The Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado has accused Nicolás Maduro’s regime of “kidnapping” one of her key allies as protesters took to the streets to mark one month since the allegedly stolen presidential election and a cabinet reshuffle left government opponents fearing an upsurge in repression.
Activists say more than 1,600 people have been detained during the post-election crackdown ordered by Venezuela’s authoritarian president. On Tuesday, one of the opposition’s most important figures, the lawyer and spokesperson Perkins Rocha joined their ranks after being captured on the streets of Caracas, seemingly by Maduro’s secret police.
Machado, who is the driving force behind the recent electoral challenge to Maduro, announced her friend’s alleged abduction on X, calling him “a righteous, brave, intelligent and generous man”.
“They want to vanquish us, distract us and terrify us. We will continue to move forwards, for Perkins, for all the prisoners and those being persecuted, and for the whole of Venezuela,” wrote Machado, who claims the opposition presidential candidate Edmundo González beat Maduro in the 28 July vote.
Maduro insists he won, although Hugo Chávez’s authoritarian heir has yet to provide proof and, without that, even regional friends such as Brazil and Colombia are refusing to recognise the official result.
On Wednesday, supporters of the opposition – which has published detailed voting tallies that experts believe confirm a González landslide – returned to the streets in an effort to put pressure on Maduro to accept a negotiated transition.
However, the president’s crackdown and a major cabinet reshuffle on the eve of the protest have unnerved many citizens who are increasingly fearful of the consequences of opposing Venezuela’s ever-more autocratic regime.
In the reshuffle, the hardliner Diosdado Cabello was made interior minister, a position that gives the 61-year-old former soldier control of both the Bolivarian national police force and the national intelligence service, Sebin.
Cabello, who fought alongside Chávez during the latter’s failed 1992 coup, has long been considered one the most feared and formidable names in Chavismo, occupying a succession of top ministerial and socialist party posts under the former president and Maduro.
In his book about Chávez, Comandante, the Guardian journalist Rory Carroll described Cabello as a “calculating, pragmatic bruiser” with immense power and influence. “He was nicknamed the octopus: tentacles everywhere,” Carroll wrote of the politician whose name literally means “God-given hair”.
Speaking to the Wall Street Journal in 2015, one former military associate of Cabello said: “Diosdado is a kamikaze. He will never surrender.”
For the last decade Cabello has had his own state TV talkshow, Con El Mazo Dando (which roughly translates as Coming Out Swinging), during which he verbally cudgels government critics with incendiary and choleric tirades. Since July’s election he has repeatedly used the programme to harangue Machado and González, calling her a terrorist “witch” and him a cowardly “rat”.
“If the new cabinet is a bellwether of what Maduro intends to do, Cabello’s appointment is an indication of even more repression to come,” Juanita Goebertus, Human Rights Watch’s Americas director, told the Associated Press.
Opposition fears that Cabello’s appointment meant an intensification in the already harsh post-election repression were compounded by a series of power cuts on Tuesday night that added to the tension. Outages were reported in several parts of the country, including Caracas, rekindling grim memories of the widespread power failures that plunged Venezuela into chaos in 2019.
Experts believe Maduro’s control of the military and the continued support of China and Russia means he has a good chance of surviving the latest challenge to his 11-year rule.
However, in an audio message to supporters before Wednesday’s expected protests, Machado said: “The end of this regime of horror is approaching.
“Today I can’t tell you the exact moment at which we will claim [our] victory. But what I can tell you, with absolute conviction, is that the destiny of this struggle is the liberation of Venezuela.”
