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Venezuela has lost its sovereignty as an independent nation-state. In late January — just a few weeks after the Trump administration bombed the country, reportedly killing between 100 and 120 people, damaging 463 homes, and kidnapping President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores — Venezuela’s National Assembly, which is dominated by pro-Maduro lawmakers, approved reforms to the Organic Hydrocarbons Law. This set of reforms moves Venezuela’s oil industry away from state-controlled exploration and drilling by Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA, the state-owned oil company), and joint ventures between PDVSA and foreign oil companies, by authorizing private companies — foreign and domestic — to participate directly in upstream hydrocarbon activities (exploration, production, transportation, and initial storage). This change to the country’s hydrocarbon’s law is viewed as a dramatic shift from the strict nationalization model in place in Venezuela since the early 2000s.

Acting President Delcy Rodríguez, who first proposed the reforms, claimed they would allow investment flows to be directed toward new oil fields, as well as fields where no investment or infrastructure has previously existed. She said that the reform would incorporate production models from the Anti-Blockade Law (which aimed to attract foreign investments into Venezuela in order to get around the U.S. economic blockade) so that “investment flows are incorporated and shield our hydrocarbons.” Emphasizing Venezuela’s right to have trade relations with China, Russia, Cuba, and Iran, Rodríguez added: “If one day I have to go to Washington as president in charge, I will do it standing, walking, not crawling.”

Nothing could be further from the truth. Rodríguez is now following Washington’s dictates and the new hydrocarbons law is a reflection of that. According to a leaked video of a meeting between Caracas officials and social media influencers, seven days after the U.S. attack, Rodríguez told gatherers via phone that, after Maduro was kidnapped, the U.S. military called her to inform her that the president and his wife had been “assassinated.” The Guardian reported that Rodríguez claimed that “she and other members of his cabinet were given 15 minutes to decide whether to comply with Washington’s demands — ‘or they would kill us.’”

Rodríguez claimed that both she and her brother replied that they “were ready to share the same fate” adding, “we stand by that statement to this day, because the threats and the blackmail are constant, and we have to proceed with patience and strategic prudence.”

Rodríguez’s statement about Washington’s threats is not out of sync with Donald Trump’s first comments after Maduro’s kidnapping: “If she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro,” were Trump’s exact words.

Caracas Residents Describe Terror of US Invasion as They Worry for What’s Next

Speaking to a group of oil workers in Puerto La Cruz toward the end of January, Rodríguez returned to the issue of the pressure that Trump was placing on her government. “Enough already of Washington’s orders over politicians in Venezuela,” she said, adding that Venezuelans should resolve their own differences, and that the country had already paid an extremely high price for having to confront fascism at home.

But the violence unleashed by the domestic opposition on Venezuela since it first carried out an unsuccessful coup against Hugo Chávez (Maduro’s predecessor) in April 2002 pales in contrast to the aggression the U.S. delivered on January 3. Worse, as Roger Carstens, a U.S. diplomat, retired Army Special Forces lieutenant colonel, and best known for previously acting as a prisoner swap negotiator with officials in Caracas, told “60 Minutes,” if Venezuela’s new government does not follow Trump’s dictates, they should expect further armed aggression — a task which can easily be achieved given how the U.S. military was able to neutralize Venezuela’s air defense capabilities.

Venezuela is “currently living under a kind of military occupation,........

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