By Kejal Vyas

CARACAS, Venezuela -- Weeks after a U.S. military raid ended the 13-year rule of Nicolás Maduro, Venezuelans are living through a whiplash transition that feels less like a democratic dawn and more like an economic takeover.

Maduro's regime is still largely in place, led by his vice president and confidante Delcy Rodríguez. There is little talk of holding free and fair elections. Masked intelligence agents, dressed in black and armed, still man checkpoints throughout the city, a reminder that Maduro may be gone but his legacy of repression lives on.

At the same time, there is hope for the economy for the first time in a decade, as relations with the U.S. thaw. The Trump administration sold $500 million of Venezuelan oil and pumped $300 million of it into Venezuelan banks, in a bid to help lift the country's currency, the bolivar, and tame hyperinflation. Meat prices have fallen nearly 60%.

"I would not have said this a month ago, but it actually feels like things could improve for a change," 31-year-old Marisela Perez said as she was buying groceries with her two children in an east Caracas slum.

Venezuela now represents a practical application of what President Trump's aides call the "Trump Corollary" to the Monroe Doctrine, the maxim that the U.S. calls the shots in the Western Hemisphere.

For Venezuelans, they get a transactional peace with the U.S. and hope for a better day-to-day life, in exchange for fewer political rights, including a wish for democracy that appears delayed well into the future. It is a bargain that autocracies from Saudi Arabia to China have made with restive populations.

Rodríguez's administration is moving fast on policy reforms and oil-sector overhauls meant to prop up an economy that has contracted 70% since Maduro took office in 2013 -- a period during which Rodríguez herself held powerful government positions. She has freed more than 200 political prisoners as part of what she calls "a new political moment" for Venezuela.

The Venezuelan opposition, at home and abroad, has criticized Rodríguez for making cosmetic changes and not committing to elections. Political analysts say she is a wily politician who can appease Trump -- who says she is doing a "fantastic job" -- while consolidating power in the long run.

Motorcycle courier Eduardo Flores said his hopes for a political and democratic transition remain distant.

"We can't get too excited yet," said Flores. "I keep telling my family: patience."

For now, Venezuelans have to settle for moderate improvements to their economic situation.

Rafael Arteaga, a 69-year-old retired community organizer, said he is still upset about the erratic supply of cooking gas, his barrio's rough, trash-strewn roads, and houses that rarely have running water. But he celebrated how meat prices had fallen in recent weeks to about $5 a pound from more than $10 a pound in December.

"Finally, we senior citizens are going to be able to dine on some pork," he said. "For a while, it was just beans and rice."

Italo Atencio, president of a national supermarkets association, said prices have dropped substantially on perishable goods such as beef, chicken and eggs because those products are sold the fastest. He said he expects other food items with longer shelf life, such as rice and cornmeal, to follow suit.

"There is an air of optimism, mixed with some realism," Atencio said.

This week, Venezuelan lawmakers are expected to approve new legislation that aims to remove red tape and loosen government control of the energy industry as part of an effort to attract foreign investment in the country's prized oil fields. Output plummeted due to corruption, mismanagement and U.S. sanctions leveled during Maduro's 13-year tenure.

The legislation also will formally eliminate bureaucracy from the public sector, which had long stifled the private sector, Rodríguez has said, and seeks to streamline price controls on basic goods and services that the government had enforced arbitrarily in recent years.

The moves come as delegations of U.S. diplomats have been working to reopen the U.S. Embassy in Caracas, which has been closed since 2019. American oil executives are expected to arrive in Venezuela in the coming weeks to scout new investment opportunities there, industry officials said. U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright says he plans to visit.

Economic reforms and U.S. rapprochement efforts have triggered an upswing in real-estate prices, brokers said. They have also led to a surge in the prices of Venezuela's defaulted government bonds that trade in international markets, as well as the prices of company shares on Caracas' stock exchange as investors bet that the country may be able to reintegrate into the global economy after years of isolation.

Venezuelans still face currency woes because vendors of imported goods such as vehicle parts demand customers pay in hard-to-acquire U.S. dollars. In Caracas, prices are often denominated in dollars or euros, while on the borders, Colombian pesos and Brazilian reals are often used.

Few global currencies have had more spectacular declines than the bolivar. In Ian Fleming's 1961 novel "Thunderball," from the James Bond series, the main villain demanded that the earnings from his criminal enterprise be transferred in Swiss francs and Venezuelan bolivars, a sign of the strength and stability of the currency at the time. By 2020, the popular cartoon series "Animaniacs" featured a caricature of Maduro hosting a game show where a contestant struggles to guess the price of corn, which rises exponentially in real time into the billions of bolivars because of runaway inflation.

"That's what you call a fall from grace," said Venezuelan economist Giorgio Cunto. "In 60 years we went from having the world's most-respected currency to being ridiculed by Warner Brothers."

Now, it is Trump who could turn into the savior of the bolivar, which is named after national liberator Simon Bolívar.

In recent days, Venezuelan officials hailed the arrival of $300 million from the U.S. into Venezuelan banks to alleviate dollar shortages. It marked the first tranche of proceeds from oil sales, which Trump administration officials say they are directly managing and distributing into the Venezuelan economy to ensure that revenues aren't stolen by the ruling regime. Another $200 million are expected to be sold into the market in the upcoming days, the Venezuelan central bank said in a statement Tuesday.

The dollar injection has helped the Venezuelan currency trade at about 450 bolivars per dollar on the crypto exchange Binance from about 800 a couple of weeks earlier. The central bank's official rate is 360 bolivars per dollar.

While the economic changes are welcome, Arteaga, the retired community organizer, said he was still cautious about his country's future.

He fears that Rodríguez might struggle to control the armed forces and paramilitary gangs. He said he hopes that by July, the country can move toward democratic elections, and that the regime's archnemesis, opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, would be allowed to return from exile and run as a candidate.

"Whatever happens, I think it'll be a woman who will be our next leader, " he said. "It's what the country needs."

Write to Kejal Vyas at kejal.vyas@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

January 27, 2026 22:00 ET (03:00 GMT)

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