Interview with Compañero Nicolás Maduro Moros,
Constitutional President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela,
with Compañero Rafael Correa
Program "Conversing with Correa”
September 9, 2025
Compañero Rafael Correa
Welcome friends to one more episode of "Conversing with Correa”, this time with an exceptional Guest, I am referring to the President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro Moros. Welcome Mr. President. Thank you very much for accepting my invitation.
President Nicolás Maduro
Well, it is a great joy for us to receive you here, in this Presidential Palace, in this Simon Bolivar Hall, which has that legendary painting by a great neo-Granadian-Colombian painter, for which Bolivar posed. So, in this Hall, which has witnessed so many historical things in our Country, welcome to you too.
Compañero Rafael Correa
So many things lived together, so many experiences and memories of an extraordinary Latin American leader, Comandante Hugo Chavez. I remember how the press criticized him, how they tried to assassinate his reputation, and when he came to visit us in Ecuador, we would go out on the street and we couldn't make our way, because everyone was crowding to greet him. The same with Fidel.
President Nicolás Maduro
Love.
Compañero Rafael Correa
That's right. Okay, but let's talk a little about the situation. You have said that Obama, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was first given the Nobel Prize before earning it, since it never had any merit, given his overthrows of governments, wars and interventions, and in 2015 the decree declaring Venezuela a danger to the National Security of the United States.
And there it began, it had already begun in 2013, but without strategy, without consistency; sanctions were beginning to be applied consistently against Venezuela, and today we have a flotilla, even with a nuclear submarine off the coast of Venezuela so as to prevent drug trafficking, saying that you, a President, lead the Cartel de los Soles, trafficking drugs. What are they after? What is their goal?
President Nicolás Maduro
They are after many things, first they are looking for oil, not drug traffickers, it is about oil, it is about gas.
Venezuela has the main oil reserves in the world, which are now increased by the new recovery factors that exist with oil technology. It has the fourth gas reserves, which are all over the Caribbean, precisely where these people sent their fleet. And Venezuela has what could be the world's leading gold reserves, and so on.
30 million hectares of A1 arable land; water, a gigantic aquifer, we have the Orinoco to the North and South of the Orinoco, which crosses the entire South of Venezuela, water, water, drinking water, enough to throw up into the sky.
Venezuela has a fundamental geographical position, it is in the northern part of South America, facing Central America, towards the north and towards the Atlantic.
We have other great wealth, Bolivarianism, the Bolivarian Project, Chavismo, which is an Independence Project of the whole Greater Patriotic Nation; it is a deeply democratic Republican Project, one of the Socialism of this Century, our Socialism. It is not past socialism that was known. It is Democratic, Libertarian Socialism, it is the Socialism of Cultural Diversity.
That's what they are coming to, to try, with their Hollywood narrative, to try to smear the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, its Leadership, its President, and after smearing it, to try an operation to attack us.
Well, we have in front of us 8 warships, destroyers, in the Caribbean. That's never been seen before. The only thing like it is the memory of the October crisis in 1962, when they made the blockade of Cuba. Well, they have 8 ships now with 1,200 missiles pointed at our heads.
They have a nuclear submarine, and now they say they have one in Puerto Rico, that the Head of the Pentagon arrived in Puerto Rico, and the Governor of Puerto Rico said that Puerto Rico was a base for a military operation against Venezuela. He said it. The Governor of Puerto Rico joined a military plan.
I say to the Governor of Puerto Rico: If you say you are going to invade Venezuela, come first, do you hear? You get off the first boat, and Venezuela's women are going to be waiting for you here, do you hear? And I know that the people of Puerto Rico are going to oppose turning Puerto Rico into a military base to attack their Brothers and Sisters from South America, their Brothers and Sisters from the Caribbean.
Now, what are they afterr? They seek, through military intimidation, to look good for the ultra-right, for the extreme right, for imperial interests, because internally we have defeated them at all levels.
The Right-wing extremist groups that represented the most rancid, patriotic, colonialist opposition of the American Empire in Venezuela, they disappeared in Venezuela.
