Welcome to Telesur English. With the end of 2025 and the beginning of a new year 2026, the president of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, received journalist and international analyst, Spanish journalist Ignacio Ramonet at this hour today for a special conversation about the country's present, about also the country's social and economic life at a time in which powers are ramping up their pressure on the region and also Venezuelans, in a context as well in which Venezuelans are showing the day today their commitments in the defense of their homeland. And this has been shown on a daily basis for the past year. A year that also has been marked as well by many challenges for the Venezuelan people, that has been marked as well by continuous harassment by the US administration of President Donald Trump. But nothing has put Venezuelans back on their goal, which is preserving peace, which is defending as well their social achievements, which is also putting the people at the forefront of the political decision making of the country. The country that has as well been performing and following closely and with much respect their political agendas, their electoral calendars as well. The people have been going to the polls on several occasions, on four occasions for the past year to elect the social projects that they want to prioritize in their communes. Also, people that have been enlisting and preparing to defend the country at any cost, at whatever, even if it takes offering their own lives as well. Now let's listen to the statements and this special interview that Telesur is bringing to your TVs at this hour.
Interviews of the end of the year. It was the 1st of January of 2017. When we published the 10 victories of President Maduro of 2017, which was the year of the 120 days of Guarimba, the year of the constituent and the miraculous peace, the year that we triumphed in the election of the governorates, the most competitive one that we have had, out of 23 we won 20. Then we won the mayor offices of the country. It was a year politically speaking very fruitful. And then came all of these years 18, 19, 20. In that moment, the years 2016, right? Because this was the 1st of January of 2017. There was like in the international press, the idea that this was going very badly and that there was a campaign that was very open against your government and also against your person. And in that we had not had still, that didn't have the shape of an interview, a formal one, but there were interviews that we did in the last days of December and from there I did a text and it was transformed into a news report and in the news report we proved how in reality that year that they pretended to be a dark year, a shady one, it was a year that effectively of great victories for the revolution and for the country.
That is a little bit looking into the depth of the reality and not staying in the superficiality and the media manipulation.
Exactly in the media's manipulation, the media headlines. It's a little bit where the center of cognitive war and the psychological war is, year after year staying in the headlines and the show of the ride and they don't go into the depth that we live from the deepness with the people year after year, moment after moment. The skin of the news that is hidden and it hides the end of the reality.
It is a beauty. Caracas is very beautiful. This is called the Plaza of Silence. It was designed by the general president Isaías Medina Angarita with a great architect, and it was part of a vision that was had in a time of the 20th century with the working bank houses for the working class. This plaza was filled by Fidel in the meeting, the biggest meeting on January 23rd of 1959. He came already victorious and it was the first country that Fidel visited here. He was and that was iconic as the biggest meeting, the biggest political action of the history of Venezuela until Commander Chávez on October 4th of the year 2012 in the ending of his campaign filled the seven avenues including Avenue Bolívar which is what we're going to go through at the moment. There I was when the cordones of San Francisco, of course under the rain. I had never gotten as drenched as that day with rain. October the 4th, the cordones of San Francisco.
No. Here people don't get a flu because the weather is not that cold. But we got very drenched. Even our socks were completely drenched. Driving in Caracas is not easy and in Venezuela because there are many bikes that have been made here and that is due to what? They're cheap. They're very cheap and there's systems of credit and there's everything. They're electric. They're of gas, especially of gas. And those bikes, they're very simple to access the credit. There's great companies that assemble them and they have prospered very much. And of course, we have a problem which is the subject of the amount of accidents that we have. And now we're starting a campaign that we're going to reinforce in January for the motor owners and their families to take care of because there has been many, especially in December, many accidents, painful accidents.
Look, this bike here is going very slow. He's very tranquil in his fast lane. That is Caracas precisely. And here exactly. We are now entering the avenue. How many citizens does Caracas have? The great Caracas, because Caracas the original one is where we are at the moment. But the great Caracas is almost five municipalities: the municipality Libertador which is where the capital is, the municipality of Baruta and the municipality of Sucre, which is known as, it is calculated about 6 million people in all of the great Caracas. Truly, look, this is the famous corner of Los Palos Grandes. There's a commercial activity that had never been here. It is impressive. Truly, it gives an idea of the enormous also of life at this moment.
Look, let's start. If you want formally our interview, go ahead.
First, I want to start and I want for it to be told that I truly appreciate that you give me once more this interview because I know that you have a very tight and busy agenda especially in these circumstances and I want to start with a subject of economy, president, because it has talked a lot of geopolitics and obviously we're going to talk about geopolitics but it just came out a report of the ECLAC which is the organization of economy in Latin America and this report says that the biggest growth of Latin America this year 2025 is had by Venezuela with a growth estimate of 9%. And then the question, president, is how in these circumstances, a country that is blocked, a country that is under unilateral coercive measures that are illegal, a country that is also very threatened by the United States, how do you accomplish this economical miracle?
