Venezuelan opposition leader, Maria Corina Machado, is arrested
Machado was arrested by government security forces Thursday as she left a rally in Caracas on the eve of President Nicolas Maduro’s inauguration after a widely discredited election.
María Corina Machado, the driving force of Venezuela’s opposition movement, was arrested by government security forces Thursday as she left a rally in Caracas, opposition leaders said, a day before President Nicolás Maduro plans to take office for a third term.
Edmundo González, the exiled opposition leader recognized by the United States and several other countries as Venezuela’s president-elect, posted a message on X demanding Machado’s “immediate release.”
“To the security forces that kidnapped her I say: do not play with fire,” González said.
Machado, Venezuela’s “iron lady” who led the opposition’s presidential campaign and its effort to provide evidence of its victory in the July 28 election, had emerged in public for the first time in months on the eve of the inauguration to lead protesters in rejecting Maduro’s increasingly authoritarian rule. She stood over a sea of people in Caracas as they chanted: “We are not afraid!”
She had been in hiding for more than 100 days, avoiding an order for her arrest and speaking only virtually.
“All of the strength that we’ve built and that grows every day prepares us to finish this final phase,” Machado said, speaking just a few hundred feet away from government intelligence agents. “Whatever they do tomorrow, they will continue to bury themselves.”
Maduro, an ironfisted autocrat who has overcome every political challenge standing in his way in more than a decade in power, mobilized his security forces to clamp down ahead of the inauguration. After a months-long crackdown against anyone associated with the opposition, more than 1,700 political prisoners remain behind bars, and those who dared protest on Thursday knew they could be next.
Despite the military checkpoints across the city on Thursday, thousands of people poured onto the streets of Caracas, walking along blocked highways and roads to reach opposition rallies, waving Venezuelan flags and crying out “libertad!” — freedom.
Hundreds of pro-Maduro motorcycle gang members, armed and masked, circled the protests a few hundred meters from Machado as she spoke from the top of a truck.
“What they want is for people to be afraid and not to go out,” said one 69-year-old woman who joined the rally in Caracas. “But we want an end to this dictatorship. That’s what this is, a dictatorship.”
Her children have all left the country, she said, but she stayed behind with her neighbors, working as a seamstress at home. She spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution. But she was willing to risk her safety, she said, to demand an end to Maduro’s grip on power.
Vote tallies provided by the opposition — and verified by The Washington Post and independent election observers — showed that Maduro likely lost the country’s presidential election in a landslide. Maduro, meanwhile, has refused to release the official precinct-level results to support his claim to victory.
“That day changed history,” Machado, who led the opposition’s campaign and effort to prove their win, said in her speech at the rally. “The regime collapsed.”
The United States and several other countries have recognized opposition candidate González as the country’s president-elect, and even some of Maduro’s leftist allies in the region have declined to accept his claim to the presidency. But the growing international pressure and widespread support for the opposition do not appear to be enough to stop Maduro from taking office once again.
González — who fled to Spain months ago — vows to enter Venezuela to be sworn into office on Friday. But with a $100,000 bounty on his head, and threats from the Maduro government to arrest him as soon as he steps foot in Venezuela, González’s return is, at best, a long shot.
González was in the Dominican Republic on Thursday wrapping up an international tour, after a visit with President Joe Biden in the White House, to rally support for his cause. As Maduro prepares for a swearing-in on Friday, he faces growing isolation in the region and around the world. A host of Latin American presidents, including leaders in Argentina, Ecuador, Peru, Panama and others, have recognized González as president-elect.
The leftist presidents of Brazil, Colombia and Mexico have announced they will not be attending Maduro’s inauguration but plan to send representatives instead. It remained unclear whether any pro-Maduro presidents of the region planned to attend. Bolivia, which congratulated Maduro after the election, plans to send its foreign minister, a spokesman confirmed.
written by Samantha Schimidt
‘’The Washington Post