In Venezuela there is a political climate of coexistence, of tolerance, of participation; we have come through multiple elections, all have been carried out in a very orderly way, one of progress; the Presidency of the Republic was renewed; the 24 Governorships were renewed with a Popular Vote; the 335 Mayoralties were renewed with a Popular Vote; a new National Assembly was elected for the period 2026-2031; there are permanent consultations to Community Projects; the economy has recovered by its own efforts, step by step growing a new economy.
So the American Empire is playing a dangerous card for our Region, but dangerous for them too, and, moreover, it is an extremist card.
They cannot say of Maduro that he has weapons of mass destruction. Or can they say about me what they said about Saddam Hussein? They can't! No one would believe them. So they take out the stories they have spread about, Hollywood tales, where Maduro is the bad guy in the movie and they are the good guys, and so then they are going to send their Army.
The good guys in the movie, the blond guys, like the blond haired tough guy who goes looking for the Latino, the bad guy. But people know the truth about that movie: That the bad guy is not the one they say, in fact the bad guy is the one who writes the movie, the one who makes the movie; those are the real bad guys, as we have proven many times.
Venezuela is a free country, completely free of the phenomenon of drug trafficking. Free of it! There is not a hectare planted with coca leaf plantations here. There are no cocaine labs. And those who bring it to the border, pin-pun-pa, we destroy them ourselves, with our Police Forces, our Military Forces.
There is not even one hectare of marijuana, because after all, marijuana is now produced in the United States legally, it is an enriched marijuana.
Compañero Rafael Correa
And even certain US presidents consume it as well.
President Nicolás Maduro
And all the consumption of all those drugs in the United States.
Compañero Rafael Correa
It's all about those people themselves, starting with Obama.
President Nicolás Maduro
There are maps, very clear maps, Correa, Rafael, I'm used to calling you President, so I have to tell you, here are the maps... This is cocaine! All the cocaine is produced in Colombia, why? Because in 40 years, 40 years, of oligarchic governments, the oligarchy was turned and became a drug trafficking oligarchy.
Compañero Rafael Correa
With 7 US military bases.
President Nicolás Maduro
8 military bases! 8 military bases! Plan Colombia. More than 100,000 million dollars got into it.
Compañero Rafael Correa
Colombia had more combat helicopters than pilots, because of Plan Colombia.
President Nicolás Maduro
Yes. Before the cocaine was sent through the ports of the Colombian Pacific. Now, 70% of the cocaine produced in Colombia leaves through the ports of Ecuador.
Now, here's the fact: 87% of the cocaine produced in Colombia goes out through the Pacific. 8% leaves through the North, the Colombian Guajira, and only 5% tries to pass through Venezuela. Of that 5% we, I think it is more than 100 tons, 5%, we managed to seize and destroy more than 70%, official figures of the World Organization for the Fight against Narcotics.
Now, here is another one, this is the World Customs Organization, which coincides with the Report of the European Union and the World Organization for the Fight against Drugs, which is from the UN. It's very straightforward. Look, they all say that these are the drug routes.
This is official, these are not reports from Venezuela, they are reports from the European Union, from the World Customs Organization, and the World Customs Organization saying that all the cocaine is being transferred in Ecuadorian shipping companies and bnusinesses. That's the truth.
Compañero Rafael Correa
In boxes of bananas, not in boxes of ”Ripe/Maduro".
President Nicolás Maduro
In boxes of bananas, not in boxes of ”Ripe/Maduro".
Compañero Rafael Correa
Invading Venezuela, President, would be suicide, as those of us know who are familiar with Venezuela. As you say, an enlistment was called for the People's Militias and 8 million enlisted. But if there is a "surgical" attack as they call it? When they are never surgical attacks, there us always “collateral", I mean, destroyed civilians, etc. Can you rule that out really, with thousands of missiles pointed towards Venezuela?
President Nicolás Maduro
Well, that would be crazy.
Compañero Rafael Correa
But they have shown they are mad, haven't they?
President Nicolás Maduro
Totally! It is that we are in a state of war.
