CARACAS – As Venezuelan stakeholders prepare to launch a new round of U.S.-facilitated reconciliation dialogue between the country’s ruling party and opposition this Saturday, the nation is holding its collective breath, holding cautious optimism after four prior negotiation cycles collapsed without delivering the political unity the country has long craved. This latest round of talks arrives in an unprecedented political context: just months after U.S. forces captured former longtime president Nicolás Maduro, and the negotiations are framed around two core goals: entrenching democratic governance and restoring fundamental civil liberties after nearly 30 years of socialist leadership.
Leading the discussions are delegates from Venezuela’s current National Assembly, which holds a heavy pro-government majority, alongside a cohort of former opposition legislators who previously organized efforts to remove Maduro from power. U.S. officials have clarified their role will be limited to facilitation, not direct control of the process.
For ordinary Venezuelans like 58-year-old homemaker Soraida Martínez, the stakes of these talks could not be higher. “I hope those in government finally understand that we cannot move forward with the same arbitrary actions of the past; they have to respect the agreements they sign,” Martínez said. “Both sides have to give ground for the good of this country.”
Saturday’s opening session comes nearly seven weeks after an initial exploratory meeting in Caracas between Jorge Rodríguez, president of the National Assembly and brother of current acting president Delcy Rodríguez, and Dinorah Figuera, a former opposition lawmaker who made her first return to Venezuela in nearly eight years of exile. In 2023, Figuera was selected to represent opposition legislators from the 2015 National Assembly, a body widely recognized as Venezuela’s last democratically elected legislative body. She has echoed the Trump administration’s framing that the top priority is building an institutional agenda that prioritizes national interests over the competing goals of individual political factions.
Following the capture of Maduro and his wife by U.S. forces, the Trump administration laid out a three-phase roadmap for Venezuela: stabilization, post-disaster and economic recovery, and full democratic transition. On the eve of the opening talks, the U.S. State Department emphasized that Washington has no intention of dictating the terms of Venezuela’s upcoming electoral process, acknowledging the unique challenges of organizing a vote while the country continues to recover from a pair of devastating earthquakes that killed thousands in late June.
“Our role is to help facilitate, not dictate, a reconciliation process that lets the will of the Venezuelan people be fully expressed,” the State Department said in a statement. The department outlined its core priorities for the talks: encouraging all political factions to shift from protest-based organizing to formal institutional political participation, advancing protections for a free and independent media, building an impartial, transparent electoral council, and guaranteeing the safety and security of all polling locations and voters. “This process will require time and patience,” the statement added.
Negotiators from both sides have also framed the talks as an opportunity to rally national unity in the wake of the June 24 earthquakes, which the latest official data confirms killed more than 5,500 people, injured more than 16,700, and left more than 20,000 Venezuelans homeless.
Even with the collapse of four previous dialogue efforts between 2017 and 2024, a large majority of Venezuelan voters hold out hope for a positive outcome from this round, a shift driven by the country’s entirely new political landscape following Maduro’s ouster and the new U.S.-backed framework for talks. Many Venezuelans believe that even a limited, incremental agreement could meaningfully improve daily life across the country.
Still, political analysts warn that a full transition to stable democracy remains a long-term goal, with a free, fair election unlikely to materialize in the near term. Setting a binding electoral timeline and establishing the conditions for a legitimate vote does not appear feasible in the immediate future, they argue.
John Magdaleno, a political consultant and professor at Caracas’ Andrés Bello Catholic University, notes that democratic transition does not start with the opening of a dialogue session. “It begins with the recognition and restoration of guarantees that have been violated for years,” he said. For Magdaleno, the first non-negotiable step is restoring core civil liberties and political rights: freedom of expression, press freedom, freedom of assembly and association, the inviolability of private communications, and all other basic human rights guarantees that have been eroded over decades of authoritarian rule.
Associated Press reporter Matthew Lee contributed reporting from Washington, D.C.