By Anietie anii-bassey
Andrés Velásquez did not intend to become another government critic hauled off to prison after Venezuela’s turbulent 2024 presidential election. A former state governor who had spent months traveling the country campaigning for President Nicolás Maduro’s rival in the disputed vote, he went underground as repression intensified. He grew a thick beard to disguise himself, sent his children abroad for safety and avoided public gatherings that might expose him to arrest.
Only after Maduro was forced from power by the United States did Velásquez summon the nerve to speak openly again. On Jan. 19, he appeared in a recorded message, transformed by months in hiding, voicing support for Maduro’s removal while urging fresh elections.
Days later, he escalated his challenge, filming himself outside Caracas’ notorious Helicoide prison — long feared as a detention center for political opponents — and calling for the liberation of everyone jailed for dissent.
“We must dismantle the entire repressive apparatus in the hands of the state,” Velásquez declared in the video. “Venezuela will be free.”
He is no longer alone. Since Maduro’s ouster, prominent critics who once vanished from public view have begun cautiously resurfacing, probing how far political speech can go after years defined by fear and self-censorship.
Families of detained activists have staged protests outside prisons, recently freed detainees have defied the customary silence imposed as a condition of release, and broadcasters that once avoided confrontation with authorities have reopened their platforms to dissenting voices.
Velásquez has likened the tentative loosening to glasnost, invoking the period of openness that preceded the Soviet Union’s collapse. Yet this nascent liberalization is unfolding under extraordinary circumstances: it is being shepherded largely by the Trump administration, which has paired financial inducements with threats of further military action in pursuit of the president’s vow to exert decisive influence over Venezuela from Washington.
What the White House ultimately intends remains uncertain. Officials have praised acting President Delcy Rodríguez for cooperating with U.S. efforts to revive Venezuela’s vast oil industry, dismantle criminal networks and counter the influence of Iran and Russia in the region. At the same time, opposition figures worry that demands for elections and a restoration of democratic norms could be pushed indefinitely into the future.
Rodríguez, a longtime ally of Maduro who stepped into power after his removal, announced last week that her government would pursue a general amnesty that could free hundreds of opposition politicians, journalists and human rights advocates detained for political reasons.
She also said Helicoide would be shut down and transformed from its spiral-shaped concrete form — once an emblem of futuristic ambition and later a symbol of repression — into a sports and cultural complex for police officers and residents of nearby hillside neighborhoods.
“May this law serve to heal the wounds left by the political confrontation fueled by violence and extremism,” Rodríguez said during a ceremony surrounded by ruling-party figures.
Rights advocates remain skeptical. Pedro Vaca, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights’ leading expert on freedom of expression, said such gestures fall far short of what is required to safeguard civil liberties.
“Venezuela’s civic space is still a desert,” Vaca said, noting that he has sought permission for months to carry out a fact-finding mission in the country. “The few critical voices emerging are seeds breaking through hardened ground, surviving not because freedom exists, but because repression has loosened while remaining ever-present. Let us be clear: this does not mark a democratic turning point.”
Political pluralism had already eroded sharply after Maduro succeeded Hugo Chávez in 2013. Security forces routinely suppressed anti-government demonstrations, and unrest was met with arrests and force.
After the July 2024 election, the crackdown intensified dramatically when Maduro rejected evidence indicating that opposition challenger Edmundo González had defeated him by a margin exceeding two to one. Thousands were detained, dissidents fled into hiding, and the remaining independent news organizations toned down already cautious coverage to avoid closure.
Velásquez, speaking in an interview, said he intends to keep pushing the boundaries of what is allowed but remains wary because the machinery of repression is still firmly controlled by Rodríguez and her allies.
“We must continue winning back lost terrain, challenging power,” he said. “An opportunity has opened up and we can’t let it close again. But the biggest obstacle we have to overcome is fear.”
In the weeks ahead, he hopes to organize a public gathering of figures who recently emerged from hiding, including former lawmaker Delsa Solórzano, a prominent voice in the opposition’s 2024 campaign. Solórzano reappeared last week at a rare party news conference, describing through tears how she had taken vitamin supplements to compensate for months without sunlight while living clandestinely.
“I didn’t hide because I committed any crime,” she said. “I hid because here fighting for freedom became an extremely high risk — to your life, your liberty and your safety.”
Signs of a shifting media climate have accompanied the political stirrings. Venevision, which like most private networks had avoided confrontational reporting in recent years, has aired critical coverage and closely followed opposition leader María Corina Machado’s activities in Washington after Maduro’s capture.
Globovision, the country’s largest private broadcaster, invited veteran commentator Vladimir Villegas back on air for the first time in years. His program had been canceled in 2020 after he criticized the government over actions that prompted a major satellite television provider to leave the country, cutting off access to several international news channels.
Rodríguez herself has avoided broad public debate about Venezuela’s crises, aside from announcing an advisory panel on political coexistence led by Culture Minister Ernesto Villegas, the commentator’s brother.
Some of her allies, however, have already moved to counter the renewed criticism. Authorities have not fully restored access to the social media platform X, which Maduro blocked after its owner accused him of stealing the 2024 vote.
After Venevision covered Machado’s meeting in Washington with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello accused the network of abetting a destabilization campaign, warning on state television that without publicity the opposition figure would fade from view.
Even within state media, long devoted to government messaging, small cracks have begun to appear. During a recent visit by Rodríguez to a Caracas university, cameras captured her stepping away from her security detail to confront a cluster of protesting students — an image that would have been inconceivable weeks earlier.
While the broadcast did not dwell on the demonstrators’ grievances, merely showing the encounter marked a departure from years in which even mild dissent was erased from official coverage.
Under Maduro, televised rallies were eventually broadcast on delay after repeated disruptions embarrassed the government, including a 2016 appearance in which he was chased away by residents banging pots in protest.
For opponents, hope now coexists with uncertainty. Many believe Rodríguez may have unleashed forces she cannot fully control, even as they draw strength from those who endured imprisonment.
Journalist and activist Carlos Julio Rojas spent 638 days behind bars, he said, often shackled, deprived of sunlight and locked in cramped cells without beds for weeks at a time. Freed last month in what authorities described as a goodwill gesture, he was instructed not to speak publicly about his treatment.
He kept silent for only two weeks.
“For me, not speaking meant I still felt imprisoned,” Rojas said. “Not speaking was a form of torture. So today, I decided to remove the gag and speak.”
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