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The Republican congresswoman María Elvira Salazar issued a strong warning on Tuesday to Delcy Rodríguez, the acting president of Venezuela, accusing her of trying to deceive President Donald Trump “in the same way she and Maduro deceived and destroyed Venezuela.”
The message, posted on X on Tuesday night, arrived hours after Rodríguez concluded his speech before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, where he personally led the Venezuelan delegation in the hearings on Esequibo held from May 4 to May 12.
"President Trump knows exactly who she is: another member of Ali Baba and the 40 thieves," Salazar wrote. "One does not negotiate with him through secret letters while trying to steal territory from a free and sovereign nation like Guyana."
The legislator from Florida thus reiterated a phrase she had used in March to refer to chavismo, when she identified Rodríguez as "the 37th thief" and warned that he would end up in prison if he did not follow Trump's directives.
In his message, Salazar drew a direct contrast between Guyana's economic model and that of the Chavista regime: "Unlike Maduro's regime, Guyana did not steal from its people. They managed their oil wealth responsibly, created a sovereign wealth fund, and saw their GDP per capita quadruple in just five years."
This data is backed by concrete figures: Guyana's per capita GDP rose from approximately $6,600 in 2019 to around $29,675 in 2024, driven by the oil discoveries made by ExxonMobil in the Stabroek block in 2015 and managed through the Natural Resource Fund, established by law in 2019.
Rodríguez, for his part, defended in The Hague that "Venezuela will not renounce its history or legitimate rights, acknowledged and preserved in the Geneva Agreement, simply because Guyana now intends to unilaterally and opportunistically redefine the controversy." The trip to the Netherlands was his first departure from the Caribbean since taking power after the capture of Nicolás Maduro on January 3 in the Absolute Resolution Operation.
The political context further complicates Rodríguez's position: although the United States lifted the sanctions against her in early April as part of a tacit agreement with her interim government, tensions persist. Rodríguez rejected Trump's proposal to turn Venezuela into "state 51" from The Hague and reaffirmed Venezuela's claim over Esequibo, a region of 160,000 km² rich in oil and minerals, with a dispute that has remained unresolved for decades.
Salazar ended his warning with a straightforward statement: "Delcy should stop threatening Guyana and start learning from it."
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