Hours before the United States invaded Panama in 1989, opposition leader Guillermo Endara was sworn in as the Central American country’s president at Fort Clayton. Washington had roughly 30,000 troops on the ground and could dictate the outcome. This January, the Venezuelan opposition hoped history would repeat itself. Instead, they now find themselves navigating a far more ambiguous U.S. strategy and praying that the White House hasn’t sold them out entirely.

After years of organizing against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro—often from exile or underground—the opposition, led by María Corina Machado, expected that his removal in January would finally open a direct path to power, especially after Machado wooed U.S. conservatives and offered her Nobel Peace Prize to U.S. President Donald Trump.

Instead, the Trump administration moved quickly to engage regime structures that the opposition had spent years trying to dismantle, working through Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro’s longtime deputy and a member of a powerful Venezuelan political family, and leaving the opposition sidelined at the very moment that it believed history had turned in its favor. Rodríguez, rumor has it, aided the United States in Maduro’s capture to preserve her position.

The opposition, however, hopes that Rodríguez’s rule won’t last long and that the regime will slowly dissolve under further U.S. pressure, but it fears that Trump may be happy to leave the Venezuelan government in place if it plays along. An initial round of White House-backed talks between the government and a faction of the opposition has now produced its first tangible concession: an agreement to replace Venezuela’s entire Supreme Court, long packed with chavista loyalists. Both sides also agreed to establish working groups on democratic institutions and earthquake reconstruction, and they are expected to meet again in September. But Machado remains outside the negotiations.

“The United States prefers, as the first step, to trust Delcy Rodríguez but with a gun to her head,” argued Freddy Guevara, an opposition leader and a former political prisoner. “If she complies, this will be the end of the regime. And if she doesn’t comply, she will most likely end like Maduro.”

For Machado’s team, Maduro’s capture was the final rupture for Chavismo, which was weakened by economic collapse, internal divisions, and a loss of legitimacy. If Venezuelan authorities— under U.S. pressure—loosen control, liberalize the economy, and permit opposition activity, then that will deliver the final blow to the struggling Bolivarian revolution.

Whatever approach Washington takes, democracy, the opposition hopes, will emerge as a byproduct of U.S. presence and pressure. It is, in effect, the only path left.

David Smolansky, Machado’s foreign affairs advisor, drew a parallel with the Soviet bloc’s collapse, in which communist authorities in Poland and Hungary organized the elections that led to their own downfall. By the time that voters went to the polls, communism had already been politically and morally defeated.

“Will the transition happen from one day to another? No,” Smolansky said. “This is a regime that has been in power for 27 years and has led the country to shatter in every area you can imagine: energy, security, infrastructure, health care, education. Delcy Rodríguez is following orders to survive, but she’s not a trustworthy partner in the long term.”

Rodríguez originally governed under a 90-day mandate as acting president and was then given another 90-day mandate by the National Assembly. That lapsed in early July, but the National Assembly has avoided declaring Maduro permanently absent and triggering the constitutional process for an election. Devastating earthquakes in July further shook confidence in Rodríguez’s leadership, but she remains in office regardless. On the ground, the pressure has already begun to reappear. Student demonstrations have returned to Caracas, with rallies at the Central University demanding the release of political prisoners and the restoration of democratic institutions. Outside El Helicoide, one of Venezuela’s most infamous prisons, families of detainees have held nightly vigils, carrying photographs of those still inside. Víctor Hugo Quero Navas’s disappearance and subsequent death has reignited the debate over the conditions faced by political prisoners.

“People are in a mental state of resignation, of simply accepting fate as it is,” said Angel Gonzalez, a telecommunications company employee from a small town near Caracas. “Venezuelans have become more fragile and less resilient with the passage of time.”

So far, Machado is still the most popular figure within the opposition, which has largely held together with only limited defections. Yet she has faced growing criticism—including from within opposition ranks—for failing to present Washington with a concrete transition plan. Machado was building her claim around electoral mandate and international support, only to be dropped by Trump.

Back in Venezuela, former opposition leader Henrique Capriles is upping his game, but his engagement with existing institutions has caused him to be branded as a traitor by some in the opposition. He is joined by other returning opposition figures and emerging blocs as they race for influence, including Enrique Márquez, a political leader whom Trump invited to a State of the Union address after his release from prison in January.

But the weakened regime may gain strength down the line, especially if the United States helps it rebuild its economy and cash flow, as well as get out of a crisis that undermined its legitimacy in the first place.

