By: Ricardo Abud
It is difficult to find a more contradictory and painful image for Venezuela than this: a country whose president was bombed, captured, kidnapped and taken out of its territory by the United States now appears celebrating oil agreements with the same power that, just yesterday, exerted a relationship of force over it.
And what's most disconcerting is not only that oil is being negotiated after such an episode, but that the handover of a majority stake in immense oil wealth is being presented as if Venezuela were receiving a historic favor. Donald Trump announces the agreement as an extraordinary feat for the United States, speaks of oil, reserves, investments, prosperity, and cheaper gasoline for Americans, and virtually the entire narrative is constructed from the perspective of what the United States gains. This is precisely where the question arises that should trouble any Venezuelan, regardless of their political sympathies: why, when a foreign power reaps enormous profits from our oil, do we automatically assume that Venezuela is also winning?
Venezuela has endured too many years of dependency to confuse one thing with the other. We have gone from being a country that dreamed of using its oil to build prosperity to becoming a society where millions survive on incomes that bear no relation to the cost of living. While a worker struggles to buy food, a pensioner receives practically nothing, a teacher tries to get by on meager salaries, and an entire family counts every dollar before spending it, the country is once again talking about billions of dollars surrounding its oil. This contradiction should pain us. Because the problem isn't that Venezuela receives foreign investment; the problem is that a weakened nation can end up accepting as salvation what, under other circumstances, it would have negotiated from a much stronger position. When a country is ruined, plundered by those who swore to defend it, desperate and in need of capital, the word "investment" can easily become a pretty word to mask a profoundly unequal relationship.
And Venezuela knows that story all too well. For decades, we were taught that our oil was our greatest blessing. Then we discovered that it could also become our greatest curse when wealth isn't transformed into development, institutions, education, public services, and dignity; when someone steals 23 billion dollars and no one knows where the money is, bankrupting the oil industry. Oil flowed from our land while entire generations listened to promises of progress that never fully reached their homes. Now we hear the same word again: prosperity. But a Venezuelan who has to survive on a meager salary has the right to ask: prosperity for whom?
That's the crux of the discussion. It's not about hating the people of the United States, because that would be absurd. The United States has the right to defend its interests and seek oil, markets, investments, and economic advantages for its citizens. It does so just as any other world power would. What would be truly absurd is demanding that Venezuela not do the same: that it not defend its own interests, that it not protect its resources, and that it accept as inevitable that major powers come to seek what they need while we must settle for the crumbs. Venezuelan nationalism shouldn't consist of closing the doors to the world; it should consist of opening them without surrendering our home.
We need investment, yes. We need technology, capital, and markets. We need to rebuild a devastated oil industry and once again transform our resources into prosperity. But none of these needs should force us to accept a relationship in which Venezuela appears as a supplier and the United States as the main beneficiary. Because Venezuelan oil doesn't belong to a government, a party, or a person. It belongs to Venezuela. And Venezuela isn't just the government that currently occupies Miraflores Palace. Venezuela is also the child born in Petare, the mother who stretches her money to feed her children, the worker who leaves at dawn, the teacher who continues to teach despite their hardships, the pensioner who counts their coins, and the emigrant who had to leave their country because they could no longer find a future there.
That is why it is so deeply painful to hear talk of our oil as if it were a bargaining chip to be used to rebuild relations between governments while millions of Venezuelans continue to wait to rebuild their own lives. A nation is not measured solely by the number of barrels it produces, but by what those barrels do for its people. If the oil starts flowing again, but Venezuelans continue to lack reliable electricity, decent hospitals, fair wages, adequate pensions, quality education, and opportunities for their children, then we will have committed the same old sin: producing wealth without producing well-being.
And amidst all this, there is another shame we cannot hide: the capitulation of our current rulers when political survival outweighs national dignity. Too often, those who govern Venezuela have been willing to compromise principles, rhetoric, and historical positions when they feel their power threatened or need to secure their way out. Yesterday they could denounce imperialism; today they can sit smilingly at it and negotiate. Yesterday they could speak of sovereignty; today they can justify any concession in the name of reconstruction. Changing one's position can be legitimate when circumstances change; what is unforgivable is that the nation ends up paying the price for the personal needs of those who govern it. Venezuela cannot become the currency with which its leaders buy peace of mind for themselves. A ruler who gives away too much to save his own skin is not defending the nation: he is mortgaging the future of those who lack the power to sit at that table.
