In Venezuela, Amnesty for Political Prisoners Stokes Hope and Frustration

Hints of Political Amnesty Stoke Hope and Frustration in VenezuelaVenezuela’s new leaders and President Trump have alluded to a major release of political prisoners, but the liberations have been slow to come.The opposition politician Juan Pablo Guanipa, in Caracas in 2020.Credit...Miguel Gutierrez/EPA, via ShutterstockJan. 12, 2026, 1:08 p.m. ETWhen Venezuela’s interim government announced last week that it would start freeing political prisoners, Ramón Guanipa Linares, a college psychology student, immediately packed a bag and flew from his hometown in western Venezuela to the capital, Caracas.On arrival, he went straight to a prison where his father Juan Pablo Guanipa, a prominent opposition politician, has been detained for the past eight months for challenging President Nicolás Maduro’s rule.“I wanted to be the first to hug my father,” Mr. Guanipa Linares, 28, said in a phone interview from his home in Maracaibo, Venezuela’s second largest city. “But they had no information about his liberation or anything like that. They were just rumors.”Mr. Guanipa Linares, like most Venezuelans, has been trying to understand his country’s political course since the U.S. captured Mr. Maduro and helped install his vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, as the country’s interim leader.ImageRamón Guanipa Linares, the son of political prisoner Juan Pablo Guanipa, at home in Maracaibo, Venezuela.Credit...Margioni Bermudez/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesHer unexpected alliance with the United States has raised cautious hopes that Venezuela could become less repressive, if not democratic. On Thursday, Ms. Rodriguez’s brother and congressional speaker, Jorge Rodríguez, announced that the government would be freeing an “important number” of political prisoners.President Trump raised expectations further on Saturday, announcing on social media that “Venezuela has started the process, in a BIG WAY, of releasing their political prisoners.”But the slow pace of the ensuing liberations has raised questions in Venezuela over Ms. Rodríguez’s ultimate intentions, as well as her ability to impose her will on the more extreme factions of her government that control the various security agencies and their prisons.On Monday morning, Venezuela’s government announced that it had released 116 prisoners “in recent hours.” But rights groups that monitor political prisoners in the country have counted only 41 releases since Mr. Maduro’s downfall.About 800 political prisoners remained behind bars as of Sunday, according to a count by Foro Penal, one of the rights groups.On Sunday night, relatives of political prisoners held a night vigil outside the secret police’s notorious El Helicoide prison in Caracas, a move that underscored both the growing impatience with the government’s foot-dragging and a cautious sense of hope.ImageFamily members of political prisoners holding a vigil on Sunday as they waited outside El Helicoide prison in Caracas.Credit...The New York TimesDuring the final years of Mr. Maduro’s rule, security forces would have dispersed such a protest within minutes.Mr. Guanipa Linares has since returned home, where he has been trying to make sense of his country’s new power dynamics.“From what we understand, there was a plan to free all these political prisoners, but something has happened midway,” he said. “So we are just trying to raise our voices and maintain the pressure.”His father, Juan Pablo Guanipa, is arguably the most prominent politician who remains in detention in Venezuela. A former congressman from a centrist opposition party, he ran successfully for governor of Venezuela’s oil rich Zulia state in 2017.But Mr. Maduro’s government dismissed him from office for refusing to swear allegiance to a legislative body that the president had created, in violation of Venezuelan law, to bypass the opposition-controlled congress.In 2023, Mr. Guanipa ran to be the presidential candidate for the main opposition alliance for the election to be held the following year. After coming second in the primary, he threw his support behind the winning candidate, Maria Corina Machado, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2025 for her pro-democracy campaign.The opposition alliance won those presidential elections in a landslide, voting machine tallies show, but was prevented from taking power by Mr. Maduro, who declared himself the winner and then unleashed a new wave of repression against opponents.Mr. Guanipa and Ms. Machado were among the few prominent opposition leaders who chose to remain in Venezuela as repression deepened.In May, security forces raided his hiding place, breaking down the door of his room at 2 a.m. and dragging him off to prison, according to Mr. Guanipa Linares, his son. Like many other political prisoners, he has been charged with terrorism and treason, but never convicted.Mr. Guanipa Linares said he has seen his father once since, and has had no telephone contact with him.Following his father’s detention, Mr. Guanipa Linares said he had to take on the role of looking after his four younger brothers and sisters, while raising his 8-year-old daughter as a divorced single parent and campaigning for his father’s release. His mother died in 2024.He said his father “didn’t want to flee the country and become another exiled politician in Spain or the U.S.”“In his own words,” Mr. Guanipa Linares added, “he wanted to fight the good fight.”Anatoly Kurmanaev covers Venezuela and its interim government.SKIP