If you can keep your head when all around are losing theirs and blaming it on you, then you are like Delcy!
Address to the Nation by Acting President Delcy Rodríguez
24 May 2026
Sisters and brothers, compatriots:
I address you on the darkest night in our history. Just weeks ago, we were a sovereign nation, with our conflicts, our hopes, our normal lives. And in an instant, the sky fell upon us. We witnessed a destructive power beyond our comprehension. We lost our leaders, entire families, and pieces of our cities. The pain we carry within us is the grief of a whole country.
I, who didn’t seek this position, have been left to pick up the pieces. I won’t lie to you: I wasn’t elected. I was elected by chaos. And I accepted this burden for one reason only: to prevent greater chaos, total destruction, from taking away the last thing we have left: our people. Every single one of you.
That is why I come to speak to you today with the starkness that the moment demands. We are in an unprecedented state of national emergency. This is not a metaphor. It is the physical reality of our survival.
Today, you might ask—and rightly so—why do we allow the presence of those who attacked us, their companies, those… operatives in our oil industry? The answer isn’t easy, but it’s clear: because we have no choice. It’s not a foreign policy decision. It’s a calculation of pure and simple survival.
Let me explain: the attack we suffered wasn’t just a bombing for a kidnapping. It was a message. A message that said, “We can wipe you off the map in a matter of hours.” Any gesture of outright rejection, any act of violence against them, wouldn’t be an act of heroism. It would be an act of collective suicide. And my first mandate, the only one I’ve imposed on myself in this nightmare, is to prevent anyone else from having to die.
Oil, our main resource, is now our only currency. It’s the price of a permanent ceasefire. They need it. We need them to stop shooting. This isn’t a treaty between nations. It’s the condition imposed by a survivor about to be thrown off a cliff. Clinging to the rock, however unpleasant, is the only thing preventing the fall.
I have heard the voices calling me a traitor, a coward. I carry them in my heart like a dagger. But I ask them a question, the most difficult question of all: What would you prefer? A symbolic resistance that ignites the fuse of our annihilation, or the agonizing patience that allows us to live one more day, breathe one more day, and from there, rebuild? Venezuela is not the only country in the world under threat, and the largest ones are paralyzed by weapons of mass destruction.
I have chosen patience. I have chosen to rebuild from the rubble. Every barrel of oil that flows is one more day of respite we have bought. And on that day, our sacred duty is to do three things: bury our dead, care for our living, and strengthen our home.
Therefore, my government, this emergency government, will focus all its energies, all the resources we can salvage, on the following:
As a first priority, allocate incoming economic resources to Venezuelan families. The logistics of life.
The reconstruction of critical infrastructure: water, basic energy, communications.
National unity. I will not tolerate opportunism, looting, or division. Our enemy is not among us. Our enemy is the desperation that drives us to destroy one another.
I’m not asking you to smile at those who hurt us. I’m asking you, with all my heart, not to give them an excuse to finish the job. Our strength now isn’t in our fists, which are broken. It’s in our ability to endure. To be harder than steel. To be resilient.