Regime change but no change in Venezuela
Nicolás Maduro in handcuffs – it’s the image so many Venezuelans have wanted to see since he took over the presidency following Hugo Chavez’s death in 2013. So when Maduro was dramatically captured on Saturday, a few took to the streets to celebrate. This included a street vendor in the western state of Zulia, who shouted that the autocrat who’d once danced at rallies could now dance in prison. Two days later, the vendor’s wife said he had been arrested. The police demanded $1,000 for his release and the family had to ask relatives for help and hand over bags of their own fruit and vegetables to police. This story is not an isolated incident. Maduro is gone but his brutal apparatus remains.
On Monday, Delcy Rodríguez, the country’s vice president, was sworn in as interim president. Described by opposition leader María Corina Machado as “one of the main architects of torture, persecution [and] corruption,” Rodríguez has already issued an emergency decree requiring police to search for and arrest anyone “involved in promoting or supporting the armed attack by the United States of America”. The decree has resulted in a marked increase in the number of police and security forces on the streets, especially the so-called colectivos, masked men carrying rifles. They’ve set up checkpoints and boarded public buses, demanding access to people’s phones. Scores of journalists have also been detained, as have civilians and protests have been banned.
That this level of crackdown is very much on brand for the Venezuelan government is of consolation to no one. Nor was Donald Trump’s flagrant dismissal of any international rules-based order that led to Maduro’s arrest. But let’s quickly reflect on Maduro’s rule, which was a toxic mix of despotic and chaotic. At the start a drop in oil prices, mismanagement of resources and corruption led to a dire economic and humanitarian crisis. International news homed in on the impact on toilet paper (which ran low), while we examined how newspapers were shuttered. When people protested – and they did – they were met with extreme force and incarceration, a pattern that continued throughout the years. In 2019, Venezuela was officially named the worst country in the world for the abuse of judicial power. In 2024, it had the most political prisoners in Latin America. There was even a name given – Operation Tun Tun (Knock Knock) – to refer to the post-2024 election arrests, a reference to the chilling and widespread practise of knocking on people’s doors in the dead of night.
The repression under Maduro was a big reason we gave an award at the end of last year to the journalist Carlos Correa. Working in the media there is no mean feat. It demands courage and that deserves credit.
Trump declared on Tuesday that “a torture chamber in the middle of Caracas” would be closed. He was likely referring to El Helicoide, a notorious prison where dissidents are held, including some we featured in this grim piece. But when I last checked, on Wednesday, it was still very much open.
Jemimah Steinfeld
CEO, Index on Censorship
