled with an iron fist. By the end of 2025, civil society organizations in the country listed over eight hundred political prisoners, and opposition leader María Corina Machado had been forced into hiding.
The change began on January 3, when US special operations forces carried out a military operation to capture Maduro and bring him to face justice. Following the operation, Delcy Rodríguez became Venezuela’s interim leader and moved quickly on some fronts. She replaced more than half of Venezuela’s thirty-four cabinet-level ministers. She reshuffled the military high command and the leaders of much of the security services. And she oversaw the appointment of new officials to institutions such as the Attorney General’s Office and the Human Rights Ombudsman. Rodríguez has also directed the release of hundreds of political prisoners (although in many cases those released remain under house arrest or are obliged to continue appearing before a judge), and she has declared an end to checkpoints that had restricted movement across the country.
With the advice of Washington, Rodríguez has also reshaped Venezuela’s foreign policy. Whereas before Venezuela had emerged as a key Western Hemisphere partner of US adversaries such as China, Russia, and Iran, Rodríguez has worked with Washington to reposition Venezuela firmly within the US geopolitical orbit. Last month, she approved an oil agreement granting the Pentagon a 35 percent stake in the parent company of North American Blue Energy Partners (NABEP), which had acquired concessions to operate seventeen Venezuelan oil fields containing an estimated 65 billion barrels’ worth of crude. Six of those fields had previously been operated by Chinese and Russian companies. Almost every week since then, US and other Western oil companies have announced new plans to deepen their investments in Venezuela’s energy sector.
Yet progress has not come as quickly as many Venezuelans with whom I spoke would like. Venezuela remains far from a rights-respecting democracy. Despite the recent releases, local human rights group Foro Penal currently lists 322 political prisoners still behind bars. Journalists, human rights defenders, and opposition politicians continue to face harassment, and laws that restrict organized political activity, such as the controversial “Law against Hate,” are still on the books. In September, the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission on Venezuela issued a report noting that, while the most blatant forms of repression are rarer, much of Venezuela’s repressive apparatus remains in place. Public frustration has spilled into the streets in recent days, with residents in several states protesting infrastructure neglect amid prolonged power outages and electricity rationing. In other words, Venezuela has begun to open up, but the institutions and legal reforms needed to ensure a genuine democratic transition are still pending.
The change so far
But there is hope that the glacial pace of reforms may be about to pick up. A few days after my arrival in Caracas, representatives of the democratic opposition and members of the interim government kicked off the second round of negotiations meant to put Venezuela on a path toward a democratic transition. The goal of these talks, according to the US State Department, is to “produce tangible progress toward a peaceful and democratic electoral transition,” and US officials have lauded the parties for demonstrating commitment to “strengthen democratic institutions, improve the electoral system, and restore guarantees for political participation.”
While there is still no date set for a presidential vote, government supporters and opposition representatives I talked with in Caracas were cautiously optimistic that the process could open a new chapter in the country. In the first round of these talks, which ended in August, the two sides agreed on a shared framework for talks and established technical working groups focused on both immediate and long-term needs, including funding recovery efforts in the wake of a devastating June earthquake that killed thousands. This agreement has received widespread support from Washington and its allies. Following the agreement, for example, the United Kingdom restored full diplomatic relations with Venezuela, a move that will very likely facilitate the handover of an estimated $4 billion in Venezuelan gold reserves that had previously been frozen by sanctions and the lack of British recognition of the government in Caracas. The two sides have agreed to use frozen funds to benefit earthquake victims, and on September 18, they created a “monitoring commission” to ensure that the accords are implemented in agreement by each delegation.
