While Venezuela’s announcement that President Hugo Chávez’s bout with cancer has taken a turn for the worse is making big headlines, there is another development in the Venezuelan drama that has gone almost unnoticed: high-level U.S.-Venezuelan talks preparing for a post-Chávez future may have already started. Well-placed U.S. officials tell me that Roberta S. Jacobson, the top U.S. State Department official in charge of Latin American affairs, held a long telephone conversation with Venezuela’s Vice President and Chávez-designated heir Nicolas Maduro on Nov. 21, where the two discussed, among other things, the possibility of restoring ambassadors.
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