Maduro opponents detained, harassed

Jan. 8, 2025

Venezuela’s government launched a new wave of repression against political opponents, just days ahead of the start of a new presidential term on Friday, in which President Nicolás Maduro is expected to swear in for a third consecutive term. He has claimed victory in a presidential election last July that was widely believed to have been won by the political opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia.

González Urrutia’s son-in-law, Rafael Tudares, was detained while taking his children to school yesterday, just a day after González met with U.S. President Joe Biden. González said Tudares was pulled over by plainclothes agents and taken away in an unofficial vehicle. The U.S. State Department called the disappearance an attempt to “intimidate Venezuela’s democratic opposition.” (Associated Press, New York Times, AFP)

María Corina Machado, Venezuela’s most popular opposition figure who has promised to come out of hiding to participate in protests on Thursday, said her mother’s house was left without electricity and had drones flying over it.

Enrique Márquez, a moderate opposition politician who has advocated for a negotiated solution with Chavismo was detained yesterday — one of a number of politicians and human rights defenders kidnapped by hooded agents yesterday, including Carlos Correa, a well-known human rights activist with Spanish citizenship. (Efecto Cocuyo, El País)

“Hooded agents were stationed at the door of the homes of dissidents and critics, and throughout the country opponents were arrested in a number yet to be determined. In some neighborhoods of Caracas, residents protested by banging pots and pans from their balconies,” reports El País.

Government authorities announced 125 detentions in recent days, a counter to the releases announced of people detained in post-election unrest last year.

Yesterday Maduro said the government detained seven foreigners, “mercenaries,” including two U.S. citizens. He said they, along with two Colombian "hitmen" and three "mercenaries" from the war in Ukraine were involved in plotting unspecified "terrorist acts" ahead of the Friday inauguration. (AFP)

Maduro has a history of using detained U.S. citizens as bargaining chips — a number of foreign nationals detained since the contested July elections will likely come into play as he navigates a new phase of government that will coincide with the incoming Trump administration in the U.S. (Reuters)

Maduro also accused an Argentine gendarme, detained last month trying to enter the country to visit his family, of planning to assassinate Vice President Delcy Rodríguez, an accusation Argentina’s government characterized as “ridiculous.” (El País)

Colombian President Gustavo Petro said he will not assist Friday’s inauguration in response to Márquez and Correa’s detentions. (Efecto Cocuyo)

More Venezuela

• While it is widely expected that Maduro will remain firmly in power after Friday’s legal deadline, the opposition’s actions have raised the cost of that step, argues Venezuelan journalist Luz Mely Reyes in El País.

• Beyond the political crossroads Venezuela finds itself at this week, civil society holds the key to an eventual democratization, argue Maryhen Jiménez and Verónica Zubillaga in El País. “Even under repression, local organizations have managed to articulate forms of resistance and solidarity that challenge government narratives. These experiences demonstrate that coordinated collective action is essential to reestablish the social fabric and undermine authoritarian power.”

• El País reports on the fate of a secret plan by Colombia’s government to guarantee a political transition before Venezuela’s election — while Venezuela’s political opposition views Colombian President Gustavo Petro with suspicion, the agreement foundered in the Maduro camp, according to the report.

• Machado argues that Venezuela’s military might be swayed to abandon Maduro in the wake of the collapse of the Syrian regime, with which Maduro’s government had strong ties, and which might make them fear being abandoned by allies Russia and Iran. (Financial Times)

• It is unclear what approach the incoming Trump administration will take towards Venezuela — a return to maximum sanctions would likely force the Maduro government to depend more on illicit economies, reports InSight Crime. “Drug trafficking stands to indirectly benefit from increased US pressure.”

Regional Relations

• Trump raised hackles yesterday at a press conference at Mar-a-Lago, in which he explicitly declined to rule out using military or economic coercion to defend U.S. interests in relation to the Panama Canal. (Guardian, see Monday’s briefs.)

• Panama's Foreign Minister Javier Martínez-Acha responded by saying that "the only hands operating the canal are Panamanian and that is how it is going to stay". (BBC)

• Trump’s threat to take over the Panama Canal seems unlikely to materialize, and analysts believe the incoming U.S. president is aiming to intimidate Latin American governments into cooperating on a draconian approach to migration. Nonetheless, his statements have “unsettled Panamanians, who used to live with the presence of the U.S. military in the canal zone and were invaded by American forces once before,” reports the New York Times.

• Indeed, “the possibility that millions of undocumented immigrants could be expelled — what would be the largest deportation program in American history — has sent shock waves through Latin America and sowed confusion among migrants and asylum seekers,” reports the New York Times, separately.

• Trump has named a foreign policy team with expertise in Latin America. Ryan Berg argues in Foreign Policy that “the second Trump administration has the opportunity to fulfill the broken foreign-policy pledge of several previous administrations: to focus U.S. policy more intently on the Western Hemisphere—and in so doing, also shore up its own security and prosperity at home.”

Haiti

• At least 5,601 people were killed and more than 2,000 injured by armed gangs in Haiti last year, the United Nations human-rights office said yesterday. The number of killings increased by more than 20% compared with all of 2023, according to the U.N. Human Rights Office. In addition, more than 2,200 people were reported injured and nearly 1,500 kidnapped, it said. (Miami Herald, Associated Press)

Ecuador

• Ecuador's former Vice President Jorge Glas was temporarily evacuated from prison for security reasons, but was returned to hours later, reports Reuters.

Mexico

• Jared Olsen reports on the oft-overlooked forced displacement crisis in Mexico from the fronlines of Michoacán — including the links between criminal groups, extractive interests and shadowy state collusion — in The Baffler.

• Two sons of notorious Mexican drug kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzman are in plea negotiations with the U.S. federal government, reports the Associated Press.

• “ Authorities in Mexico are offering state protection to famed regional Mexican singer Natanael Cano and other artists after a drug cartel in northern Mexico publicly threatened them,” reports the Associated Press.

Brazil

• “Brazil’s highly militarized policing disproportionately impacts poor and racialized communities. By providing funding and training, the United States has helped exacerbate the crisis,” writes Joseph Bouchard in Nacla.

Chile

• Chile’s Boric administration backtracked on a plan to buy former President Salvador Allende’s home in order to convert it to a museum, after a scandal because the move would apparently violate a prohibition on government officials contracting with the state — Allende’s daughter is a Senator and a granddaughter is Defense Minister. (El País)

Uruguay

• Frente Amplio lawmakers of the incoming Uruguayan administration hope to dust-off a stalled effort to legalize euthanasia. (Mercopress)

Critter Corner

• As a general rule, I don’t include pieces on Colombia’s cocaine hippos. An exception for this review of a “docu-fictional meditation” on “the historical consciousness of “Pepe”,” one of the hippos kept by Pablo Escobar on his estate and later left free when the druglord was killed — Guardian