The recent extradition and deportation of Alex Saab has sparked intense debate and criticism from various sectors of the international left and from within Venezuela. Saab is seen as someone who helped the country bypass sanctions, obtain fuel and food, open financial channels, and resist economic collapse under blockade conditions.
People hold signs with the image of Colombia n businessman Alex Saab , who was extradited to the US, during a demonstration demanding his release, at the Bolivar square in Caracas, on October 17, 2021.
Alex Saab and the Fragility of the Venezuela Solidarity Movement. It’s difficult not to see the renewed imprisonment of Alex Saab as a disappointing capitulation to US coercion after so many of us fought for his freedom, but we cannot forget the task at hand.
The recent deportation of Alex Saab from Caracas to the US on May 18, 2026 has generated shock, confusion, anger, and intense debate across sectors of the international, is seen by many Venezuelans as someone who helped the country bypass sanctions, obtain fuel and food, open financial channels, and resist economic collapse under blockade conditions. And across the international left, Saab came to represent something larger than an individual businessman: the broader struggle over sanctions, sovereignty, and Venezuela’s ability to survive under extraordinary economic and geopolitical pressure.
The Venezuelan revolution did not survive the last decade of US economic warfare without contradictions. It survived through improvisation, exhaustion, loyalty, fear, sanctions, migration, stubbornness, and an almost unbearable national fatigue that few outside the country truly understand. Reducing every painful decision to betrayal while ignoring the enormous machinery of coercion surrounding Venezuela risks reproducing the very fragmentation that external aggression was designed to create in the first place.
To understand why Saab became such a powerful figure, one must first understand what Venezuela became under sanctions: a country forced into survival mode. And now, after the deportation of Saab to the United States and the growing accusations against Delcy Rodríguez, I watch many people speak with the confidence of hindsight. As if everything had always been obvious.
As if Venezuelans navigating one of the most aggressive campaigns of economic warfare, destabilization, and military coercion in modern Latin American history had the luxury of moral purity. As a Venezuelan American, I am struggling too to understand and process this moment. I stood there too. I called for Alex Saab’s freedom when he was detained in Cape Verde during the height of the Trump administration’s maximum pressure campaign against Venezuela.
At the time, the reality that existed for many of us was that Saab was a Venezuelan diplomat helping the country navigate sanctions. Recently, Venezuelan National Assembly President Jorge Rodríguez publicly stated that Alex Saab has maintained relationships with US agencies since 2019. These revelations, combined with Saab’s deportation, have generated painful questions for many people who spent years defending him publicly. What kinds of compromises were going on inside a country trying to survive under siege?
Maybe realities existed behind closed doors that ordinary Venezuelans never had access to. Or maybe decisions were made inside an impossible reality where preventing wider war, deeper collapse, and even greater harm for ordinary Venezuelans became more urgent. Because since the kidnapping of Maduro, Venezuela has not been operating in an atmosphere of freedom. It is operating under threat.
It is easy to demand uncompromising heroism from a country under attack when you are not the one responsible for preventing millions of people from falling into even greater catastrophe. People who defended Saab for years are now confronting the possibility that parts of the story may have been hidden from them. Others are immediately translating uncertainty into accusations of betrayal against Delcy Rodríguez and the entire Bolivarian process
Alex Saab Deportation Deported Bolivarian Movement Civilian Colombia Cape Verde Captured Coercion Deportation Diplomat Economic Collapse Embassy Free Imposition Of Coercive Measures Madeira Maximum Pressure Campaign Maximum Pressure Maximum Pressure Campaign Military Operation National Navigation Of Sanctions Press President Protests Revolution Soviets UN Security Council Us Agencies Vascepa Venezuela Venezuela Solidarity Movement West White House World Bank
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