Compañero Rafael Correa
For example, a madman with a nuclear button.
President Nicolás Maduro
Yes. Pope Francis, May he rest in Peace, beloved Pope Francis, who said it more than 2 years ago: It is not that we are going into a Third World War; the Third World War has already begun. I think that's the way it is.
The US Empire has a war plan to try to impose its hegemony, political, economic, cultural, and military, in the world. It is impossible for them to do so, it is impossible, because a New World has already emerged, and the Multipolar World is a fact. Already the new Power Regions, the new Powerful Countries are a fact. They are an economic, technological, scientific and cultural power. They are an economic power and they are a military power.
China, Russia, India, are the three flagships of the Multipolar World, but along with all those go Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean. There is already a Multipolar World, it already exists, and the United States has a plan to use force in that new situation. And force, force and more force. That's why they talk about imposing peace by force. Of course it's not peace! Because they are talking, while they mouth Peace, about slavery, colonialism, cemeteries.
Compañero Rafael Correa
This is "pacification."
President Nicolás Maduro
Yes. People don't want Roman peace, nor a US imperial Peace. People want Peace with Equality, with Sovereignty, with Independence, with National Identity.
Compañero Rafael Correa
With Justice, Mr. President.
President Nicolás Maduro
The US public is tired of military interventions, of massacres, of regime changes. And what the current US government is doing is lying with a story to justify a military action, to start a war in South America for a regime change, to colonize Venezuela, and by colonizing Venezuela to colonize the Caribbean, South America and beyond.
They are not superior to anyone. No! The United States cannot be allowed to believe itself superior to anyone, we cannot let racist, class, oligarchic, political supremacism be imposed. No! It would be a new colonialism.
I always ask the people and the military: Raise your hand here those who want to be a colony again. No one! Raise your hand here the one who wants to be a slave. Do you want to be a slave? Do you want to be a slave? Because that's their project: We submit to their slavery.
Correa, the biggest test in the world that they want to impose is Gaza, Palestine, it is to completely exterminate a People, exterminate a Culture, and tell the World: We can exterminate whoever we want. That's not the world the US people want, either. No one. That they come then, with regime change, to impose a new World Colonialism No!
Venezuela is at Peace, we are sure of the way ahead, we are on the right side of history and we are part of the Multipolar World that has already emerged. We are part of that Multipolar World and we give battle the way we are giving it.
Now, we are solid and united to build the country, not to attack anyone; our Military Forces are not designed to invade anyone, anywhere; to attack anyone.
Look at the phenomenon that has occurred: We liberated the Country, Correa, you know Venezuela well, we liberated the country from crime and the criminal gangs that plagued the country's cities and the countryside.
I could tell you that in the battle against the criminal gangs, the Aragua Train, the Tren del Llano, and all those gangs, we have advanced more than 90%. We exterminated the local group called Tren de Aragua, who now get turned into a myth, a legend, to justify political and economic aggression, and now this military threat.
So I think that our country probably has problems, mistakes have been made, for sure, but the mistake that our People have never made and will never make is to betray our History, betray the liberating generosity that the People of Venezuela have and that the South American Peoples have.
If we have to fight, our People will fight, with serenity, with firmness, and with deep Love, with Passion, that the invaders, the aggressors, are never going to have. Although some people will come out, Rafael, to defend colonialism and the new slavery.
Compañero Rafael Correa
Unfortunately, some Latin Americans already do, Mr. President, don't let anyone be fooled on that. Unfortunately there are sell-outs in our America.
President Nicolás Maduro
They do appear. I know that. In Venezuela, by law, by our Constitution, calling for an invasion, supporting an invasion, promoting bombings, promoting the violation of National Sovereignty, is a crime against the Nation.
Compañero Rafael Correa
Former President Lasso, former President of the Republic of Ecuador, just said in an interview on CNN with Fernando del Rincón, that he would support a US bombing on our nation's soil, on Ecuadorian soil, to combat drugs. I mean, since when has drug trafficking been fought with bombing? But to allow a bombing in your own Nation, and nothing happens. That quisling should be brought to justice.
