When Delcy Rodríguez chaired her first council of ministers meeting as the acting president of Venezuela on Sunday, the portraits of the two leaders who preceded her loomed on the wall behind her.
These were Hugo Chávez, who transformed Venezuela into a socialist state, and Nicolás Maduro, who continued Chavez’s legacy and drove the country deeper into autocracy before his capture by US forces on Saturday.
Rodríguez, 56, is a stalwart of both the Chávez and Maduro governments, having served as Maduro’s oil minister and vice president. The daughter of a Marxist revolutionary, Rodríguez relentlessly defended the Maduro regime against accusations of drug-trafficking and election-stealing. She will…
