In 1936, Venezuelans learned for the first time what it meant to transition towards democracy. While this was not the only period of transition the country would experience (since the process that began in 1958 consolidated a more open and enduring political regime), the transition of 1936 was longer and more complex, resembling the one Venezuelans are now experiencing after the capture of Nicolás Maduro on 3 January 2026.

Coromoto Escalona, a 35-year-old woman, was preparing her baby’s feeding bottle when she heard some strange noises in the house. It was two o’clock in the morning. She wondered whether the fridge had broken down, since it sometimes made strange noises when it was damaged. Her eldest daughter, who was scrolling on WhatsApp, shouted from her room: “Mum, they’re bombing us.” The two of them stopped what they were doing, grabbed the essentials – the feeding bottle, water and some food – and ran to an underground room in their house, an old colonial mansion in La Pastora, a working-class neighbourhood in central Caracas.

Coromoto’s testimony is one of many you hear in Caracas these days, a week after the US military attack on the Venezuelan capital which concluded with the capture of Maduro. The event, other Caracas residents recount, felt like a repeat of what they experienced on 4 February 1992, when the city was also bombed – not by the US, but by Hugo Chávez’s military officers, who had risen up against the existing democratic system. The structure in place at the time of Chávez’s strikes had taken many years to achieve and consolidate – just over three decades in the past century.

To understand the depth of this moment, it is necessary to step back to 1936, when Venezuelans first experienced what a political transition meant: a shift towards democracy with relative guarantees of freedom, as is often the case in such contexts. After the death of Juan Vicente Gómez in December 1935 – hitherto the longest-ruling dictator in the country’s history – his minister of war, Eleazar López Contreras, succeeded him in the presidency and was able to steer the nation towards a moderately democratic regime: political prisons were opened, freedom of speech was granted and a modernisation programme was designed.

At that time, at least two factors were required: political will and sustained pressure from the streets. The demonstration of 14 February 1936 served as a catalyst for the reforms that followed, despite leaving several casualties. This does not mean there were no contradictions: in the 1936 transition – a term used by one of the protagonists of the moment, Ramón Díaz Sánchez – there was also repression and persecution of those who thought differently. It was not a spontaneous and immediate change.

Although this transition was the most complex in Venezuela’s history, it was not the country’s only experience of political change. In 1958, Venezuelan society once again experienced a similar scenario: the fall of Marcos Pérez Jiménez (for many, Venezuela’s last dictator of the 20th century), when a consensual regime based on political parties and alternation in power was established – a system that, despite its lights and shadows, became the most solid in Latin America. The country opened its doors to thousands of migrants from Europe, Latin America and the Middle East; ensured peaceful transfers of power between two different parties; developed its oil production to its fullest potential; and succeeded in neutralising the prevailing extremism of the cold war.

It was precisely against this political regime that Chávez’s actions were directed in 1992, for which he ended up in prison. The existence of a rule of law allowed him to be released and to assume the presidency without major setbacks in February 1999, under the slogan of refounding the state with the ideals of Simón Bolívar, the principal figure of national independence, and in the name of those most in need. The concentration of power brought about by the new constitution expanded the president’s authority to unprecedented levels. What followed was predictable in such circumstances: power was exercised for personal convenience and wielded against those he regarded as enemies. Before his death in March 2013, he urged voters to support Maduro – then his vice-president – should he become permanently absent.

And so it came to pass: in 2013, Venezuelans elected Maduro as president in a controversial vote. The social outlook was already bleak, as the decisions taken under Chávez were beginning to exact a heavy toll on the economy. What followed was yet another transition – one that, unlike those of 1936 and 1958, did not point towards democracy but towards a more oppressive regime marked by totalitarian features. Maduro forcefully repressed the opposition, persecuted and tortured thousands, killed hundreds and drove millions of Venezuelans into exile. He aligned himself with some of the world’s least democratic regimes, which exploited the country’s resources in exchange for strategic, anti-western alliances. In July 2024, he disregarded the results of the elections and forced opposition leaders underground.

That remained the case until 3 January 2026 – or, at least, that is how it appears a week after Donald Trump’s attack. Today, Venezuelans once again find themselves facing a dilemma of political transition, uncertain whether it will lead to a democratic system or yet another form of authoritarian rule. After 27 years of the latter, we naturally hope for the former. This hope is reflected in calls for the release of political prisoners, an end to media censorship, respect for human rights and the return of those forced into exile.

None of this has occurred so far. Yet there is a palpable tension in the air, oscillating between fear and a cautious sense of celebration – not because we place blind faith in Trump, whose interests do not necessarily align with Venezuelan democratisation, but because we sense that this moment carries a genuine opportunity for change. Nor is this sentiment rooted in the belief that history is cyclical, or that it simply “rhymes”, as Mark Twain once suggested. Rather, it arises from Venezuela’s own experience: as history shows, this is not the first time the country has faced a moment of this kind in its republican past.

Jesús Piñero is a journalist and a historian at the Central University of Venezuela