A truly sovereign negotiation demands transparency, citizen oversight, and democratic approval. Contracts that mortgage the subsoil for decades cannot be signed behind closed doors among elites seeking impunity, but rather under the scrutiny of a country that has the right to know what is being given away in exchange for what.
The contradiction becomes even more bitter when we look at Venezuelans living in the United States. While governments speak of friendship, cooperation, and lucrative oil deals, many of our compatriots face harsh immigration policies, detentions, deportation proceedings, and the constant fear of ending up in ICE custody. The contrast is hard to ignore: while Venezuelan oil is welcomed as an extraordinary opportunity, the Venezuelan who arrived seeking a better life may be met with suspicion, imprisonment, or a deportation order. This isn't about demanding privileges or denying the United States' right to enforce its immigration laws; it's about remembering that behind every case file is a person, a family, and a story of survival. For Venezuelan oil, there is interest; for many Venezuelans, distrust. For the resource, there is a welcome; for the person, deportation. This contradiction deserves to be highlighted because no relationship between countries can be considered truly balanced if the natural resource is valued more than the human being born in the land from which that resource originates.
What has happened with the United States should also force us to ask an even more uncomfortable question: how can a relationship begin with bombs, continue with the capture and kidnapping of a president, and end with major oil deals without Venezuelan society asking itself what kind of relationship we are building? This is not a question of left or right, neither Chavista nor opposition; it is a Venezuelan question. Establishing relations with another nation is one thing, but becoming accustomed to a powerful nation imposing its will on us and then presenting itself as our indispensable partner for rebuilding our country is quite another. That has a name we should avoid at all costs: dependence.
Venezuela doesn't need to replace one pattern of dependency with another. It doesn't need to substitute political tutelage for economic tutelage, nor does it need to shift from years of anti-American rhetoric to an uncritical celebration of everything that comes from Washington. It needs something far more difficult: to recover its national dignity. And recovering national dignity means understanding that we can engage with the United States without submitting to it, trade with them without becoming their backyard, receive American capital without accepting that our wealth should be considered war booty, and rebuild our oil industry with foreign aid without ever forgetting that Venezuela is not foreign property.
And the danger today is greater: we are not just talking about yesterday's black oil, but about the resources of the future and the strategic minerals that global powers seek to secure in an increasingly aggressive geopolitical chessboard.
History has taught us that great powers are rarely driven by charity; they are driven by self-interest. The United States seeks what it deems beneficial to the United States, and there is nothing unusual about that. What would be unusual is if Venezuela did not do exactly the same. Therefore, this moment should serve to revive an idea that seems to have been lost amidst poverty, polarization, and despair: oil cannot be used to buy our obedience.
After years of destruction, confrontation, emigration, and poverty, Venezuela needs to rebuild. But rebuilding doesn't mean handing over the keys to the house to whoever promises to paint it. It means being able to live in it with dignity again. Venezuelans don't want eternal enemies; they are tired of political wars and divisive rhetoric. They want to work, eat, study, receive healthcare, prosper, and see their children grow up in their own country. They want the wealth that lies beneath their feet to cease being an abstract promise and finally become a better life.
That's what the word prosperity should mean. Not that Venezuela produces more oil so others can get richer, not that Washington gets more energy while Caracas receives applause, and certainly not that large figures serve to mask everyday poverty. Prosperity means that Venezuelan oil once again serves, above all, to allow Venezuelans to live like human beings.
If we need foreign partners to achieve this, so be it. But partners, not owners; investors, not guardians; allies, not masters. Venezuela does not have to kneel before Washington or any other power. After all we have suffered, the least we can demand is something much simpler and much greater: that Venezuela once again belong to itself, knowing that sovereignty will not fall from the sky nor be a favor granted by pragmatic diplomacy; it will have to be demanded and defended by a reorganized civil society, aware that no economic bailout is worthwhile if it destroys the nation's moral sovereignty.
THERE IS NOTHING MORE EXCLUSIONARY THAN BEING POOR.
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