NOTE: This article was written before the huge earthquakes in Venezuela on June 24, 2026.
“Venezuela has become a happy country,” spouted Donald Trump again this month in his latest flex about the “miracle” his administration has brought on the Latin American nation by putting “his people” in charge.
As usual, that was it from the orange man: just flex clout, then move on. No evidence, no figures, no context, just the same cringe Twitter hyperbole on loop since January 3 – until the algorithms cement it in history as fact.
But how happy are Venezuelan workers really? Are they ecstatically “dancing in the streets” and donning huge “smiles” with the new US tutelage of our country?
Measuring-up happiness is like trying to get all the Epstein files released – a near impossible task – but for those who try, Venezuela ranked 82nd in 2025. Others placed it 5th in 2012.
Joy is a very subjective emotion and differs according to each person’s life priorities. For some, it comes from sporting success, while for most it’s sparked by economic, professional, or personal achievement.
Others find euphoria in social or political struggle, hooking-up personal glee to that of a collective, a class. Progress in a people’s emancipation, empowerment, national sovereignty, or liberty is often enough to get the dopamine flowing.
But happiness is also intrinsically linked to the objective material conditions that each class faces, such as wages, access to affordable and quality healthcare, education, recreation or housing, constant electrical, water and telecoms supply, or the ability to cover one’s basic needs, for example.
Jubilation can also exist as false consciousness, a cover-up to temporarily disguise a deeper distaste that hardly reflects life satisfaction. Any smoker or drinker will tell you how a quick buzz blankets-out the tiredness from a 11-hour shift or the stress of family problems, albeit for a few minutes.
Vibe on the ground
So: are Venezuelan workers happy now that we have US military operations being carried out over Caracas’ skies and the mines in the east; now that Washington controls our oil income; or now that the increasingly unpopular Delcy and Jorge Rodriguez are selling off our electrical grid, oil industry and mines to US big capital, as I detailed in my last Venezuela Flex column?
Well, some undoubtedly seem on cloud nine. A small group of workers (who are joined by many government officials and Delcy) feel that US tutelage and investment is – to quote Delcy – the “correct path” towards, quoting others, “righting the wrongs of the past” and “recuperating” the country’s “prosperity”, with some even thanking Trump for his “brave” January 3 assault. We would have to be blind (or paid propagandists) to ignore that this sector exists (despite not sharing their views in the slightest).
Another, maybe majority, cross-party group felt a great upsurge of hope following January 3, despite the battering to their deep-rooted sense of national pride and sovereignty. They saw Maduro as the main hurdle to better wages, conditions, democracy and general improvement. But these hopes have now dwindled.
The lack of progress on fresh (and clean) elections, miserable $0.21 monthly minimal wages and labor conditions, with no improvement in prices, hospitals, schools, roads, electrical or water supply, or other infrastructure, have all created a maelstrom of frustration with the Trump-Delcy duo. These workers are definitely not tickled today.
And finally there’s us, the once massive anti-imperialist sector who – despite differing opinions on Maduro’s reign – are today melancholic over the violations of our sovereignty and liberty committed by the US on January 3 and by Delcy thereafter. To these workers – whose clout has weakened due to years of demobilization, emigration, and the rise of the harsh wage-cost disparity as people’s number one concern – the imposition of foreign capital is antagonistic to any exultation.
Labor conflicts = Unhappy workers
All the while, a cacophony of labor conflicts ensue in Venezuela – dating back to before Delcy’s coronation – which give us a decent enough marker as to where the workers are on the happiness scale.
One of the more prominent and long-running is that of educational workers, who held another day of action on June 10 in which the vast majority primary, secondary and university educational workers halted operations and “stayed at home”, according to the trade union Fetrasined, one of the eight national educational unions which called the protest.
Millions of educational workers have been protesting dire wages, non-existent union freedoms, deteriorated workplace conditions, the failure to apply collective bargaining, indiscriminate sackings, failure to pay contractual bonuses, and the suspension of 100,000 teachers – all since Maduro’s 2018 economic turnaround kicked in. Not much happiness there.
As in previous stoppages, the action was joined by organized doctors, nurses, pensioners, students and other workers, making it a “total success across the country” that “surpassed expectations”, as per Fetrasined President Falime Hernandez. Unhappy proletarians of Venezuela, unite!
More Protests, Less Happiness
From miners to oil workers, iron welders, electrical workers, healthcare workers, university workers, telecomms workers and even snack food workers, there has been a marked uptick in labor protests since January – including sizable May Day marches. Some demand better wages or pensions, some oppose violations to national sovereignty, others seek to block privatizations and sell-offs, while some simply demand the right to join a trade union – but none seem very happy!
In their first report of the year, the Venezuelan Observatory of Social Conflict estimates a year-on-year 144% rise in protests during the period January to March, from 788 in 2025 to 1,926 (21 per day) this year. March 2026 alone registered a whopping 705 protests, with similar or greater figures expected for April and May.
“During that month [March], workers once again took center stage in social protests, organizing nationwide demonstrations to demand wage increases, decent pensions, and the restoration of purchasing power. Union members and workers from various sectors organized days of protest to reject the wage subsidy policy,” the report says.
“Labor unrest was widespread and involved various unions and economic sectors, which in March they even marched to the National Assembly building—a development that would have been unthinkable just a few months ago. Taken together, these demonstrations show that labor protests have become an expression of resistance against the deterioration of living conditions and a means of exerting pressure in the absence of institutional responses that guarantee fundamental rights,” it continues.
“The high proportion of combined protests reflects the fact that the Venezuelan population is facing a multidimensional crisis, in which demands for justice, freedom, labor rights, access to basic services, and democratic guarantees do not arise in isolation but are deeply intertwined. This pattern shows that citizens are reacting not only to specific problems but also to a structural environment of rights violations that simultaneously impacts various aspects of daily life,” it concludes.
‘Trump and his lackeys are the only ones who are happy’
So, are workers happy?
Pedro Eusse, general secretary of the CUTV trade union confederation which joined the June 10 protest despite raising concerns about the “demobilizing” ‘stay at home’ message it conveyed, says no.
“Here, the only ones who are happy are the bureaucratic, authoritarian, corrupt and anti-people elite which runs the government, and the business class that now definitively has the government working for it. The working people are increasingly impoverished,” he told me.
“Even those sectors which believed that possible solutions were coming [after January 3], they thought that from then onward we would live better off, but its been the complete opposite. Wages have disappeared, meanwhile the cost of living increases, every day there’s increases in the prices of goods and services and the purchasing power of Venezuelans has been destroyed. This sector feels defrauded,” he continued.
“And for the popular sectors which have historically accompanied Chavismo, they feel deceived and betrayed by the governing elite which is today handing over the wealth of the country [to the US], while for the people there is only increasing misery and abandonment. Trump and his lackeys here are the only ones who are happy, and we reject his cynical, arrogant comments,” Eusse concluded.
As the CUTV points out: for the 1% there are certainly good reasons to feel happy and “dance in the streets”. The rich are getting richer, bankers are making more money, the business class is salivating over multi-million dollar US contracts, and the political elite remain in power and pocket without elections. Happy, happy, happy, it seems!
But for the rest, we the 99%, who toil day-in-day-out, many for less than a $1 a month wage, who value national sovereignty and independence but who struggle with a dollar economy, battering 524% inflation, devastated healthcare, education, and transport services, who have had families ripped apart over income-induced emigration, who are still waiting for the 2024 election results to be published, and who now see US military jets flying overhead, the only music we might dance to is that of the blues.
- First published at Marxism-Leninism Today.