Venezuelan Acting President Delcy Rodriguez issues statements during a meeting at Miraflores Palace on Monday, March 16, 2026. Photo: Venezuelan Presidential Press.
“We will continue to defend [territorial] integrity, sovereignty, and independence. Our history is a history of glory, of men and women who gave their lives to make us not a colony but a free country,” said Venezuela’s acting president Delcy Rodríguez in reponse to Trump’s threat to make Venezuela “the 51st state” of the US.
Upon leaving the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, Netherlands, where she defended Venezuela’s historical and legal rights over Guayana Esequiba, she noted that Venezuela had attended that forum precisely to “defend sovereignty, to defend our process of independence.”
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In response to a question about Trump’s threat, she aid “That is not on the table, it will never be on the table, because if there is one thing about Venezuelans, it is that we love our independence process; we love our heroes and heroines of the Independence.”
“President Trump knows. We have been working on a diplomatic agenda of cooperation. That is the course, that is the path,” she added.
“Venezuela, certainly, is the country with the largest oil reserves on the planet and also one of the largest gas reserves. The path is cooperation for understanding between countries,” she concluded.
On Monday, statements that Trump made to a journalist from FOX, John Robert, went viral, in which Trump claimed that he is “seriously considering” making Venezuela the 51st state of the US. The disgraced leader of the US regime also mentioned the country’s enormous oil reserves, saying that there is “$40 trillion in oil there.”
(Resumen Latinoamericano – English) by Yuleidys Hernandez Toledo