President Nicolás Maduro
Of course, because there is simply a Right wing that emerged as a reaction to the Progressive Spring of 2003 to 2014, 2015, the Right that emerged, is a rustic, extremist, mother-selling Right; the worst Right wing that there has been in 150 years on the Continent.
Because there has always been Right, Left, Center-right, Center-Left, but from political, sensible, constitutional, often nationalist positions. Not today, today they are simply direct agents of imperialist foreign forces, and they are not political leaders.
Compañero Rafael Correa
I have heard Right-wing leaders, opponents of your Government, President, but Nationalist Patriots, saying, I may be totally opposed to Chavismo, to the Government of President Nicolás Maduro, but faced with the first shot fired at a Venezuelan soldier, we all have one Government and one Nation; they will unite the Venezuelan people.
President Nicolás Maduro
That is how it will be.
Compañero Rafael Correa
In any case, it is undeniable that they have the strength, they have the national and international media power, they can generate consensus and then manufacture consent. They can make people believe, above all, who want to believe the biggest lies, fanaticism and irrational hatred, allows them to believe the impossible, deny the obvious.
And it turns out that cocaine production has increased in Colombia, especially under Duque's government. In Ecuador, with the last three Right-wing governments, we became the world's leading exporter of cocaine.
On the contrary, Venezuela was declared by the United Nations in 2016, it seems to me, a Territory Free of Illicit Crops; but they still claim those who support drug trafficking are you.
President Nicolás Maduro
The world upside down as Galeano said.
Compañero Rafael Correa
A world turned upside down. We have a Secretary of State, from the United States, who when told that: But if the UN declared Venezuela Free of Illicit Cultivation asserts I don't care what the UN says.
What to do in the face of such unprincipled people, who are even unaware of the world's institutionality, the legal order, an incipient order, fragile, but still the legal order? What little we have of legal order at the International Level, even that is ignored.
President Nicolás Maduro
Defend the truth, spread the truth and prepare for struggle permanently; be prepared, alert, because we are facing a government that represents extremist ideas that does not recognize the UN, does not even recognize the internal legality in the United States.
There is a growing position among the US citizenry, of denunciation, that there is no recognition of internal legality, they do not recognize it. Unfortunately we are living through a period similar, with great differences too, to the period of Hitler, of Mussolini, where they ignored Society and Nations.
Compañero Rafael Correa
President, 50 million dollars reward to whoever delivers Nicolás Maduro, President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. What an insult! As an interviewer I have to keep objectivity; careful, neutrality never, no one is neutral, we all have our affections, disaffections, prejudices for better or for worse; the important thing is not to lose objectivity.
In this case, allow me, with this new neutrality, to make it clear that I will always be with Venezuela, with its Heroic People, Cradle of Liberators. I've known you for a long time, President.
I am outraged by these things, I am outraged by the double standard, the insult of offering a reward for a Latin American President, when it is other Presidents who have even been accused of sexual assaults, by the dozens, and who are running the world, or pretend to run it. But what do you think about this nonsense coming from the US government?
President Nicolás Maduro
It's a repeat movie, a bad movie of a cowboy who failed in the past by putting up "wanted" posters, we've already seen this poster, we've seen the poster, it's the same mistake as in 2020, just the same. a bad movie a bad movie
At that time the actors were different, John Bolton in the White House; Mike Pompeo in the State Department; a guy I think surnamed Barr from the Prosecutor's Office. The story is the same, the failure was the same, it was the first version of a bad movie. This second version, I can tell you, has universal repudiation.
Compañero Rafael Correa
If I may add President, in the “Panama Paper” scandals, the "Pandora Papers", where were the secret accounts of the Leftist Presidents? They were all right-wing presidents. Absolutely nothing happened about it.
President Nicolás Maduro
They are always the same, so you will know them by their works; they intend to make up a story, a narrative to criminalize the Revolutionaries who are fighting for our Nation at this time. It's not new, how many narratives did they make against Sandino? Bandit, Terrorist? Who is Sandino, as remembered by the Peoples? A Liberator.
