This article examines the mobilization announced by Nicolás Maduro as a strategic narrative device—symbolic in scale, ideological in function, and territorial in presence. This framing informs the subsequent analysis across statistical, ideological, and territorial dimensions. 

Statistical Simulacrum  

On August 20, 2025, Nicolás Maduro announced the mobilization of 4.5 million militiamen to defend Venezuela’s territory, peace, and sovereignty. The declaration came in response to increasing U.S. pressure, including the doubling of the bounty on his capture—now set at $50 million—and the deployment of three destroyers in the Caribbean Sea. 

Venezuela’s population is estimated at approximately 28.5 million. Mobilizing 4.5 million militiamen would imply that over 15 percent of the total population is actively part of a military structure—a mobilization ratio unmatched in any comparable regional context. This figure is unsustainable from operational, logistical, and demographic standpoints. 

The Bolivarian National Militia includes civilians enrolled in “integral defense” programs, community-based armed groups tasked with territorial surveillance, and women employed in logistical, educational, and propaganda roles. Most are neither armed nor operational. The figure serves to simulate national armed cohesion, not to represent a real fighting force. 

Ideological Function 

Female participation is emphasized in official communications but remains marginal in operational terms. Pro-government movements have promoted the formation of female “Combatant Corps,” yet women are primarily assigned non-combat roles. In a society with entrenched machista norms, female inclusion in the militia functions more as a legitimizing strategy than a shift in operational doctrine. 

The Venezuelan militia is a hybrid device. It simulates internal cohesion, external deterrence, and revolutionary legitimacy. The language used by Maduro—territory, peace, sovereignty—does not describe a military operation but a semantic construction. The militia does not defend territory; it defends a narrative. 

Territorial Presence  

In many rural and peripheral areas, the militia operates as a tool of granular control, enabling low-visibility enforcement and community-level saturation. It partially replaces regular armed forces. Its presence is visible at checkpoints, in local surveillance activities, and in the management of community resources. This control is not only military but social. The militia becomes a daily actor with informal power over local dynamics, resource distribution, and conflict management. 

In parallel, the militia performs a didactic and ideological function. Training courses on “integral defense” include elements of Bolivarian doctrine, revolutionary history, and anti-imperialist rhetoric. The militia is portrayed as the embodiment of the sovereign people, capable of defending the homeland without institutional mediation. This model produces an overlap between citizens and combatants, between community and security apparatus. 

External Response 

Several former Colombian military personnel were arrested in 2025, accused of participating in plots against Maduro. Their presence has been confirmed by Venezuelan judicial sources. These are not militias supplied by foreign states, but mercenary personnel employed selectively. Iran and Cuba maintain cooperative relations with Venezuela. Iran provides technological and energy support, while Cuba continues to send medical and intelligence personnel. No public evidence has emerged of state-sponsored militia deployments in 2025. 

Operational Summary  

Maduro’s mobilization fits within a regional pattern where the militarization of civil society is recurrent, though rarely on the scale claimed by the Venezuelan government. The figure of 4.5 million militiamen is unprecedented in the region. It serves to position Venezuela as a bastion of resistance and to consolidate internal control amid growing external pressure. 

For external actors, the militia does not represent a conventional threat but an indicator of internal stabilization and narrative resilience. Its function is to saturate the territory with ideologically aligned presence, making any external intervention socially costly. The militia is a multiplier of internal legitimacy, not a combat-ready force. 

Key Takeaways  

The figure of 4.5 million militiamen is symbolic, not operational. The militia is a narrative, ideological, and territorial device. Female participation is instrumental, not equal. U.S. pressure provided the regime with a pretext to reinforce internal control. The Venezuelan militia is not a military threat but a narrative obstacle for external actors. 

Comparative References  

Similar models of ideological and territorial mobilization have been observed in Cuba with the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, in Nicaragua with armed Sandinismo and popular militias in the 1980s, and in Iran with the Basij (a paramilitary force with ideological and social control functions). 

Didactic Applications  

This article can be used to analyze the construction of narrative devices in crisis contexts, the function of hybrid militias, and the overlap between semantics and operational logic. Its structure allows adaptation for training modules focused on hybrid security environments and narrative-based territorial control. 

Final Line 

The militia does not defend a nation-state. It sustains a regime’s semantic infrastructure and saturates its territorial narrative.