Venezuela’s new envoy pays court in Washington as US tightens grip

Venezuela’s newly appointed Foreign Minister Oliver Blanco met US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Washington on November 2, in the latest sign of the US’s growing sway over Caracas.

Neither man spoke as they posed for photographers at the State Department, AP reported. The two "discussed progress in the Venezuelan-led reconciliation talks, including institutional reforms that lay the groundwork for free, fair, and credible elections", the department said in its readout, and Rubio urged Caracas to keep releasing political prisoners. It was the first meeting between the two countries' top diplomats since relations were restored in March. But the encounter underlined how lopsided the relationship has become, some analysts say.

"This scene is unprecedented. It looks less like a meeting between sovereign counterparts and more like a protectorate relationship, with Venezuela's foreign minister in a clearly submissive position," said Imdat Oner, a policy analyst at Florida International University's Jack D. Gordon Institute and a former diplomat in Caracas. "Perhaps this is exactly the message Washington wants to send, explaining [former foreign minister Felix] Plasencia's removal."

Ten months after US forces seized former president Nicolás Maduro in Operation Absolute Resolve, Washington sets the pace of Venezuela's transition, holds a stake in a company with rights to almost a fifth of its oil reserves and hosts a stream of its ministers. The readout restated President Donald Trump’s “three-phase plan for Venezuela: stabilisation, economic recovery and political reconciliation, and democratic transition”, which critics say has stalled midway, leaving Chavista figures in power with US blessing.

From Rubio, Blanco went on to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, where the agenda was raising energy output and plugging Venezuela's banks back into the international financial system.

An opposition man at the foreign ministry

Interim President Delcy Rodríguez named Blanco, 34, to the post on October 29, replacing Félix Plasencia after three months. A former youth leader of opposition party Acción Democrática, Blanco ran communications for the opposition-controlled National Assembly under Henry Ramos Allup in 2016. Since February, he has been deputy foreign minister for Europe and North America, a job that put him in the room when Rodríguez met Trump at the UN General Assembly in September.

He said he remains independent of the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV). On X, Blanco said he had discussed "bilateral relations, regional challenges, cooperation and energy security between our countries" with Rubio, and "access to multilateral financial organisations and opportunities for bilateral economic cooperation" with Bessent. Bessent said Washington would back Venezuela's economic recovery, help revive critical sectors and reconnect its financial system.

The 2027 question

The meeting came two weeks after the interim government and opposition negotiators agreed a blueprint for electoral reform that would allow a vote at some point in 2027. Under a roadmap Washington endorsed in late October, Rodríguez would declare the presidency vacant in 2027, once a new Supreme Tribunal of Justice and National Electoral Council are in place, opening a six-month window to call elections, El Nacional reported.

The talks pit a government delegation led by National Assembly speaker Jorge Rodríguez, the interim president's brother, against Dinorah Figuera of the opposition-led legislature elected in 2015. Three rounds since August have freed more than 1,000 political prisoners, lifted blocks on more than 70 news websites and set a December target for 32 new Supreme Court magistrates. Jorge Rodríguez had floated 2030 as a possible election date.

Opposition leader María Corina Machado, the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize laureate who gave her medal to Trump, returned on October 25 after 10 months abroad and is campaigning for a presidential vote next year. Rubio "has set out a sequence of events aimed at moving toward a democratic transition that makes clear the holding of presidential elections in 2027", she said. But her party, Vente Venezuela, has no seat at the negotiating table.

Two surveys published in April and May put Machado ahead of Rodríguez. She took 44% in spontaneous voting-intention polling in May, far outstripping Rodríguez, and a Meganálisis poll in April gave her more than 70% in head-to-head scenarios. Rodríguez has answered her return by casting herself as a reformer from inside the system. "Judge me by my actions," she said in a televised address on October 29, promising elections "with the world as witness" but giving no date.

Oil first

Trump has seemed content with Rodríguez, who has so far delivered on Washington's first demand, oil. In recent months, energy Secretary Chris Wright flew to Caracas to sign oil and power deals with Chevron, Eni and GE Vernova. Under a separate pact unveiled in August with North American Blue Energy Partners (NABEP), owned by controversial Venezuelan businessman Alejandro Betancourt, the Pentagon took a 35% stake in a company holding 100-year rights over 17 oilfields with an estimated 65bn barrels of reserves, and the US can buy 20% of its output at cost.

However, the contract does not guarantee the $200bn in royalties and taxes the White House has promised Caracas, and it sends disputes to a federal court in Texas, ProPublica reported. The first NABEP cargo reached Texas on October 27. "We took over Venezuela very successfully, and they sent me a ship full of 1mn barrels of oil as a gift," Trump said, before joking at a rally in Corpus Christi that Venezuela should become the 51st US state.

Machado has grown more critical of Washington, saying the agreement "does not reflect the levels of transparency that Venezuelan society wants", yet she has also pledged to honour legally signed oil contracts, while offering companies the option of moving to better terms under a new regulatory regime.

Her campaign, re-energised by her return to the country, risks upending Washington’s delicate arrangement with Rodríguez, as Venezuelans see little benefit from revived US investment and yearn for a return to democracy.

Trump's approval among Venezuelans fell from 92% in January right after Maduro's abduction, to 47% in April during the period in which he aligned with the interim president, according to Meganálisis, and nearly nine in ten respondents opposed any US support for Rodríguez. In a pointed reference to Machado and to hardline Chavista factions showing discomfort with Rodríguez’s accommodation with Washington, Rubio has warned that attempts to derail the negotiated process through street protests would "do great harm" to Venezuela.

Blanco, meanwhile, offered no timetable. Asked by NTN24 whether elections would come in 2027, he replied: "In another meeting, but I have to go."