Venezuela After the Tumor

Barely a few hours have passed since the arrest of Nicolás Maduro, and millions of words have already been written — some euphoric, some indignant, many plainly foolish. The world seems split between Venezuelans waving flags with one less star — the one Chávez added when he attacked national symbols as befits a 21st-century socialist militant — and a handful of western leftists who never set foot in Venezuela and, if they ever visited Cuba, brought back nothing but memories of a friendly barmaid and inexpensive mojitos. Neither of these camps actually explains the real problem.

At the center of the issue lies an uncomfortable metaphor: Chavismo was Venezuela’s cancer. Not just another authoritarian government or a tropical-tinged Latin American populism, but a systemic disease that learned fast and deep precisely because the organism it attacked was so vital. Venezuela was not weak — it was, arguably, the richest country in Ibero-America, with colossal energy reserves, productive capacity, and regional influence. As with physiological cancer, the more energetic the body, the more aggressively the disease spreads.

There Is Metastasis

The United States removed the tumor — a precise surgical intervention with a clear objective and name. That word was repeated compulsively during the first 48 hours after Maduro’s arrest, and that repetition was no accident. Any doctor knows that removing a tumor is not equivalent to curing the patient. There is metastasis. And in Venezuela, metastasis is not a hypothesis; it is a historical fact: networks, money, weapons, organisational cadres, hidden alliances. That is why, inside the country, celebrations are cautious.

Venezuela rid itself of Maduro and his immediate circle but not of the system that empowered them. The armed forces as they exist today may not be a serious problem by themselves, but the tens of thousands of Cuban, Chinese, and Russian officers who for years implemented strategies of occupation, repression, torture, and control are — and U.S. intelligence services know exactly where the country’s former leader slept; so did others. It is even plausible that China made a strategic error by sending a delegation to congratulate the dictator just 24 hours before the operation — a provocation Washington simply ignored. The “surgery” proceeded. Into that mixture of muddled prophecy and geopolitics, Maduro was never the system; he was its grotesque symbol, the clumsy executor — a bus driver elevated to dictator making erratic decisions to the very end. Chavismo, by contrast, is structure — and structures don’t fall from a helicopter.

Political Chemotherapy Begins

Now begins the phase of recovery that is far less televisual. For U.S. justice, there is only one way to negotiate crimes against humanity and international drug trafficking: cooperation. And this is where “the little bird” comes into play — the same imaginary companion Maduro claimed to talk to when conjuring conspiracies and destiny. That bird will no longer sing for political myth, but for a judge, perhaps. And it will sing more or less harmoniously depending on how much music it has stored. In the United States, leniency is measured in information, not in speeches.

This is why the U.S. has not, as many Venezuelans hoped, immediately reinstated Edmundo González and María Corina Machado to the places elections awarded them. If the issue were only a change of leadership, one plane trip back to Miraflores would have sufficed. But Washington hasn’t done that because Venezuela doesn’t need a coronation; it needs treatment. Institutional chemotherapy is incompatible with theatrical gestures. In this case, prudence is not timidity — it is diagnosis.

Freedom Must Be Won

The consequences are not limited to Venezuela. Colombia now stands in glaring fragility: porous borders, illegal economies, and armed groups that found refuge under the chavista umbrella for years. Cuba, meanwhile, loses a key external pillar and is exposed like never before. When the central tumor falls, the metastases do not disappear — but they lose coverage, and that alters balances that once seemed immovable.

Nothing guarantees rapid healing. Venezuela is not cured; Venezuela is in treatment. Surgery has been done, but what follows — cleanup of institutions, economic reconstruction, and political time — is long, painful, and carries the risk of relapse. Simón Bolívar’s famous words echo here: “Freedom is not begged for; it is conquered.” Conquest, in both medicine and politics, is rarely instantaneous.

It is worth recalling another classic warning. Alexis de Tocqueville observed that “the most dangerous moment for a bad government is when it tries to reform itself.” Venezuela has entered that perilous threshold. A regime has been weakened, but it has not been extinguished. Confusing justice with spectacle would be the first error in the postoperative phase. Because Venezuela will not be saved when a dictator falls; it will be saved when it no longer needs one. And that day arrives not with a surgical act but when every organ of the country is clean and capable — finally — of not falling ill again.