The Venezuelan government and a segment of the country's opposition are set to begin negotiations on Saturday aimed at charting a path toward elections, in the first formal talks held since the removal of former President Nicolás Maduro earlier this year. The proceedings, backed by Washington, will take place in Caracas and are being watched closely across Latin America and beyond — though their legitimacy is already being questioned by critics who note the absence of the country's most prominent opposition figure.

Leading the government delegation is Jorge Rodríguez, president of the National Assembly and brother of Delcy Rodríguez, who has served as interim president since Maduro was detained and transferred to New York in January. On the opposition side, the delegation will be led by Dinorah Figuera, who headed the opposition bloc in Venezuela's 2015 National Assembly — the last legislature Washington recognises as democratically elected. Figuera, who returned from exile in Spain in June, is expected to push for an overhaul of the electoral council and the Supreme Court, both long stacked with Maduro loyalists. Jorge Rodríguez, for his part, has signalled he will use the talks to press for further relief from US sanctions.

Conspicuously absent from the table is María Corina Machado, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate and opposition leader whose popularity surged before Venezuela's disputed 2024 presidential election, from which she was barred by the Supreme Court. Despite repeatedly deferring to US President Donald Trump — including presenting him with her Nobel medal — Machado has been consistently excluded from the process by Washington. Former presidential candidate Henrique Capriles warned that "a negotiation that excludes María Corina Machado and everything she represents is doomed to fail." Machado herself said last week she would not obstruct "any initiative that produces real progress," but set clear benchmarks: the restoration of democratic institutions, the release of all political prisoners, and a concrete presidential election timetable.

Analysts are sceptical about how much the talks can achieve. Colette Capriles, a political scientist at Simón Bolívar University in Caracas, argues the negotiations resemble less a genuine political dialogue and more a logistical exercise designed to produce an election on terms shaped by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. "I don't see an adequate structure for a real political negotiation," she said, warning that changing governments alone would not resolve Venezuela's deep structural problems. Critics from both the left and the right have also questioned the legitimacy of a process perceived as directed from Washington, with socialist lawmaker Francisco Arias arguing that any agreement must ultimately be submitted to the Venezuelan people.

The talks take place against a backdrop of acute national crisis. A pair of powerful earthquakes — magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 — struck Venezuela on 24 June, killing thousands and adding urgency to calls for international cooperation. Some analysts draw a historical parallel to the 1972 Managua earthquake in Nicaragua, which ultimately accelerated the fall of the Somoza dictatorship. Whether Venezuela's disaster similarly reshapes its political trajectory remains to be seen, but it has already altered the pace and framing of diplomacy: Jorge Rodríguez cited the earthquake both as a reason to delay talks and, days later, as a reason to embrace them.