On the morning of February 7, 2026, Luis Britto García — one of the most decorated intellectuals in Venezuelan history, a recipient of the Casa de las Américas prize and a figure whose left-nationalist credentials predate Hugo Chávez's rise to power — submitted his weekly column "Pare de Sufrir" to the newspaper Últimas Noticias, as he had done nearly every week for almost 25 years. The column did not appear. The newspaper, a state-aligned outlet that has long served as a tribune for Chavismo, quietly suppressed it without explanation.What Britto García had written, and what the government now apparently did not want published, was a detailed legal analysis of the Hydrocarbons Law Reform approved by the National Assembly on January 29, 2026 — a reform that, in his reading, amounts to a systematic dismantling of Venezuelan oil sovereignty carried out in the language of technical administration.The censored column was later published on Britto García's personal blog, where it remains publicly readable. The suppression was subsequently reported by La Tabla Blog, a Venezuelan independent media outlet. Together, these facts constitute a three-layer story: a case of press freedom violation against a loyalist, an allegation of covert oil privatization embedded in reform legislation, and a visible fracture within Chavismo itself — between those who hold to the movement's founding nationalist principles and those now managing Venezuela's pragmatic opening to foreign capital.Britto García's legal critique is precise and serious. He argues that multiple articles of the reform law violate the Venezuelan Constitution directly. The most consequential objections are three:First, Article 8 of the reform permits energy disputes to be resolved through "independent arbitration" mechanisms, including international ones. Britto García argues this unconstitutionally overrides Article 151 of the Constitution, which prohibits contracts of public interest from giving rise to foreign claims and mandates resolution through Venezuelan courts. He cites Venezuela's own history — including what he describes as the loss of the Essequibo territory through external arbitration — as evidence of the danger of surrendering judicial sovereignty over resource disputes.Second, Articles 34 through 41 of the reform permit private and mixed enterprises to assume progressive operational control of hydrocarbon extraction, management, and commercialization, with the National Assembly required only to receive notification rather than grant approval. Article 41, he notes, goes further: it authorizes private operators to receive crude oil directly as compensation for their services, effectively allowing them to displace PDVSA from its role as the sovereign intermediary in Venezuela's oil commerce. This contradicts Article 302 of the Constitution, which reserves the petroleum industry to the state as a matter of national convenience.Third, and most financially consequential, Articles 52, 56, and 65 grant executive discretion to reduce royalty rates below 15 percent — compared to the 60 to 65 percent range established under the 2006 Chávez-era hydrocarbons law — when projects are deemed "economically moderate." Royalties, Britto García argues citing constitutional scholar Andrés Giuseppe of Poli-data.com, are inalienable expressions of state sovereignty over subsoil resources: they cannot legally be negotiated away or offset against other taxes. The reform's provisions, he concludes, could reduce state petroleum income by up to 50 percent, enriching foreign and private operators at the direct expense of the Venezuelan public.His conclusion: "Numerous provisions tend to diminish the exclusive competence of the Republic in hydrocarbon exploitation, enabling a progressive privatization of the industry."The political significance of this censorship extends well beyond one suppressed column. Britto García is not an opposition figure. He is a man whose entire intellectual and political biography has been intertwined with the Bolivarian project. His silencing by a state-controlled newspaper signals that the Maduro administration — or whatever configuration of power now controls Venezuela's institutional apparatus — is no longer willing to tolerate internal Chavista critique of economic policy, even from a voice that has defended the revolution for decades.This development pairs directly with the news, reported separately, that the Cisneros family is now raising a $1 billion reconstruction fund for Venezuela — capital from the country's historic private elite, returning to an economy that the Bolivarian state spent two decades attempting to subordinate. Read together, the censorship and the fund tell the same story from opposite ends: Venezuela is pivoting toward a market-friendly model, and those within Chavismo who object are being quietly removed from the conversation.In Venezuela, as across nations experiencing collapse, oil wealth that once seemed a blessing became a curse — and ordinary people pay the price. The question that Britto García's suppressed column poses — whether the new hydrocarbons framework preserves sovereignty or surrenders it — is precisely the question the government appears least willing to answer in public.This correspondent operates remotely from Panama City. Venezuelan sources are protected. The censored column remains accessible at Britto García's blog, linked above.