CARACAS — Paraguayan President Santiago Peña traveled to Caracas on Saturday, September 19, to meet with acting Venezuelan President Delcy Rodríguez, becoming only the second head of state to visit Venezuela since Nicolás Maduro’s January capture by U.S. forces — a visit both governments framed as the opening step toward restoring diplomatic relations severed almost two years ago.
Paraguay and Venezuela’s diplomatic and consular ties have been suspended since January 2025, when Maduro’s government cut them off. Paraguay, under Peña, has maintained close alignment with Washington throughout his presidency, and had positioned itself among the region’s more vocal supporters of Venezuela’s political transition following Maduro’s removal.
Rodríguez received Peña, accompanied by his wife, First Lady Leticia Ocampos, at the Miraflores presidential palace shortly after Peña landed at Simón Bolívar International Airport in Maiquetía.
Paraguay’s Foreign Minister, Rubén Ramírez, had explained the day before that the encounter would be a “reunión de mutuo respeto” — a meeting of mutual respect — aimed at working toward the start of a new dialogue.
Following the meeting, Peña confirmed on X that the two sides had begun a dialogue “enfocado en el bienestar de los ciudadanos” — focused on citizens’ wellbeing — and on the eventual restoration of bilateral relations. He said the discussion, which he described as conducted in a spirit of mutual respect, covered Venezuela’s institutional process, strengthening its economy, and joint efforts against transnational organized crime.
Speaking to reporters afterward alongside Ocampos and Rodríguez, Peña said simply: “Greetings to all the people of Venezuela, very happy to be here.”
Mutual Agreements
Paraguay’s Foreign Minister Ramírez and his Venezuelan counterpart, Félix Plasencia, signed a joint communiqué during the visit stating that the meeting “Lays the groundwork for a progressive and full reactivation of diplomatic relations.”
According to Venezuelan reporting on the visit, the day’s agenda, coordinated by both countries’ foreign ministries, included a private meeting and a working lunch between the two delegations, with diplomatic reopening — the reestablishment of embassies and consulates suspended after years of political distance — identified as a specific goal moving forward.
Peña is only the second sitting head of state to travel to Venezuela since U.S. forces captured Maduro in January, following an April visit by then-Colombian President Gustavo Petro.
That scarcity underscores how diplomatically isolated Venezuela’s government remained through much of the year, even as its economic engagement with Washington accelerated rapidly on a separate track.
Peña’s visit adds Paraguay to a still-short list of governments willing to engage directly and publicly with Rodríguez’s administration at the presidential level.
United Nations, Venezuela & Trump
Venezuelan reporting placed Saturday’s meeting within a notably active week of diplomatic movement for Rodríguez’s government, which separately included progress in dialogues with both the United States and the United Kingdom.
Most significantly, the White House confirmed on Friday that Trump himself is scheduled to meet directly with Rodríguez on Tuesday during the United Nations General Assembly in New York — a meeting Sociedad Media previously reported as merely possible, now formally confirmed.
If that meeting proceeds, Rodríguez would become the first Venezuelan head of state to visit the United States since Maduro’s own 2018 U.N. appearance, and would do so just kilometers from the New York-area prison where Maduro is now being held.
Peña’s own itinerary reflects the same overlapping diplomatic calendar: after concluding his Caracas visit, he continued on to New York for the same UN General Assembly session, where he is set to address the body for the third time since taking office in August 2023.
Peña’s visit reinforces a pattern that has defined Venezuela’s international rehabilitation throughout 2026: incremental, government-by-government normalization proceeding alongside, but distinct from, the country’s unresolved domestic political questions, including the continued absence of a confirmed elections timeline.
For Paraguay specifically, the visit signals a notable openness to reengaging with Rodríguez’s government despite Asunción’s historically close alignment with Washington’s own Venezuela policy — suggesting that, at least for some regional governments, Washington’s own accelerating economic and diplomatic engagement with Caracas is making similar engagement politically easier to justify.
With a formal communiqué now signed and diplomatic reopening identified as a concrete next step, attention turns to how quickly Paraguay and Venezuela move to reestablish embassies and consular services, and how Tuesday’s Trump-Rodríguez meeting in New York — a considerably higher-stakes diplomatic moment — unfolds just days after Peña’s own visit.
Taken together, the two events suggest Venezuela’s government is entering a genuinely active stretch of international engagement, even as the underlying question of the country’s democratic transition remains where it has stood for much of the year: acknowledged, discussed, but not yet resolved.