How many narratives were made against Fidel, and how is Fidel remembered by the Peoples? The Great Comandante.
How many narratives did they make against Chavez? How many narratives did they make against the 30,000 disappeared in Argentina?, and are remembered today as the most precious treasure of the disappeared Children of Argentina.
So they've had different narratives. In the past it was Communism, Jacobo Arbenz was overthrown in Guatemala as a Communist. They invaded against Juan Bosch, a great Eminence, Juan Bosch in the Dominican Republic as a Communist; that was in '65.
Compañero Rafael Correa
And none of them were Communists, just in case. Jacobo Arbenz declared himself a modernizing capitalist.
President Nicolás Maduro
In '64 they also went to Brazil, João Goulart, 50 years later, I think it was the Obama Administration, that asked for public forgiveness from Guatemala, the Dominican Republic and Brazil because, sorry, they were not Communists, we were wrong!
They overthrew a Humanist, the great Democrat who these days is celebrating his 52nd anniversary, the Great Martyr President, and they killed him, Salvador Allende. That was the time when they were using accusations of being Communists.
Then they started using the accusation of being terrorists, bin Laden, ISIS, who created them? And so on; the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. There is always a story to falsify reality and justify the unjustifiable; now this is the new story that you can be sure of...
Compañero Rafael Correa
President, does the Cartel de los Soles exist?
President Nicolás Maduro
There is the Cartel of the North that is clandestine, 85% of the thousands and billions of the annual international drug trafficking are in US Banks. That's where the Cartel is, let them investigate it and find out.
Compañero Rafael Correa
Money laundering, (...) tax havens
President Nicolás Maduro
I was looking at the data that the Vice President gave, and I think it's more than 500,000 million dollars a year that are in the US Banking system, in legal Banks. If they wanted to investigate a cartel, they should investigate the Northern Cartel.
Because it is to the United States that all the drug trafficking in South America and the world is directed, because the US also directs opium drug trafficking, etc., etc. It is in the United States, that there is the mafia, and where there are the real Cartels.
Compañero Rafael Correa
It is as the great Eduardo Galeano said: In the fight against drugs, the responsibilities are distributed, we offer our dead, and they offer the snorts up their noses.
In conclusion, President, thank you for the time you have given us. Venezuela is looking a lot towards the BRICS, particularly Russia and China. How do these Alliances, based on Respect, mutual benefit, contribute to strengthening Venezuela, to strengthening Latin America?
President Nicolás Maduro
Well, we have an open door policy to international investments, a lot of investments are coming from all over the world. Now, the relationship and partnership with China is strategic, we set it on that path with President Xi Jinping, in the year 2023.
Compañero Rafael Correa
That makes it a bigger target for the United States, which see China as their strategic adversary.
President Nicolás Maduro
Right, they have to understand that there is another world.
Compañero Rafael Correa
They don't understand, but sooner rather than later, they have to understand it; it's a reality.
President Nicolás Maduro
I always want, in any scenario I may be in, to thank the national business community, from all sectors: Agriculture, Agribusiness, Industry, Pharmaceuticals, Metalworking, Oil, Gas, Tourism; from all sectors, to the Country's Traders.
Threats, sanctions and blockades brought out the best in Venezuelans, and we became great entrepreneurs of work, life, production. And the difficulties allowed us to reinvent ourselves. So, yes, it is possible, we have achieved it, and we are going to continue moving forward on that path.
Compañero Rafael Correa
We know this, President, but the cost has been very high; hopefully one day we will have a true World Order, where no one can block a Sovereign Country, on a whim, for vested interests, for the largest oil reserve on the planet.
President Nicolás Maduro
That will come about, rest assured, it will come about and it will be part of the Great World Freedom.
Compañero Rafael Correa
That is the struggle, beloved President. In any case, thank you very much for accepting my invitation, it's always a pleasure to see you, it's always a pleasure to interview you, dear Nicolas.
And with you also friends, one more episode of "Conversando con Correa".