“If there’s a successful restarting of the energy sector and improvement in general infrastructure, people see water and electricity and food—all of that impacts lives,” said Vanessa Neumann, an opposition strategist. “Then, if Trump insists on elections in two years’ time, Delcy could win.”

With a Rodríguez victory, Chavismo may yet buy itself another extension. Hugo Chávez, whom Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes once called the “Mussolini of the tropics,” built his revolution on oil wealth, social spending, and everlasting confrontation with the United States. But by the time Chávez died, the oil-rich nation had already begun to rot from within. Maduro inherited the ruins without Chávez’s charisma. Under his rule, Venezuela’s economy contracted by 75 percent, one of the worst peacetime collapses in modern history.

Roads crumbled, gasoline disappeared, rural regions drifted beyond the state’s reach, and more than 7.9 million Venezuelans fled the country in the largest migration crisis that Latin America has ever seen. Maduro, who was often mocked by many of his associates for his lack of erudition and class, wrapped himself in Chávez’s memory with near-religious zeal, invoking the late leader as a prophetic figure while blaming the United States for the country’s collapse and mandating school protests against U.S. imperialism.

Yet Chavismo endured. In rural towns and among state workers tied to subsidized food and housing programs, the revolution survived through a mix of patronage and fear, even as the broader social order fractured and the elites surrounding the regime enriched themselves.

“Last supporters of Chavismo are rent seekers, small and big ways, less ideological but more transactional, these people are the last to leave regimes everywhere,” said Armando Armas, a member of the 2015 Venezuelan National Assembly. “Chavismo will survive in small numbers, the way there are still communists in Russia. But support is marginal.”

After Maduro, the Rodríguez siblings are now competing for influence against Diosdado Cabello, the former soldier whose influence runs deep through the military and security services. That rivalry now defines the regime’s internal politics. Cabello has projected strength through public mobilization campaigns, while Rodríguez has reshuffled cabinet and security leadership to consolidate control. In March, she replaced a third of the ministries and appointed a new attorney general. She also fired the powerful and longtime minister of defense, Vladimir Padrino López, and gave the job to Gen. Gustavo González López, a former intelligence chief and close Cabello ally. The move raised questions about Cabello’s hold over the regime and whether Rodríguez is attempting to accommodate him to avoid a split or trying to enlist his soldiers.

A U.S. official working on Venezuela-related issues, speaking informally and asking not to be named, confirmed tensions within Chavismo and described Cabello’s recent moves as an effort to demonstrate that he remains relevant as Rodríguez consolidates power.

“People seem more interested in the division within the opposition. But for me, what is more important is the division within Chavismo,” said Jose Ignacio Hernández, who served as special attorney general of Venezuela between 2019-2020 for the opposition’s de jure government. “The traditional chavistas, the politicians that worked and were loyal to Chávez, mostly opposed the Maduro regime. Nobody right now controls the political basis of Chavismo. Eventually, opposition can emerge to Rodríguez, not only from the side of Maria Corina, but from the side of the traditional Chavismo movement.”

Rodríguez is calibrating her message to her audiences, striking a nationalist tone at home while signaling pragmatism abroad. To parliament and the chavista base, she has positioned herself as Maduro’s rightful successor defending the revolution. In practice, she has so far delivered what Washington has demanded: opening oil fields to foreign investment, securing the unfreezing of sanctioned funds, and passing reforms to protect foreign ownership of business.

Some of the Cuban soldiers sent to guard the Venezuelan revolution have left the country along with Cuban doctors, who sometimes acted as part-time spies. The government passed an amnesty law in February, claiming the release of more than 3,200 political prisoners. Foro Penal, a Venezuelan legal aid organization that tracks political detentions, has confirmed the release of around 600 prisoners but said more than 550 remain.

“What the Trump administration is betting on is that the system will break on its own under U.S. pressure. I’ve seen this movie before. It ended badly. They will consolidate. Trump will struggle more to dislodge them down the line,” Neumann said. “I think the regime’s way forward is to wait for Trump to lose interest and move on.”

Like Neumann, some worry that Rodríguez could slowly lock things down while softening the regime’s image, easing repression just enough to calm criticism, producing “socialism with a human face” over time—a Chavismo that looks tolerable and undercuts the opposition.

“We should not let the Maduro regime feel they can outsmart the world,” Guevara said. “They’re going to try to buy time.”