MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Now to Venezuela, where the American flag is flying again over the U.S. embassy in Caracas for the first time in seven years. This is happening as the White House is looking at Venezuelan oil as a possible way to lower fuel prices that are higher because of the U.S. and Israeli war with Iran. NPR's Eyder Peralta is with us now from Venezuela's capital, Caracas. Eyder, good morning.
EYDER PERALTA, BYLINE: Hey, good morning, Michel.
MARTIN: So how significant is this reopening of the embassy?
PERALTA: Well, I mean, it means the U.S. and Venezuela have normalized diplomatic relations. And the break in relations happened in 2019. At the time, the U.S. recognized Juan Guaido, not Nicolás Maduro, as the legitimate president of Venezuela, and Maduro threw out the American diplomats. Now, of course, the U.S. seized President Maduro, but the U.S. has also now officially recognized his vice president as the leader of Venezuela and not the opposition, which was widely seen to have won the last elections in 2024. And now the U.S. is flying the flag over the embassy once more.
It's a lot of plot twists, but in broad strokes, it means enemies have become friends, and a lot of this friendship is convenience. The U.S. wants its oil companies in Venezuela, and Venezuela needs to restart its oil industry.
MARTIN: You've been reporting about oil. What have you seen?
PERALTA: Yeah. I went to Maracaibo, which is the capital of oil here, but what you see is the decay of the oil industry. Once-grand hotels are falling apart, homes are abandoned, malls are empty. The workers here used to make serious money, and now they're getting paid a couple of hundred dollars a month. Production has plummeted to a third of what it was at its peak. And I've been talking to the workers of the state oil company, and one of them says when you go out into Lake Maracaibo, you see a spaghetti of floating pipelines. They've been abandoned and they're full of gas, so they've floated to the surface. Essentially all of them, two of which are operations managers, say corruption is rampant. The Chinese and the Russians have tried to get oil out of Venezuela, but they didn't have the know-how or they were thwarted by corruption.
But all the workers I've spoken to keep coming back to one point - the oil facilities both on land and at sea were built mostly with American technology, and the big multinational companies have the know-how. The workers say a lot of the rigs and wells are not actually hopelessly broken. They say they might need a fitting or a part that was impossible to get with U.S. sanctions in place, but if Chevron or Shell really step in, they say they can get things up and running fairly fast.
MARTIN: And you've had a chance to talk to a lot of regular Venezuelans, which you were telling me is actually easier than it has been in years when you've been trying to do reporting there. What are they telling you? Are they as hopeful?
PERALTA: I mean, I think the most interesting thing here is that Venezuelans seem ready for reconciliation. There was a forum on Friday that joined government-affiliated journalists and independent journalists. And the independent journalists complained about a repressive government that had thrown them in jail, that had kidnapped them, and the government-affiliated journalists complained that even after 25 years of this government of Chavismo, they felt invisible and unacknowledged. They complained that the independent journalists had made enemies out of them. But the most expressed feeling by both sides was the past is the past and we need to look forward.
At one point, the minister of culture, Ernesto Villegas, stood up in front of the crowd and said, look, I don't want a single journalist in jail, and there was huge applause. And it felt cathartic, like some of the deep divisions of Venezuela were being talked about in the open. And in that moment, at least, it felt like Venezuela could find a peaceful way forward. But, you know, one political scientist warned me - he said, don't get too excited. It's too early. It's not even clear this is a transition. And history tells us that transitions like these, by and large, do not end well.
MARTIN: That is NPR's Eyder Peralta in Caracas. Eyder, thank you.
PERALTA: Thank you, Michel.
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