Alex Saab and the Fragility of the Solidarity Movement

By Michelle Ellner  –  May 22, 2026

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 solidarity movement and many Venezuelans themselves.

Alex Saab, a Colombian businessman who became closely associated with the Venezuelan government during the years of heavy US sanctions, 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.

The US accuses Saab of corruption and money laundering connected to Venezuelan state contracts, but for many people in Venezuela 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.

The United States did not merely sanction Venezuela. It attempted to break it. It froze national assets, it openly pursued regime change, backed parallel governments, economically strangled the country, and ultimately launched a military operation to kidnap President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores from Venezuelan soil.

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 U.S. agencies since 2019. These revelations, combined with Saab’s deportation, have generated painful questions for many people who spent years defending him publicly.

What did we actually know?

What kinds of compromises were going on inside a country trying to survive under siege?

These are painful questions. And at this moment, there are still far more questions than answers.

Maybe painful compromises were made.

Maybe Saab was never what many believed him to be.

Maybe serious betrayals occurred.

Maybe the deportation was justified.

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.

And 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.

About the Extradition of Alex Saab

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.

But I think there is something dangerous about how quickly so many people are rushing toward absolute conclusions while fragments of information, accusations, leaks, and political narratives are still colliding in real time.

Maybe there will come a moment for deeper criticism of Delcy Rodríguez and others within the Bolivarian process. Maybe new information will eventually clarify realities that today remain obscured by contradiction, secrecy, pressure, and war.

But I think there is a certain political myopia in discussing Venezuela’s internal contradictions while removing the broader reality of US pressure and coercion from the story entirely.

Because regardless of what may eventually be revealed about Alex Saab, the larger reality remains unchanged: Venezuela was subjected to years of sanctions, destabilization, economic strangulation, coup attempts, international isolation, and eventually direct military intervention.

The aggressor has not disappeared from the story.

And 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.

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. If we are serious about ending US aggression towards Venezuela, we cannot allow our solidarity with the Venezuelan people to be deterred. They have shown us how to sustain a revolution amidst contradictions, and that is what we must do.

 

 

(Countercurrents)