Maduro sends soldiers into streets of Venezuela as key date nears in troubled nation
Fearing that opposition leader Edmundo Gonzalez will return to Venezuela this week as promised, strongman Nicolás Maduro has mobilized the country’s military, sending soldiers to patrol the streets in major cities and carrying out new arrests of opponents or individuals he calls mercenaries.
Friday’s inauguration for the new presidential term looms as a watershed moment for the future of the troubled nation, with Maduro and Gonzalez simultaneously declaring to be the one who will be sworn in. Both claim to have been the legitimate winners of July’s presidential election, but the assertion by the socialist strongman that he won has been declared as outright fraudulent by most members of the international community, including the United States.
As Gonzalez prepared his return to Venezuela this week by meeting with regional leaders, including president Biden on Monday, Maduro and the regime’s number two man, Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello, continue to insist they are willing to use violence to quash what they are calling a planned invasion.
“Make no mistake with the people of Venezuela; we are resolute and determined to win,” Maduro said on state television before issuing orders for a military and police mobilization “to preserve peace, national independence; to defend the rights of the people with our own lives if necessary, so that the country may live, so that the country may grow.”
According to state media, around 1,200 soldiers and security agents have been mobilized to counteract any attempt to disrupt the inauguration of what would be Maduro’s third presidential term.
The opposition has called on all Venezuelans in and outside the country to take to the streets Thursday to defend the election results, which it claims Gonzalez won by a margin of 67% to 30%.
Those results are accepted by a growing number of countries, despite the regime’s claim that Maduro won 52% of the vote. The overwhelming majority of Venezuelans, 90% according to the latest polls, believe that Maduro’s claims that he won the election are fraudulent.
Maduro, whose regime has arrested more than 2,000 people since protests erupted around the country challenging his claim that he had won reelection, announced more arrests on Tuesday, including seven people he called “foreign mercenaries.” Those detained, which reportedly includes two unidentified American citizens, form part of a larger group of 125 individuals from 25 countries who have been detained in the last two months. Maduro said the people who have been arrested were planning to conduct “terrorist actions to disrupt the peace of the Venezuelan people.”
Among those arrested was González’s son-in-law, Rafael Tudares, who was detained by masked men when he was taking his children to school. Opposition leader Enrique Marquez and human-rights activist Carlos Correa were also arrested.
It is not known how Gonzalez plans to return to Venezuela amid regime plans to arrest him on the spot. Cabello, who has been distributing posters offering a $100,000 reward for the capture of the opposition leader, has said repeatedly that they are waiting for him to arrive.
Cabello also said regime forces will arrest top opposition leader Maria Corina Machado if she dares to appear during the protests she has called for Thursday.
But Machado, who has been in hiding since the presidential election, says the regime does not have the support inside the military and the securities forces that Maduro y Cabello think they have.
“It is a house of cards,” Machado told reporters in a video press conference, before emphasizing that military officers have been contacting the opposition to say know Gonzalez was the real winner of the election.
Members of the military have a momentous decision to make, she said.
“They have to decide at this moment if they want to become tyrants or if they want to be heroes defending their own people,” she who are part of this tyranny”.
This story was originally published January 8, 2025 at 12:55 PM.
