Venezuela’s Acting Leader Makes Her U.N. Debut

Venezuela's Rodríguez Speaks at UNGA

By using this website, you agree to our use of cookies. This use includes personalization of content and ads, and traffic analytics. Review our Privacy Policy for more information.

!Foreign Policy

Foreign Policy Get analysis and alerts more quickly in the mobile app.

Install

Back to Foreign Policy Magazine home page

* Latest
* Regions

+ Asia & the Pacific
+ China
+ Middle East & Africa
+ Americas
+ Europe
* Newsletters

Editors’ Picks

Evening roundup with our editors’ favorite stories of the day

!World Brief Icon

World Brief

Your guide to the most important world stories of the day

!China Brief Icon

China Brief

The latest news, analysis, and data from the country each week

Situation Report

Weekly update on what’s driving U.S. national security policy

FP Weekend

A curation of our best book reviews, deep dives, and other reads

!Africa Brief Icon

Africa Brief

Essential analysis of the stories shaping geopolitics on the continent

!South Asia Brief Icon

South Asia Brief

Weekly update on developments in India and its neighbors

The Reading List

Curated guides on geopolitics and current affairs

FP Bookshelf

A monthly guide to FP’s book reviews, excerpts, and reading recommendations

!Latin America Brief Icon

Latin America Brief

One-stop digest of politics, economics, and culture

!Southeast Asia Brief Icon

Southeast Asia Brief

A weekly dispatch with news from the region’s 11 countries

The New Geopolitics

A five-part masterclass in IR theory with Harvard Professor Stephen M. Walt

View All Newsletters

* FP Live

* Latest
* Trending:
* Trump-Xi meeting
* United Nations General Assembly

Search this website

* Preferences
* My FP Feed
* Saved Articles
* Newsletters
* Magazine Archive
* Subscription Settings
* FAQs
* Log Out

Sign In

Sign In

Partner with FP at UNGA81 Partner with FP at UNGA81

Subscribe Subscribe Partner with FP at UNGA81 Partner with FP at UNGA81

Latin America Brief: Venezuela’s Acting Leader Makes Her U.N. Debut

*
*
* Facebook
* Bluesky
* X
* LinkedIn
* WhatsApp
* Reddit

Save Save

1. Create an FP account to save articles to read later.

Sign Up

ALREADY AN FP SUBSCRIBER? LOGIN

PDF PDF

1. **Downloadable PDFs** are a benefit of an FP subscription.

Subscribe Now

ALREADY AN FP SUBSCRIBER? LOGIN

Gift Gift

*
*
* WhatsApp

1. Gifting articles is a subscriber benefit.

Subscribe Now

ALREADY AN FP SUBSCRIBER? LOGIN

2. This article is an Insider exclusive.

Contact us at [email protected] to learn about upgrade options, unlocking the ability to gift this article.

Latin America Brief

A one-stop weekly digest of politics, economics, technology, and culture in Latin America. Delivered Friday.

Venezuela’s Acting Leader Makes Her U.N. Debut

Delcy Rodríguez played stateswoman in New York—but gave no timeline for elections.

!Osborn-Catherine-foreign-policy-columnist15

*Osborn-Catherine-foreign-policy-columnist15*

*Catherine Osborn*

By **Catherine Osborn**, the writer of *Foreign Policy*’s weekly Latin America Brief.

!A woman wearing a white suit jacket stands behind a black lectern with the United Nations logo.

*A woman wearing a white suit jacket stands behind a black lectern with the United Nations logo.*

Acting Venezuelan President Delcy Rodríguez speaks during the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly at U.N. headquarters in New York City on Sept. 23. Ryan Murphy/Getty Images

My FP: Follow topics and authors to get straight to what you like. Exclusively for FP subscribers. Subscribe Now | Log In

*
*
*
*

September 25, 2026, 8:00 AM

Welcome back to *Foreign Policy*’s Latin America Brief.

The highlights this week: Acting Venezuelan President Delcy Rodríguez attends the **United Nations General Assembly**, oil-rich Guyana prepares to launch a **development bank**, and a Bolivian biologist discovers a **new cat species**.

Welcome back to *Foreign Policy*’s Latin America Brief.

The highlights this week: Acting Venezuelan President Delcy Rodríguez attends the **United Nations General Assembly**, oil-rich Guyana prepares to launch a **development bank**, and a Bolivian biologist discovers a **new cat species**.

Sign up to receive Latin America Brief in your inbox every Friday.

---

Venezuela Returns to UNGA

Latin America was in the spotlight this week at the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

Venezuela saw a reentry of sorts into the international community, as acting President Delcy Rodríguez became the first Venezuelan leader to address the gathering in-person in eight years. Her predecessor, Nicolás Maduro, avoided the event in part due to fear of being arrested following his 2020 U.S. indictment on drug trafficking charges.

Maduro returned to New York this year but on very different terms: Since the U.S. military captured him in January, he has been held in a federal prison in Brooklyn, not far from the United Nations. Meanwhile, the Trump administration is working with Rodríguez on efforts to rebuild the country’s oil industry.

According to polls, Venezuelans overwhelmingly want free elections to choose their own leader. But both Rodríguez and the United States have declined to provide a timeline for a vote.

When Rodríguez took the podium at the U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday, she pledged that elections would occur in the country—but at an unspecified “right moment.” While in New York, she also met with U.S. President Donald Trump, who made no public mention of such a vote.

Some Latin American presidents seemed to show a growing willingness to go along with Trump in normalizing Rodríguez’s leadership. On his way to New York, Paraguayan President Santiago Peña made a stopover in Caracas, becoming only the second head of state after former Colombian President Gustavo Petro to pay the Rodríguez administration an official visit.

In New York, Chilean President José Antonio Kast—a longtime critic of Rodríguez’s Socialist movement who invited Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado to his inauguration in March—held a meeting with Rodríguez.

Meanwhile, between meetings, Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino brushed aside a question about whether Machado should be able to return to the country, saying, “That’s a problem for Venezuelans, not for me.”

Machado has been outside Venezuela since she traveled to Norway to receive the Nobel Peace Prize last December. Because the Venezuelan government has refused to renew her passport, she depends on other methods—and at times the cooperation of other governments—to travel.

In recent weeks, Machado has been staying in Panama, which granted her a temporary diplomatic travel document, multiple outlets reported this week. But she was blocked from embarking on flights or boats that were part of a planned trip to Venezuela three times this week alone, one of her team members told journalists on Wednesday.

Altogether, the events suggest that Trump is in no rush for elections in Venezuela—and that Trump-friendly presidents in the region are not pushing for democratization, either. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was a lonely voice who suggested a different approach, saying in his General Assembly speech that “the Venezuelan people deserve to define their own destiny.”

World leaders and diplomats also used this week’s gathering to confer about the U.N. secretary-general race. On Saturday, former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet became the first candidate to withdraw from the election, writing in a statement that “strong winds” were blowing against her key principles of multilateralism, international law, and climate action.

Bachelet’s sponsor countries, Brazil and Mexico, can now back another candidate. If their endorsements give momentum to a current front-runner, it cou