Hello, everybody, and welcome to another edition of Cato podcast.

I'm Ian Vasquez, Vice President for International Studies here at the Cato Institute, and I'm

joined by Marcos Falcone, policy analyst on Latin America here at Cato.

Hey, everyone.

It's not been quite one month since the U Cato. Hey, everyone.

It's not been quite one month since the U.S. military captured Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro and the Trump administration committed the United States to stabilizing the country,

initiating an economic recovery, and overseeing a transition to democracy at some unspecified time.

The United States is so far chosen to work with Maduro's top lieutenants, that is, to work

with the regime itself, rather than the legitimate opposition to achieve those goals.

Today we're going to be talking about that approach and why it makes much more

sense to instead work with Maria Corina Machado, the leader of the opposition, the winner of the

2025 Nobel Peace Prize, and a longtime champion of democratic capitalism, and why it's important to begin working with her as

soon as possible. But I think it would make sense for us to begin by talking about 26 years of

socialist failure. So Marcos, can you tell us a little bit about what the record is of 21st century socialism

and how we got to this point?

Well, it's going to be hard to wrap up the disaster that the 21st century socialism has been

for Venezuela in a couple of minutes, and please jump in if I forget about something.

But I think it makes sense to talk about two different spheres.

To put it that way, we can talk about political and civic liberties and also about the economy,

and the record is just not good.

So the Chavez-Madura regime, and we might remind our audience that Chavez governed until 2013,

and then after his death, Maduro rose to power until the first days of 2026.

...