That is a very good question. Do you see? First, I want to greet our guest. Here we have Cilia Flores, my wife, special guest. And also, we have here the philosopher poet Alfred Nazareth that is paying attention here of all of the debate that we are having, the pilot and co-pilot book. This is the second year, the consecutive year that Venezuela leads the growth of the real economy of Latin America and the Caribbean. We have 20 continuous trimesters since in 2020 when we took off. I remember that when I exposed to you the economical plan for the interview that you published on January 1st of the year 2022 that you can check. We were talking about, we had designed a plan of economical engines for each engine to start with its own force. Economical engines that were truly from a Venezuelan route of its own, pertinent to reality. They were not things that we invented and that the development of each engine, its capacity of real growth and the articulation of all of the engines was starting to give already results in 2021. We had the two first trimesters of miraculous growth. We were in the middle of the pandemic. We were coming out of the pandemic and I made the idea of the method which was known as the method 7x7 that allowed us to start that growth. If you ask me from the spiritual point of view and it is said that it is a miracle but from the spiritual point of view of Venezuelan identity, I would say that the growth of this new economy now of 14 engines is the growth of the spirit, the entrepreneurial spirit and of the way in which all society made itself. It redid itself. It reinvented itself. The Venezuelan family, the men, the women, the entrepreneur, the businessmen, the workers, they all reinvented themselves from the simplest business of selling coffee, of selling arepas. The state also created the conditions of course from the most simple entrepreneur businesses. People started redoing themselves. It was all done and it was starting to produce what was always said to be impossible: the foods of Venezuela, the meat, the milk, the chicken, the corn, the rice and many other examples that was before but with the money of the petroleum. Yes, the petroleum stream deformed everything. We did not choose to have a model that depended on petroleum. We did not decide that. When I was born in the year 62, they had already imposed the model of the capitalism that depended on petroleum and we were a petroleum colony from the US. What we elected was to start building the bases to break the relationship to build a new model and Commander Chávez left the lines in the Plan of the Homeland and we tried in the worst moment in the blockade that they did where they took 99% of the petroleum incomes. There was nothing, there was no production in Venezuela. We were not able to import anything and we said let's move forward. We're going to grow in this situation. That was what happened. Venezuela grew itself from the spiritual point of view, from the point of view of the doctrine on the economical policy. We designed a policy that was absolutely correct of an economy that was real with real values that was articulating in a new productive force. And what is what grew last year that we had 9% of growth and that this year, but it's going to be about 9% maybe more. When it's growing, the real economy grows. It also grows. The economy that produces services, goods, that produces wealth in an advanced space that truly amazes.
We have very important elements. Look, I'm sorry to comment. Look at that beauty. How beautiful that is the Plaza of the Victory. It was just the 80th anniversary of the victory against the nasty fascist of Hitler. Look at that plaza. The union of Russia and Venezuela and the flag of the Soviet Union. Yes. So then the real economy growth, each sector of the 14 engines, the real 14 engines and the great challenge now as I have been saying is that the 14 engines to apply a line of diminishing almost to disappear radically everything that is imported and do everything in Venezuela. The second to have a line of export that is not petroleum, new sources of currencies and in the third place to fulfill the market to supply the market. I could say that in a better formula which is to substitute radically all the imports, all of them until we reach zero imports on each line and in second place produce everything to continue fulfilling 100% of the national market and also in the food and everything and everything we're talking about public services, goods, all the necessities that the country has, the clothes, the shoes, everything, the footballs, everything, everything produce, everything, cars, of course. And in the third place to continue growing in the green engine of the exports that are not petroleum to continue growing in the exports of foods that come from the sea, from organic products of the land to continue exporting our coffee that is growing and the best in the world, exporting chocolate, cocoa, etc. We already did the path and we are exporting each time more. So it is an economy that has great challenges to continue articulating itself because no one can sing victory. One thing is to move forward in a path but another one is saying no everything is ready. This is still being done and being built and the 14 engines have proven great vitality and the good news that for the second year, the consecutive year, we lead from the Venezuela that is under threat. We lead the economical growth of all of Latin America and the Caribbean.
That is great news, president. That success that is economical does not stop that for the time there's still an increase again on inflation. So the question is in this context that is so difficult let's say from the geopolitical point of view that we were talking about, what strategies does your government have to control the inflation to stabilize the currency and to improve the buying power of those who have pensions, of the workers, of those who have salaries?
Well, in the first place, we have had a strategy that is absolutely correct, which is the indexing of all of the incomes. This is not talked about in the world but this is a formula that we rehearsed which is the indexing that has allowed together with entrepreneurship to combine the works that were created, employment, right, of indexing and also familiar businesses and of cooperatives among workers because Venezuela has one of the internal markets that are the most powerful and we have what I call from September of last year of the year 2024 an overheating, an internal overheating of commerce. So in December this year the commerce and the sales and the consumption grew by 34%. So there's an overheating that has been very significative and if there is an excess of the offer, national and imported products, already the nationals covered 90% of all the products of the national market and there is a growth of commerce to 34% this year again which means that there is a capacity of buying, a real one, a capacity of consumption in the Venezuelan family and the Venezuelan family that is watching us knows that is like this now that needs to be consolidated as a model. The other subject which has to do with the permanent speculative attack on the currency is a subject that we have overcome by stages and by stages. It is also turned in what we could say the central objective of that extreme right and of the campaigns of economical threat and economical blockade of the empire. One of the objectives now with all of this subject of the attack to the petroleum ships, to the selling of the petroleum of Venezuela is to once again perturb the money life and the balances that we have accomplished and consolidated in previous stages. It is a perturbation that we know how to face, that we're going to face and that when we do the podcast in a year we will see that we would have overcome it.
Let's talk. Cilia, how do you feel?
There's no coffee around, right?
No, they didn't put... Yes. Yes, there is.
Help us with a coffee then. Let's talk now. We are already in Los... I don't know if the pictures will show it right. This is the Plaza de la Nacionalidad. That is the name. Very pretty. This is the metro. This line that was built here is the metro of Caracas. This is a very beautiful area that I know very well because I grew up in this place.
This is your birth neighborhood.
It's around here. Yes, we're going to pass by and I'm going to show it to you. I like being around here and I be in these times of parties because there's a lot of people and it's very joyful.
