The price of opposing Maduro’s power

Rafael Tudares Bracho was kidnapped at 12:39 p.m., on Tuesday, January 7, 2025. At the time, he was taking his seven- and eight-year-old children to visit their grandmother, who had just had surgery.

Two months have passed since that moment and his whereabouts are still unknown. There’s no information about his physical integrity or his state of health.

Rafael Tudares Bracho is my son-in-law. This is the reality we face after his forced disappearance… but it’s also the story of thousands of men and women in Venezuela.

Despite the efforts to locate him — which include constant visits to detention centers and filing formal requests with the authorities to access information — the Venezuelan state is keeping his whereabouts a secret, even denying him the right to a phone call.

I am the legitimate president, elected by more than 7.5 million Venezuelans. In each vote, I recognize the will for change in my country. But today, I’m also just any ordinary Venezuelan. I’m experiencing what thousands of my compatriots have suffered: I have a relative who has been kidnapped by the state. I have a daughter who wanders through detention centers, searching for her husband. I have grandchildren who lived through the terror of seeing how armed and hooded men took their father away, leaving them in the middle of the street. These same men — now stationed around the corner from their house, wearing the same hoods and carrying the same weapons — serve as a permanent reminder of who took him.

Is this my story? No. It’s the story of many Venezuelan families who live in a state of constant uncertainty, threatened and persecuted. Families who, like mine, receive pressure and warnings to remain silent, not to report, not to be difficult.

My commitment — along with María Corina Machado and other opposition leaders in Venezuela — has been to fight for freedom and political change in a context of serious human rights violations. We have faced systematic attacks against the civilian population, practices that the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) has described as “state terrorism,” revealing the magnitude and systemic nature of these crimes.

Since I accepted the nomination as an opposition candidate less than a year ago, I have been the victim of harassment, persecution, and threats, including the risk of being arbitrarily deprived of my freedom. This is what happens in Venezuela when you stand on the side of the people and when you understand the desire for change that mobilized almost eight million Venezuelans to vote for a better future. It’s the risk that every citizen runs should they choose to oppose authoritarianism and the loss of basic rights and freedoms.

Is yearning for a dignified life a crime? It certainly is not.

Added to this panorama is the strategy of expansive political persecution, as Nicaraguan writer Sergio Ramírez described to me. A persecution that not only seeks to silence the opposition within Venezuela, but extends its tentacles beyond, trying to silence any dissident voice and even forcing citizens into exile, including my wife Mercedes, myself, and many others. This strategy subjugates family members and friends, generating a climate of fear to shape a controlled, submissive society.

Rafael has been disappeared just because he’s my son-in-law. This is despite the fact that the Venezuelan Constitution establishes that the criminal responsibility of a person cannot extend to their family members. You cannot take a family member hostage. However, believe me, our loved ones are hostages, bargaining chips, negotiating pieces. Rafael, Jesús, Dignora, Rocío, William, Enrique, Américo, Freddy, Perkins, Magaly, Claudia, Pedro and many others — including military personnel — are being held captive today by the Venezuelan state, awaiting the moment to be exchanged.

In recent days, informal sources told us that Rafael was brought before a judge in a legal procedure that was flawed from the start. In this clandestine trial, he was charged with treason, conspiring with foreign governments and criminal association… the same crimes that I am charged with. His defense was left in the hands of a lawyer appointed by the state, a common practice for those detained in the post-election context.

The persecution of political dissidents in Venezuela isn’t new, but it has intensified since the 2023 opposition primary elections. State repression against opponents, political leaders and their families has intensified, as documented by national and international NGOs, the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Fact-Finding Mission on Venezuela and the UN subcommittees on torture, enforced disappearance and arbitrary detention. Recent cases follow the same patterns: arbitrary detentions, hooded officials, enforced disappearances, incommunicado detention, isolation, denial of the right to a private lawyer, clandestine trials without the family’s knowledge, denial of due process, lack of access to health care and total isolation from the outside world. This is nothing other than a kidnapping. I have explained this to the authorities throughout the international community whenever I have met with them.

The Venezuelan government wants to silence us, the family members. They want to stop our struggle. They want to make us feel guilty, when clearly the only culprit here is authoritarianism and its practices of state terrorism.

Despite the adverse context, the pressures and the risks, as a father, I remain firm in demanding freedom for my son-in-law and for all those who, like him, are unjustly kidnapped. As president-elect, following the civic process of July 28, 2024, I remain committed to defending justice, freedoms and human rights in my country.

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