It reads like a desperate move from a cornered regime, but the threat is being broadcast with deadly seriousness from Caracas. Facing what it describes as an “extreme external threat” from the United States, the Venezuelan dictatorship has announced a bizarre yet chilling escalation in its defense strategy.
Diosdado Cabello, the regime’s powerful number two, revealed that pro-Maduro militants will now be trained by indigenous groups to wield silent, lethal weaponry—specifically, arrows tipped with curare, a paralyzing neurotoxin—against potential American invaders.
This directive comes as the Trump administration ramps up pressure, with the USS Gerald Ford aircraft carrier patrolling the Caribbean and the State Department officially designating the Cartel de Los Soles as a terrorist organization linked directly to Nicolás Maduro.
Asymmetrical Resistance and Mass Mobilization
The disparity in military capabilities has led the dictatorship to resort to psychological and asymmetrical warfare tactics to maintain internal control. Consequently, the regime is mobilizing over 4.5 million activists into “Bolivarian Integral Base Committees,” urging them to maintain “nerves of steel” for a potential conflict. While Maduro attempts to project a disorienting image of peace—even clumsily singing John Lennon’s “Imagine” on national television—his administration is simultaneously preparing for a scorched-earth resistance.
Cabello’s threat that foreign forces “will find out what curare is” serves to stoke anti-imperialist sentiment while signaling that the regime intends to turn the country into a trap for foreign forces. In summary, the Chavista leadership is weaponizing the population and ancestral tactics to ensure its survival, betting on a prolonged, unconventional insurgency rather than a conventional military confrontation.