On Friday, Nicolás Maduro was sworn in as president of Venezuela for a third term, declaring victory in a stolen election. Though Venezuelans protested the fraud—thronging Caracas and other cities—the regime crushed the uprising and threw 2,000 opponents in jail. Venezuelans seem doomed to live under a regime that has brought them nothing but inflation, repression, and despair.
At The Free Press, we could think of no better person to reflect on Venezuela’s deepening political night than Roberto Ampuero, an acclaimed novelist and one of South America’s leading public intellectuals. As Chile’s foreign minister from 2018 to 2019, he helped spearhead regional efforts to democratize Venezuela. —The Editors
On January 10, a rare glimmer of hope penetrated the dense air of Caracas, igniting fleeting excitement among those who still dream of democracy for Venezuela. It happened when María Corina Machado, the indomitable leader of the Venezuelan opposition, was abruptly freed by the same police force that had detained her at a protest earlier in the day. The reversal seemed to carry the weight of a potential turning point—a signal of change in the nation’s trajectory.
Yet by the time night fell, that hope had dissolved.
The protests against Maduro had fallen far short of the fervor seen in years past or in July. Edmundo González Urrutia, the rightful victor of the election, and Machado’s ally, failed to return to the country as he had boldly promised. He remains in exile in Spain. Upon her release, Machado, who has lived mostly in hiding since the election of July 28, posted on X that she was “in a safe place now and with more determination than ever,” but the prospects for her movement were murky at best.