Out of the shadows: Venezuela’s opposition emerges from hiding but remains on political sidelines
For nearly 600 days, Anthony Romero crept between more than a dozen safe houses to avoid being captured by Venezuela’s secret police. After helping challenge Nicolás Maduro’s spurious claim to have won the 2024 presidential election, the opposition activist went underground, as the South American dictator waged a ruthless crackdown in an attempt to cling to power. “He unleashed the harshest repression Venezuela has ever seen – we’re talking about nearly 3,000 arrests,” recalled Romero, 35, a lawyer who is part of the Nobel laureate María Corina Machado’s political party, Vente Venezuela. But on a recent sunny Saturday, Romero had emerged from hiding and was back on the streets, proudly wearing their movement’s signature-blue shirt as pro-democracy activists revived their campaign for change after Maduro’s overthrow appeared to herald a tentative glasnost.
“I see a bright and prosperous future for Venezuela,” Romero effused as he canvassed in the winding alleys of La Dolorita, a deprived neighbourhood in east Caracas. Such activism would have been a kamikaze mission before US special forces ended Maduro’s tyrannical reign on 3 January. “We’d have been arrested immediately,” said Jonatan Molero, 46, an activist and restaurateur also wearing the colours of Machado’s movement. A third local campaigner accompanying Romero, a retired carpentry teacher named Oswaldo Rodríguez, 59, recalled being so terrified by the post-election crackdown that, when armed pro-regime thugs arrived at his home, he used scissors to destroy his blue Vente shirt.
Now the repression has eased, at least temporarily, with Maduro’s successors largely tolerating opposition protests and gatherings – despite the fact that no democratic transition has taken place and there is still no date for new elections. Three hours after Romero’s visit began, police officers arrived and photographed his group, but they were otherwise left undisturbed.
As dozens of party canvassers strolled through the hillside community, Romero promised that Machado would soon return to conclude her push for democracy. “The process that began after 3 January will, without any doubt whatsoever, lead us to a transition, to a democratically elected government and to a free and flourishing Venezuela,” he said. Analysts have their doubts. A recent Chatham House report based on input from election experts, diplomats and scholars of democratic transitions suggests Venezuela has its best opportunity in more than a decade to rescue its democracy and collapsed economy. But the British thinktank warned the momentum for change was fading, with the Trump administration seemingly content to leave Maduro’s vice-president, Delcy Rodríguez, in power in exchange for economic concessions and obedience from a country the US president has pondered turning into the 51st state. The report’s author, Christopher Sabatini, said Washington showed little interest in pushing for elections that could threaten a lucrative new relationship some critics compare to colonial rule. “[The US] needs a foreign policy win, and Venezuela – rightly or wrongly – is what they’re holding up as a win in the face of Iran and an uncertain agenda and outcome in Cuba,” Sabatini said of Trump’s parallel crusade to subjugate the Caribbean island’s communist leaders. “[Washington’s] interest was never democracy … much to the frustration of the opposition.” In La Dolorita, some Machado supporters insisted they were keeping faith in Donald Trump’s three-phase roadmap for their country’s future: stabilisation, economic recovery and political transition.
“Donald Trump has been a great ally of democracy in Venezuela,” said the retired carpenter Rodríguez, acknowledging that many Venezuelans had been disappointed not to see the “total change” they had hoped for. “But I believe the strategy of Donald Trump’s government is the correct one,” he added, expressing confidence that negotiations and US pressure would gradually produce substantial reforms, including an overhaul of the pro-regime National Electoral Council and free and fair elections. Daniel Gaspar, a 35-year-old motorcycle taxi driver from La Dolorita, said: “We’re moving forwards! Only crabs move backwards!” But there are signs of fraying patience among Venezuelans who hoped Maduro’s abduction would bring immediate democracy. One recent poll found support for Trump’s actions had plunged from 92% in January to 46% in April amid growing discomfort about his obsession with securing access to Venezuelan natural resources and apparent indifference to elections. The longing for a genuine political shift was palpable as Romero’s campaigners advanced through the backstreets of La Dolorita, long considered a working-class stronghold of Maduro’s Chavismo movement but where he suffered a crushing defeat in 2024. On almost every doorstep, they encountered anger at how years of hyperinflation, hunger, corruption and state violence had had brought the area to its knees and caused millions to flee abroad.
In a dimly lit shack at the top of a steep stairwell, 63-year-old María Núñez told Romero her house had not received a drop of running water in 21 years. She remembered once having been able to afford pork chops; now she ate chicken feet. She said neighbours faced even greater difficulties: one family of four with a child with special educational needs were so poor they lacked a mattress and slept on the floor. “We want true, profound change,” Núñez said, imploring Romero’s team to find a bed for her neighbours. Of Machado, Núñez said: “I want her to be president of Venezuela because she knows Venezuela … and I ask God to make her Venezuela’s president.”
Juan Córdova, a community organiser, said hunger was widespread, and even comparatively better-off families were struggling, making $50 for a seven-day-week. “Fifty dollars buys you nothing,” complained Córdova, 57. Of the government, he said: “Every day they and their friends grow richer and the people grow poorer … We want change – and we hope it comes soon.” Machado, who slipped out of Venezuela in December to receive a Nobel prize she later gave to Trump, has responded diplomatically to the slow pace of change, keen not to alienate her most powerful supporter despite his decision to sideline her.
The conservative democracy activist has pledged to return home to seek Venezuela’s presidency by the end of this year – but her path to power appears to be narrowing, given the increasingly cosy relationship between Rodríguez and Trump. Speaking after a recent opposition summit in Panama, Machado urged the US to help “promote a serious, firm and responsible political negotiation with the interim regime to restore democracy in Venezuela”. Sabatini predicted Machado would at some point make good on her promise to return home, where she would seek to reassert leadership of the opposition and a “showdown” with Rodríguez’s regime, with unpredictable consequences, including her possible arrest. “If something happens to her, it really becomes a showdown of whether the Trump administration will go to battle for María Corina Machado against the interim government that it has embraced. I wouldn’t be sure which way that would go … quite frankly,” he said.
Romero was more optimistic as he wrapped up his tour with an improvised assembly inside the sitting room of 58-year-old Neirubes Millan. She wept as she described her struggle to feed La Dolorita’s most deprived children during the worst moments of Venezuela’s humanitarian crisis. “We cry because we aren’t the people we used to be,” Millan said. “But happiness is on its way … Soon this will all be over and things will be different. And if once we shed tears of sorrow, we will then shed tears of joy.” After taking a video call from a senior Vente leader who remained in exile, Romero stepped out into the afternoon sunlight, celebrating the enthusiastic welcome his team had been afforded in an area where the opposition had long been shunned.
“We’re convinced we’re going to completely break with 21st-century socialism,” he said, before his convoy wound its way out of La Dolorita, old weather-beaten propaganda murals paying tribute to Maduro’s fallen regime. Beneath one wall painting celebrating the dictator’s “good governance”, a scavenger in yellowing Nike trainers used a butter tray to shovel through a rubble-filled dumpster. Farther ahead was a homage to Maduro’s late mentor, Hugo Chávez, accompanied by a slogan given new meaning by the downfall of his heir. “La esperanza está en la calle,” it read. “Hope lies in the street”. Additional reporting by María de los Ángeles Graterol.
