“Capitalism is the cause, the true cause of misery, inequality and exclusion (…) The supreme mandate of Christ the Redeemer will only be possible when socialism reigns in these lands and in these worlds.”

Two decades after the late Hugo Chávez uttered these words, the so-called 21st century socialism that he promoted in Venezuela is more in question than ever.

Since the unprecedented military operation that the United States launched against the South American country on January 3 - and which ended with the capture of Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores -, the economic model that the late leader of the Bolivarian revolution defended has experienced an accelerated metamorphosis, driven by hasty legal reforms approved by the Parliament controlled by Chavismo and by other executive measures.

Below, we present three examples that show how the Venezuelan economy seems to be leaving behind a long period in which the State has been its main actor.

1. Back to international markets

On May 13, the Venezuelan interim government announced the beginning of a “comprehensive and orderly” process of restructuring its external public debt and that of the state-owned Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA).

The objective of the measure is to “free the country from the burden of accumulated debt” and, to this end, the authorities hope to renegotiate with their creditors the deadlines to pay unpaid loans since 2017 and obtain forgiveness.

The news came less than a month after the Rodríguez government announced the reestablishment of its relations with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, organizations that Chavista leaders had insistently denigrated over the years.

"The IMF should commit suicide. I'm not referring to the gentlemen who run it. No, no, I hope they have a long life, but they should call a session and declare their dissolution," said Chávez in 2008, who blamed the multilateral organization for the international financial crisis that broke out that year.

Nicolás Maduro spoke in similar terms in 2025, not only blaming the IMF for the “sinking of countries,” but also accusing anyone in Venezuela who thought of negotiating with him as a “traitor.”

“Whoever hands our country over to the IMF will be a great traitor and the people would have the right to take to the streets again,” he declared.

The announcement of the renegotiation of the Venezuelan external debt was received with optimism by international markets. The country's bonds, whose price does not reach one dollar, rose more than 2%, while those of PDVSA advanced up to 4% after hearing the news, according to the Bloomberg agency.

Experts consulted by BBC Mundo warned that this is only the first step in a long process that could culminate with the country's full return to the international financial system and, consequently, with the possibility of accessing credits and financing again.

"We are beginning a renegotiation process without having the numbers on the table. We do not know how much is owed or to whom it is owed," said Venezuelan economist José Manuel Puente.

The professor at the Institute of Higher Studies of Administration of Venezuela (IESA) and the IE University of Madrid (Spain) highlighted that there is no clarity about the amount owed to China, nor about whether that figure includes the billions corresponding to international litigation that Venezuela has pending with firms such as oil companies Exxon Mobil and ConocoPhillips.

“In 1998, the external debt amounted to US$35,000 million, but now it is estimated to be between US$170,000 and US$190,000 million, which makes the Venezuelan debt the largest in the world when compared to the country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which today is barely a fifth of what it was in 2013,” added Puente.

For his part, economist Rodrigo Cabezas questioned whether the interim government can successfully carry out the process.

“The ongoing political crisis denies (the authorities) legitimacy,” explained the former official deputy and one of Chávez's finance ministers.

2. Review of the state business apparatus

“Explore yourself!” The word that the late Hugo Chávez used as a slogan in his war against capitalism, and with which he announced the nationalization of hundreds of companies and thousands of hectares of land during the 13 years that he occupied the presidential palace of Miraflores, has been definitively buried by the Venezuelan authorities.

On April 22, interim president Delcy Rodríguez installed a commission that will be in charge of reviewing the enormous public business and industrial apparatus to decide “which assets are not necessary for the State,” with the purpose of transferring them to the private sector or liquidating them.

The news has raised suspicions among some of those who at the time identified with Chavismo.

“The existence of public companies was not what sank Venezuela,” sociologist Moisés Durán, once close to the ruling party, told BBC Mundo.

“What sank Venezuela was the corruption that expanded with Chavismo, the militarization of the public administration, the brutal destruction of democratic institutions and repression,” added the former national coordinator of the Vuelvan Caras Mission, a government program aimed at training unemployed people or people in the informal economy for work.

For its part, Transparency Venezuela, a group dedicated to combating corruption, demanded clarity from the authorities on how this review process of the public business apparatus will be carried out, in order to prevent a situation similar to that experienced in the nations that were part of the extinct Warsaw Pact or the Soviet Union from occurring in the country.

“Since last year, shares and complete companies have been delivered through the figure of productive participation agreements (CPP), and what we have been able to verify is that these CPPs have been awarded in an opaque manner to friends,” Mercedes de Freitas, director of Transparencia Venezuela, told BBC Mundo.

Although there is no official record of the number of companies in the hands of the State, Transparencia Venezuela in a report published last April counted 920.

“Although we consider it important that the State stops being so large and powerful, and that it concentrates on what is essential—the rights of the people and avoiding abuses by companies—, this is not reflected in the reforms of laws approved, such as those on Hydrocarbons or Mines,” De Freitas added.

3. Opening the wells, the mines and something else

However, the recent express reforms to the Hydrocarbons and Mines laws approved by the National Assembly have been what has been most difficult for the most radical sectors of the ruling party to digest.

“It is a violation of our sovereignty,” said former Chavista deputy Mario Silva, a well-known propagandist for the ruling party, from his social networks.

The modifications, in practice, have reversed the model implemented by Chávez, by opening the doors to national and international private capital for the exploitation of the country's vast oil and mining resources.

To the above we would have to add a hypothetical reform to the Organic Labor Law, which was left open with another commission that President Rodríguez installed at the end of April, in which the business and union sectors participate, and to which she asked that they "sit down to talk, to dialogue and from there a consensus will emerge on what model we need."

“There is no doubt that the economic model of Chavismo has been dismantled,” political communication expert Carmen Beatriz Fernández told BBC Mundo.

“It seems that the ambition of the president in charge is to install a very open economic model, but that restricts political freedoms,” added the professor from the University of Navarra (Spain).

Sociologist Moisés Durán spoke in similar terms, who, however, pointed out that what happened in recent months in the country "has been more radical than what the opposition itself has come to propose."