I. The night of thunder: the end of the regime

Everything began with a blackout. Not just any blackout. This time, all of Caracas was plunged into darkness that was not electrical, but political. At 2:17 a.m., while helicopters flew over Miraflores, a clandestine transmission interrupted all official channels: “The regime has collapsed. The people and history have decided.”

The operation, dubbed by the media as Storm Bolívar, was a brutal choreography of intelligence, betrayal, and precision. Trump, in his second term, had woven a web of international pressure that suffocated chavismo from within. But the final blow came from within the bowels of power: a group of generals, fed up with misery and humiliation, aligned themselves with a secret civilian junta that had been negotiating with Washington for months.