Venezuela's old-guard Chavistas struggle with government's shift toward Trump

Some of the most devoted supporters of the late Hugo Chávez are struggling to make sense of a diplomatic shift by Venezuela's interim government under Delcy Rodríguez, as it moves toward engagement with Donald Trump's administration in Washington.

Among them is Mario Silva, a longtime television personality known for his state-funded program, where he spent more than two decades championing Chávez's Bolivarian revolution, often hosting the show with a portrait of the late leader behind him.

An 'ideological U-turn'

For Silva and others like him, the current administration's posture toward Washington represents what they describe as an abrupt and disorienting reversal of decades of anti-imperialist rhetoric that defined Chavismo as a political movement. Figures who built careers defending the movement's historic opposition to US influence now find themselves confronting a government that identifies with that same movement pursuing a markedly different course.

The shift reflects broader uncertainty within Chavismo's base about the direction of the interim administration, and about what the movement's core identity means under new leadership facing a changed geopolitical landscape.