For Maduro, Silencing Venezuela’s Opposition Has Become Job One

By James Bosworth

Last Friday, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was sworn into office despite losing last July’s election by over 35 percentage points. Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel and Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega—two other dictators who regularly rig elections to remain in power—were the only leaders from the hemisphere who attended the small inauguration ceremony, in which Maduro once again pledged to abide by and defend the Venezuelan constitution he has in fact trampled during his 12 years as president.

In what at first glance may seem like an odd twist, the inauguration was held almost 90 minutes earlier than planned, causing Ortega to stumble in late, and only a limited audience of government supporters and foreign ambassadors were allowed to attend. Yet, the surprise early inauguration helped Maduro control the narrative of the day. In fact, since his election loss, governing for Maduro has largely become an exercise in repression and controlling the narrative, much of which has involved efforts to censor and manipulate media coverage of his government.

That coverage is complicated by the fact that events in Venezuela regarding Maduro’s latest stolen term in office are moving quickly, and yet not moving at all. Opposition leader Edmundo Gonzalez, who won about 67 percent of the votes in July compared to 30 percent for Maduro, mounted a successful international tour prior to the inauguration, with stops at regional capitals as well as in Washington, where he met with outgoing U.S. President Joe Biden. But he fell short on his promise to attempt to enter the country, remaining unable to fly in from the Dominican Republic after Maduro shut down all borders and threatened his arrest.

Meanwhile, the U.S., Canada, the European Union and the U.K. announced coordinated sanctions against over a dozen individuals in the Maduro regime. Washington increased its reward for capturing Maduro and Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello, a top ally, to $25 million each. The U.S. also for the first time announced a $15 million reward for the capture of Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez. However, none of those measures appear likely to topple the government or split the security forces in the near term.

There will be plenty to analyze in the months ahead. The opposition will continue its attempts to remove the Maduro regime from power. Maduro, seemingly in full control but fearful of a sudden collapse similar to that of Syrian President Bashir al-Assad, will in turn continue and even increase the repression of his political opponents and Venezuelan society. In the weeks before the inauguration, the Maduro regime detained dozens of activists and their relatives, including Gonzalez’s son-in-law of Gonzalez. Foro Penal says over 80 people have been detained so far in January alone. Cabello—the interior minister—has named the ongoing campaign of arrests Operation Tun-Tun, or knock-knock, to instill fear in opposition supporters that any knock on the door could signal the arrival of government agents.

An incident the day before the inauguration ceremony deserves specific attention, because it foretells some of the challenges ahead in Venezuela, but also globally in terms of how authoritarians are learning to manipulate narratives about their repression in the era of artificial intelligence, or AI, and social media.

On Thursday, tens of thousands of opposition protesters took to the streets to demonstrate their disapproval of Maduro’s plans to hold on to power. It was far from the largest protest in Venezuela’s recent history, but it was certainly big enough to disrupt traffic across major intersections in the capital and attract media attention around the world. At that protest, opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who was barred from running for the presidency last year because she is arguably Maduro’s most popular opponent, appeared in public for the first time in months to give a speech.

An incident the day before Maduro’s inauguration foretells some of the challenges ahead in Venezuela, but also globally in terms of how authoritarians will manipulate narratives in the era of AI and social media.

As she left on the back of a motorcycle afterward to return to hiding, Maduro’s security forces fired shots at the motorcade and detained Machado. Word of her detention spread rapidly due to a journalist having witnessed it, and global condemnation began pouring in immediately. In less than two hours, an odd video appeared online showing Machado sitting outdoors, wearing a hoodie and speaking in a hushed tone, saying she was safe and that she had lost her purse while leaving the rally. The video first appeared on social media channels run by Maduro government officials and pro-Maduro media outlets. The video was never shared by Machado’s official campaign staff.

Online speculation exploded. Many people debated whether the video was real or created by AI. Maduro’s online supporters used the existence of the video to claim that Machado was lying about being detained as part of an opposition effort to rally support against the regime. That propaganda push was effective enough to convince Colombian President Gustavo Petro, whose government had condemned last year’s election as fraudulent the day before, to tweet that Machado’s arrest was a form of “fake news.”

Venezuela’s opposition had prepared for disinformation like this ahead of time. In the days before the protest, it had stressed that the public should only believe official statements from two specific social media accounts as well as the personal accounts of Machado and Gonzalez. They were preparing for a situation in which the Maduro regime attempted to insert misinformation into the news cycle. But despite that preparation, when the moment of truth came, it was difficult to prevent precisely that from happening.

That is in part due to the fact that, in recent weeks, Maduro has made it more difficult for the opposition to share information. Having already banned Twitter/X months ago, Venezuela just blocked access to TikTok, which was providing Maduro’s opponents a valuable outlet to share their messages. Then the government shut down access to various VPN services and DNS options that Venezuelans use to reroute internet traffic around the government’s firewalls. That means that those without significant technology know-how cannot access X, TikTok or the many other websites blocked by Venezuela’s government, leaving them without the information they needed to better organize protests. Furthermore, when Machado attempted to livestream a video on Friday afternoon, the government shut down electricity, internet and cellphone service in the neighborhood where she was hiding to prevent her from getting her message out.

Despite the internet blocks, Machado eventually released a recorded video from her official accounts explaining that she had been detained and bruised in the process of being pulled from the motorcycle carrying her. Before releasing her, she added, her captors had forced her to record several videos, though she did not say whether the video that the government had published online had been manipulated in any way.

As of the writing of this column, instead of addressing his political opponents, Maduro is engaging in a strange online interaction with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, who has himself proven to be a master of social media manipulation. In the days prior to the inauguration, Bukele—also an authoritarian but with more right-wing libertarian affinities—had posted some cryptic social media messages that appeared to indicate he was in Caracas and perhaps working to install Gonzalez as president. On Saturday, however, Maduro said that he and Bukele had met for drinks, over which Bukele delivered some unspecified good news.

Maduro then pivoted his comments to praise El Salvador’s FMLN, the former guerrilla group that transformed into a political party as part of the peace deal that ended the country’s civil war. Bukele launched his political career as a young star rising quickly through the FMLN’s ranks, but subsequently split off from the party to win the presidency and now views it as one of his political opponents. Bukele responded to Maduro’s post with an unexplained kiss emoji amid other social media messages showing him meeting with relatives and officials connected to U.S. President-elect Donald Trump.

There are all sorts of possible interpretations of that exchange, but they all amount to speculation that further distorts the picture of what is happening in Caracas. It was an odd end to a sad week in which the only clear narrative is that Venezuelan democracy continues to be crushed.

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James Bosworth is the founder of Hxagon, a firm that does political risk analysis and bespoke research in emerging and frontier markets, as well as a global fellow at the Wilson Center’s Latin America Program. He has two decades of experience analyzing politics, economics and security in Latin America and the Caribbean. Energiesnet.com does not necessarily share these views.

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by World Politics Review on January 13, 2025. EnergiesNet.com do not reflect either for or against the opinion expressed in the comment as an endorsement of Petroleumworld or EnergiesNet.com

For Maduro, Repression Has Become Job One in Venezuela | WPR

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EnergiesNet.com 01 14 2025