Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro appears even more isolated this week after losing two regional allies, Honduras and St. Vincent and the Grenadines, at the polls as he confronts Washington’s naval buildup in the Caribbean.
In Honduras, preliminary results from Sunday’s elections have made one thing clear: Candidate Rixi Moncada, the protégé of leftist President Xiomara Castro, has been relegated to a distant third place in the presidential race with little hope of a victory.
Though votes are still being counted, the race has narrowed to two right-leaning candidates who have promised to cut ties with Venezuela’s government: Salvador Nasralla and Nasry Asfura, who was endorsed last week by US President Donald Trump.
In St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves, a staunch supporter of Maduro, lost an election last week after almost 25 years in power. The country will now be led by center-right politician Godwin Friday, whose party won 14 of the 15 seats in Parliament.
These results, coupled with previous political shifts across Latin America, indicate the region’s move away from Venezuela’s once-popular populist movement known as Chavismo. It was founded by President Hugo Chávez, who died in office in 2013, and continued by Maduro.
Even countries governed by left-wing or center-left leaders – such as Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Colombia – have limited their ties with Maduro’s Venezuela, especially after its disputed 2024 elections. Maduro was declared the winner in his reelection bid despite evidence to the contrary.
A shifting landscape
While Venezuela has remained in roughly the same position after more than 25 years of Chavismo, countries in the region have swung between left- and right-wing leaders.
Colombia, which shares a long land border and a transnational drug-trafficking problem with Venezuela, has always had a rocky relationship with its neighbor. Under the current presidency of Gustavo Petro, that partnership has teetered.
Early in his admiration, Petro reestablished diplomatic ties with the Venezuelan government, but he now appears to have distanced himself from its leader. Last week, Petro told CNN that Maduro has no links to drug trafficking, as the US has claimed, though he acknowledged that the Venezuelan president’s problem is a “lack of democracy and dialogue.”
Venezuela’s relationship with Argentina has deteriorated over time. During the left-wing presidencies of Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007) and his wife, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (2007-2015), Caracas and Buenos Aires experienced a resurgence in diplomatic ties, with increasing trade and support. But dialogue was practically cut off after Mauricio Macri, a center-right businessman, was elected president in 2015, and even more so after the 2023 election of Javier Milei, a self-described libertarian who says he hates socialism.
In recent years, other Latin American countries have also shifted to the right and away from Maduro, including Ecuador, El Salvador and Bolivia.
Relations with Brazil have ranged from friendly to antagonistic. During the leftist governments of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-2010) and Dilma Rousseff (2010-2016), ties with Caracas flourished, but they soured during the right-wing administrations of Michel Temer and Jair Bolsonaro, a far-right Trump ally. Relations were restored when Lula da Silva returned to the presidency three years ago – though not to the same level.
If the situation in the Caribbean escalates into a larger conflict, Venezuela would have only a handful of remaining friends in the region, and it’s unlikely any of them would be useful.
Cuba, a longtime adversary of the United States, has been a loyal ally of Venezuela since Chávez came to power, and remains so to this day.
Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez told CNN in late September that Cuba “fully and completely supports” the government of Venezuela. But when asked whether Cuba would respond to a US attack on the country, the foreign minister avoided answering directly: “It’s a hypothetical scenario. When you inform me that a US military intervention has occurred, I will let you know.”
The battered Communist island, which is going through one of its biggest economic crises in recent memory, is in no position to provide military aid to Venezuela, and beyond Rodríguez’s statements, Cuba has remained on the sidelines.
Venezuela’s other friend is Nicaragua, a small Central American nation, led by Daniel Ortega. The controversial president has long been accused of human rights violations, allegations he strongly rejects.
Ortega has been mostly silent during this tense time and has offered no help to Venezuela. In late September, though, he condemned the US military buildup in the Caribbean, claiming Washington was trying to “seize Venezuelan oil by fabricating a story that cocaine comes from that southern country.”
Although Maduro is increasingly isolated in Latin America and his old friends are preoccupied with their own problems, the effects of a potential conflict are very difficult to predict in a region that has long had a love-hate relationship with the United States.
With more than a dozen warships and 15,000 troops in the region as part of what the Pentagon has branded “Operation Southern Spear,” Trump held a meeting at the White House on Monday evening about next steps on Venezuela, sources familiar with the matter told CNN.
On Sunday, Maduro responded to the US pressure campaign with a familiar, defiant message: “It’s been sanctions, threats, blockades, economic war, and Venezuelans did not cower. Here, as they say, everyone put on their boots and went to work,” he said.
Since he succeeded Chávez as president in 2013, Maduro has grown accustomed to living one day at a time, especially in the many crucial crises that only led to him tightening his grip on power, people who have dealt with him directly told CNN.
“He’s preparing for a round of negotiations, so he will not give up any card in his deck unless he’s forced to,” a diplomat in Caracas told CNN last month, asking to speak anonymously due to the confidential nature of the conversation.
It is a tactic forged from years on picket lines, and it means that Maduro, a former union boss, is effectively betting that the White House is bluffing. The Venezuelan leader is all too aware that US public opinion, and Trump’s base in particular, has a very low appetite for foreign interventions.
