Venezuela's autocrat Nicolás Maduro, accused of stealing election, seizes third term

Bogota, Colombia: He is an autocrat condemned inside and outside his country as having stolen the nation's last election. Yet on Friday, Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan president who has overseen his country's dramatic decline -- including runaway inflation, blackouts, hunger, mass migration and the unraveling of the nation's democracy -- was sworn in for a third term in office.

At the ceremony in Caracas, the capital, Maduro raised his left hand and declared that he would preside over a period of "peace, prosperity, equality and new democracy."

"I swear before history!" he shouted. If he serves the full six years, it will extend his party's reign into its third decade.

Maduro returns to Miraflores, the presidential palace in Caracas, even after millions of Venezuelans used the ballot box to express a desire for change. And he will do so amid his harshest crackdown yet, with police and military in riot gear blanketing the streets of the capital; journalists, activists and community leaders in prison; and a broad expansion of his surveillance apparatus.

The man the United States and others say won the election, Edmundo González, remains in exile, forced to flee to Spain or face arrest, while the country's most important opposition leader, María Corina Machado, has been in hiding inside Venezuela.

On Thursday she emerged for the first time since August, joining street protests against Maduro in Caracas. She stood atop a truck while thousands of supporters, all risking detention, shouted "freedom! freedom! freedom!"

Afterward, she was ripped from her motorbike and briefly detained by members of the national police, she said, and then released. The country's interior minister, Diosdado Cabello, later accused her of staging her own apprehension.

There have been few other recent protests against the government. And the ever-present threat that security forces will imprison civilians will make it difficult for Machado to continue to rally supporters to the streets.

González's supporters had hoped he would reappear in Venezuela for his own swearing-in, as he had promised repeatedly in recent months.

But on Friday, Machado said the government had closed the nation's airspace, leading their team to postpone his promised arrival for another unspecified moment.

For his part, Maduro faces the possibility that President-elect Donald Trump, who has filled his foreign policy team with Maduro foes, will take a hard line against him, possibly imposing more economic sanctions.

In response, the Venezuelan leader has spent the last six months amassing a cache of foreign prisoners, which analysts and former U.S. diplomats say he hopes to use as a bargaining tool in negotiations with the United States and other nations.

Since July, Venezuelan security forces have picked up about 50 visitors and dual-passport holders from more than a dozen countries, according to the watchdog group Foro Penal.

"They are pawns to be exchanged," said Gonzalo Himiob, a founder of Foro Penal.

Maduro wants the removal of US sanctions, which have battered the Venezuelan economy, and international recognition, among other policy changes.

Venezuelan officials say they have detained at least nine people with US citizenship or resident status, with officials accusing some of them of plotting to kill Maduro.

The United States has no diplomatic presence in Venezuela, and a State Department representative said the US government was not even sure where its citizens were being held.

Relatives of three detained US citizens said that they had not heard from their loved ones since they disappeared months ago and have received only limited communication from their own government.

David Estrella, 64, a father of five, had crossed into Venezuela by land from Colombia on Sept. 9, according to his former wife, Elvia Macias, 44.

Macias, who is close to her ex-husband, described him as an "adventurer" who -- full of optimism that the situation in Venezuela was "not that bad" -- had gone to visit friends.

He worked in quality control for pharmaceutical companies in New Jersey, was preparing to retire and had already visited Venezuela once before, she said.

Macias cried as she recounted celebrating Christmas without him. "This situation has had a tremendous impact on our lives," she said.

Maduro's socialist-inspired movement has run the country since 1999, when his predecessor, Hugo Chávez, took office. In July, Maduro faced his most difficult electoral challenge yet, facing off against González, a former diplomat who became the surrogate for Machado when the government barred her from running.

Even amid a stepped-up repression campaign, many Venezuelans came out in force to support González. And in the days after the election, the opposition collected thousands of vote tally sheets, publishing them online and saying they showed that González had won by a landslide.

Maduro nevertheless declared victory, an assertion questioned by independent observers, including the Carter Center, the United Nations and a member of the country's electoral council.

The United States has recognized González as the winner -- and even Maduro allies like presidents Gustavo Petro of Colombia and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil, both leftist neighbors of Venezuela, have distanced themselves.

Neither will attend the inauguration.

Maduro has held foreigners for political purposes before. But never has his government held so many at once, according to Foro Penal.

Some analysts said Maduro had decided to arrest foreigners because he has seen that it gets him what he wants.

In 2022 and then again in 2023, the United States struck deals with the Venezuelan government, in which Washington released high-profile Venezuelan allies in exchange for US citizens held by Maduro.

This was a part of a shift in American dealings with governments and others who capture Americans abroad.

In the past, US policy was not to negotiate with captors, out of fear that cutting deals would encourage the taking of hostages.

But this left detained Americans with little hope of rescue, and critics said it even contributed to the deaths of people like James Foley, a journalist killed by the Islamic State group in Syria in 2014.

The United States has since shown more willingness to negotiate. But some critics maintain that provokes the very practice Maduro is engaged in.

Tom Shannon, who served in a high-ranking State Department role in the Obama and Trump administrations, said he believed Maduro had been encouraged by recent hostage deals with Russia and Iran.

Still, he did not think cutting deals was a mistake.

"One of our jobs is to take care of American citizens abroad,'' Shannon said. "It's very difficult just to write people off and say, 'Oh, bad luck.'"

Instead, he said the US government should "inflict levels of pain on the kidnappers that make it clear that this is not going to happen again."

Other U.S. citizens detained in Venezuela include Wilbert Castañeda, 37, a Navy SEAL who traveled to Venezuela to visit his girlfriend, according to his mother, Petra Castañeda, 60.

Castañeda, a father of four, was apprehended by authorities in late August. By September his face had been plastered across state television, with Diosdado Cabello, Venezuela's interior minister, accusing him and others of participating in a plot to assassinate the president.

Petra Castañeda, who lives in California, said her son was innocent.

"The whole family is very worried, we are desperate," she said. "We are clinging to the hope that the United States will be able to reach an agreement with Mr. Maduro."

Stephen William Logan, 83, a retired teacher in West Virginia, said he did not even realize his son Aaron Barrett Logan, 34, had gone to Venezuela. Then, in September, his family got a call from State Department officials, notifying them that he had been detained.

Logan said his son worked in the United States for a major bank as a "penetration tester" -- testing the bank's security by trying to hack into its systems.

Cabello accused the younger Logan of being involved in the same assassination plot.

"I don't even know how to visualize it," Stephen Logan said of the conditions his son was living in, wondering if it was like "a concentration camp."

Representatives of Trump's transition team declined to comment. None of the US detainees have been declared wrongfully detained by the State Department, a designation that could get them more help from within the US government.

In Caracas, many attended Thursday's anti-Maduro protest even though similar gatherings have been met with violence from security forces and ended in the deaths of participants.

Among those in the streets was Laura Matos, 21, who said "everyone" had told her "don't go out."

But "last night I couldn't sleep," she said. "I said, 'I want something to happen, I want President-elect Edmundo González to be sworn in, I want Venezuela to experience a change.'"