Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro has launched a sweeping security crackdown in Caracas ahead of his scheduled reinauguration for a third, six-year, term on Friday, January 10, potentially setting the stage for widespread violence in the capital.
From the heavily fortified Miraflores Palace, Maduro announced Tuesday the activation of the “Integrated Management Bodies” (ODIS), security units that combine the full potential of political and military divisions, including the National Bolivarian Armed Forces, National Police, Boliviarian National Guard (GNB), and National Bolivarian Militia. The ODIS will be deployed “to defend the country’s peace” declared Maduro in a televised address.
“These bodies integrate all of Venezuela’s power at the national, state, municipal, and communal levels,” he touted, emphasizing the repressive role the ODIS will assume in preempting civil unrest in the final days leading to January 10.
Opposition leader Edmundo González Urrutia, who won the July 28 election with nearly 70% of the popular vote, is expected to attend a mass protest in central Caracas on Thursday, just hours before his legitimate presidential mandate is slated to begin.
María Corina Machado, the courageous opposition leader of Vente Venezuela, has pledged to lead the protests despite heightened risks to her life, alongside the thousands expected to fill the streets of Caracas. Large-scale anti-Maduro protests are also scheduled in cities around the world.
Over the past week, Machado’s close family, including her 84-year-old mother, have faced systematic intimidation, with reports of drone surveillance, threats, and harassment by pro-regime agents.
At least six senior campaign representatives from Vente Venezuela have disappeared in recent days, according to the opposition party. These incidents have raised alarm that Maduro is escalating the use of enforced disappearances to suppress dissent.
Maduro has responded to the opposition’s large-scale mobilization by calling on pro-government militias to counter the protests. Venezuelan Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello has urged Chavista loyalists to take to the streets on Thursday, setting the stage for potential violent confrontations, but that could strain resolve within the Boliviarian Armed Forces.
The crackdown also includes placing a U.S$100,000 bounty on the capture of González as he steps foot on Venezuelan soil to assume the presidency. González confirmed on social media that his son-in-law, Rafael Tudares, was abducted on Tuesday by “hooded men dressed in black” while taking his children to school in Caracas.
President-elect González will be accompanied by a delegation of nine former Latin American presidents, including Andrés Pastrana (Colombia), Vicente Fox (Mexico), and Laura Chinchilla (Costa Rica). The Venezuelan National Assembly declared all ex-presidents “personas non grata” and warned them they would be detained if they entered the country. News of the kidnapping forced González to cancel appointments in Washington, where he had met with U.S. President Joe Biden at the White House.
As tensions rapidly escalate, Maduro also announced on Tuesday from Miraflores the arrest of seven foreigners – two Americans, two Colombians, and three Ukrainians – accusing them of plotting terrorist activities to destabilize his government. On Monday, Diosdado Cabello touted that the regime had arrested 125 “foreign mercenaries,” including one Israeli citizen.
With opposition and Chavista militias poised to mobilize on the same streets of Caracas, a violent confrontation is looming just hours before Maduro expects to receive the presidential sash. While Caracas is at the epicenter of Maduro’s repressive security apparatus, other cities across the country are also bracing for potential violence, including San Antonio near the Colombian border. The Colombian Government has yet to announce if President Gustavo Petro – or Foreign Minister Luis Gilberto Murillo – will join a reduced group of Latin American autocrats at the Maduro reinauguration.