The other agreements reached in the talks so far have even greater consequences for Venezuelans yearning for a return to democracy. After the first round, the two agreed to “initiate a process that contributes to the transformation of the justice system,” including reforms to the Organic Law of the Supreme Tribunal of Justice (TSJ), and to begin the process of naming an independent committee to replace and appoint all of the country’s supreme court judges. This is significant. As the highest court in the country, the TSJ has effectively rubber-stamped executive decisions for years and served as an extension of the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV). In the wake of the 2024 election, for instance, which independently verified vote tally sheets show was won by the opposition candidate, the TSJ issued a ruling “ratifying” Maduro’s alleged victory while presenting no evidence. By naming a new high court with judges on whom both the government and opposition can agree, the PSUV’s ability to carry out such blatant electoral fraud would be drastically reduced.
When the second round of talks concluded on September 25, the two sides announced agreements to accelerate the lifting of blocks to independent news websites and other digital media, open a discussion on broadening the free press, and establish a seven-member council of jurists to review the credentials of Supreme Tribunal candidates, in order to advance the formal Judicial Nominations Committee process. The government also released an additional thirty-nine political prisoners.
Other reforms to pave the way for democratization are also in the works. Venezuelan opposition negotiators and US officials have said the goal of the talks is not only to boost the independence of the justice system, but also to overhaul the National Electoral Council (CNE), which oversees elections in the country. Comprehensive electoral reform will require replacing the five current national CNE rectors and auditing the voter registry. It will also require allowing the nearly eight million Venezuelans who have fled the country to vote in a future presidential election. Together, these reforms could begin to restore the body’s ability to serve as an independent electoral arbiter across all of Venezuela’s twenty-three states.
Opposition sources close to the talks have underscored to me that free and fair elections will ultimately be about more than just election-day logistics. Bans preventing politicians and political parties from participating in elections must be lifted. Party leaders must be allowed to organize and campaign freely across the country without fear of retaliation. This includes the country’s most popular opposition politician, María Corina Machado, who has in recent years borne the brunt of the government’s repression of opposition figures, forcing her into hiding and leading to the arrests of her closest advisors.
Much has been made of the fact that neither Machado, who is currently outside the country, nor her faction of the opposition has been given a seat at the table. But both she and her party almost certainly understand that, whether she sits at the table or not, she has tremendous capacity to guide the outcome of the talks indirectly. With a 53 percent approval rating according to a recent Atlas Intel poll, and with hundreds of her supporters rallying to demand her return and immediate elections in late September, she remains the most popular politician in Venezuela by far. That popularity effectively gives her veto power over any final agreement. So far, however, she has left room to judge the process by its result, a show of measured support, and has recently echoed opposition negotiators’ goals to see the appointment of a new CNE and TSJ as part of the talks.
The change still to come
Begun in August and expected to run through at least the end of the year, the talks must see additional, measurable progress. Opposition negotiators say that they hope to use the talks to dismantle key tools in the government’s repression toolbox, including the Law Against Hate, broad anti-terrorism laws, and another law restricting the registration and funding of non-governmental organizations. In addition, they say that they intend to secure the release of remaining political prisoners and dismissal of charges against those who have been released from captivity but continue to face prosecution.
There have been signs that progress is already being made on this front. On October 5, the government announced that the Law Against Hate would be reformed and created a committee of lawmakers to revise it. Prior to that, on September 16, the government announced a series of preliminary concessions that appear to be designed as a show of goodwill toward the process: the attorney general announced an end to the use of official social media channels to accuse opposition activists of criminal activity without a trial, and the minister of communications announced an end to routine internet restrictions that blocked access to certain independent news sites, nongovernmental organization pages, and social media platforms for Venezuelans. By the following day, at least ten previously blocked digital news sites, including Efecto Cocuyo, El Pitazo, and Runrunes, were accessible again through the main internet service providers in the country, although many other independent media outlets report that their sites remain inaccessible.
Taken together, these measures are baby steps. By themselves, they don’t represent irreversible progress, but they are evidence that the negotiations have some momentum. While there is an understandable sense of fatigue regarding dialogue efforts in Venezuela—there have been at least six internationally facilitated attempts to organize transition negotiations in the country since 2014, and each one failed to restore its democratic institutions—the Venezuelans I spoke with share a sense that this time may indeed be different. Still, agreements must be verified and monitored to ensure compliance.