19 May 2026
https://joeemersberger.substack.com/p/delcy-has-overthrown-chavismo

Lede: The betrayal of Alex Saab is a betrayal of Chavismo

Nicolas Maduro's government mobilized people in Venezuela and around the world
to support Alex Saab. He was a special envoy (a diplomat) for Maduro who helped
Venezuela avoid murderous U.S. sanctions. Despite being subjected to torture in
Cape Verde (where he was illegally detained) then extradited to the U.S. where
he was subjected to its notoriously sadistic prison system, Saab did not betray
Maduro. Indeed Saab was made a minister in Maduro's government after he returned
to Venezuela through a prisoner exchange that was negotiated with Biden.

Surrender not retreat
Delcy Rodriquez, became the acting president after Maduro was kidnapped by Trump
in an attack on Caracas that massacred over a hundred people. Though dismayed by
her policy of swallowing humiliation by Washington, I was convinced by comrades
to see this a strategic retreat, to see it as Delcy waiting things out, avoiding
the installation of U.S.-backed fascism under a genocidal lunatic like Maria
Corina Machado, and avoiding a costly war against the US or its Venezuelan
proxies.

I don't regret being convinced of that. I don't believe, as some people say,
that it was obvious from the outset that Delcy was doing a surrender rather than
a strategic retreat. Almost all governments in the world are small and weak
compared to the U.S., so even the most anti-imperial ones endure humiliation at
Washington's hands to some extent. Chavez and Maduro certainly did with their
tolerance of U.S. -backed subversives in Venezuela, and that was
understandable. It was not necessarily wise, mind you, but it was
understandable. Cuba has endured a U.S. torture camp on its own soil in
Guantanamo. Even countries as strong as Russia and China have let the U.S. get
away with things.

But shipping Alex Saab to the U.S. is as inexcusable as turning somebody over to
Nazi Germany in the 1940s. It reveals that all morality and honour have been
cast aside, and that the only consideration is appeasing Washington. Remarks
made by Delcy and Diosdado Cabello defending their hand over of Saab to the
U.S. have been risible.

An indirect betrayal of Maduro
Saab will now be tortured in the U.S. to help Trump prosecute Maduro. Saab will
endure this hardship in a more desperate situation than the first time he was in
the clutches of the U.S. Now he knows that the Venezuelan government he served
has betrayed him while his former ally, Maduro, is also in jail. Maybe that will
make Saab desperate enough to say what his U.S. captors want to hear. Maybe it
won't, in which case Saab will even further expose the depravity of Delcy
handing him over.

It doesn't wash anymore to say that defending Delcy counters defeatism. It's the
opposite. People who defend her now have to argue that nothing but surrender is
possible. To be consistent, they'd have to depict all US vassals as blameless
victims with no agency of their own.

Cont'd ...