Caracas Chronicles

The backstory

March 20, 2024: Attorney general Tarek William Saab orders detention of seven members of Vente Venezuela leadership: Magalli Meda, Maria Corina Machado’s campaign manager in the 2023 primaries; Humberto Villalobos, national campaign coordinator; Claudia Macero, communications coordinator; Omar González, political organization leader; Pedro Urruchurtu, foreign relations leader at the same party; Henry Alviárez, training coordinator; and Dignora Hernández, national political secretary. Alviárez and Hernández were captured that very day and sent to El Helicoide SEBIN prison. A video of Hernández’s detention, where she was crying for help while four government goons pushed her into a white SUV, went viral. In December 2023, Henry Alviárez, Pedro Urruchurtu and Claudia Macero had been accused of the same crimes, but their detention was suspended when the U.S. interchanged several political prisoners for Alex Saab. The other Saab (Tarek William) ordered as well the capture of Fernando Martínez Mottola, the liaison operator between the Unitary Platform and Machado’s team, and a retired general, Oswaldo Bracho. All were accused of a conspiracy with no proof, based on a fake confession extracted under duress from a Vente Venezuela member from Barinas. In the remaining hours of March 20, 2024, Meda, Villalobos, Urruchurtu, Macedo, Gonzalez and Martinez Mottola took refuge in Argentina’s embassy, under the protection of the government led by Javier Milei, whose political movement has ties with Vente Venezuela. The Maduro regime would start to gradually increase pressure on the embassy, with checkpoints and menacing deployment of security forces. 

July 29, 2024: Milei recognizes Edmundo Gonzalez’s victory in the presidential election and denounces the fraud. Maduro breaks diplomatic relations with Argentina and tightens the siege, even if Brazil assumes Argentina’s interests in Venezuela and the management of the besieged embassy. The security forces will harass delivery men and relatives of the Vente politicians that try to help the refugees and eventually will cut water and electricity to the building, and even confiscate the surrounding houses. The Argentinean diplomatic personnel left the country. Even with international pressure, the Maduro regime refused to allow the refugees to flee Venezuela. 

December 20, 2024: Fernando Martinez Mottola leaves the besieged embassy in a Swiss embassy car and declares in the attorney general’s office. 

February 26, 2025: Martinez Mottola dies of a stroke at his home.

The breaking news

Yesterday, May 6, 2025, we learned from different social media accounts from many political sides that the remaining Vente staffers in the Argentinean embassy had left Venezuela. The mother of Maria Corina Machado, who was ill at home, had also left the country. Maduro was on an official visit in Russia. 

The narratives

Chavista pundits and media released slightly diverging versions around the idea that it was the decision of the government, which controlled the situation, and that everything points at Machado betraying her cause and her voters. Classic chavismo.

Another version, backed by media outlets like Spain’s ABC—which usually publishes unverified info and are quite happy trigger about tubazos—and The Wall Street Journal, points at a negotiation between the Trump, Maduro, Lula and Bukele administrations, where the refugees would have interchanged against the release of other prisoners in Venezuela or abroad, and eventually matters related to oil and sanctions. This is the preferred narrative of the opposition that will participate in the incoming May elections.

Brazil said they did not participate in negotiating safe passages. So…

Machado says it was an extraction operation organized by her allies:

The same action tone and message can be found in the official statements by Marco Rubio and the Milei government:

Former police chief Ivan Simonovis, who was a political prisoner for nine years before leaving Venezuela in an spectacular escape according to his testimony, jumped in to suggest that if those refugees were extracted that way, the same can be done with “any other person.”

The questions

We can assume, from the little information available, that the refugees left separately, starting last week. Once the procedure came to an end and all of them were abroad, all the stakeholders in the situation started to announce it. 

It’s hard to think this is an operation extraction. The embassy was under surveillance 24/7, few other places in the country had so many eyes on it. A foreign incursion would have been detected and would have provoked a mess, with Maduro denouncing it as an act of war, from Moscow, with Vladimir Putin at his side. 

On the other hand, if the Maduro regime issued the exit permits, why did it not make a show of the flight of Machado’s people to exile, as they did with Edmundo Gonzalez in August 2024? 

Some other cases come to mind where important opposition hostages end up abroad with all of us scratching our heads wondering what the hell really happened. Leopoldo Lopez was released from home arrest, in 2019, to appear with Juan Guaido in a failed attempt to spark a military rebellion, but that time we knew that a high officer, general Christopher Dominguez Michael, was part of the operation and got asylum in the U.S. Years before that, the leaders of the 2002 rebellion against Hugo Chavez, business leader Pedro Carmon Estanga and union activist Carlos Ortega, left the country from jail in two separate and equally obscure operations, on which the Chavez government imposed silence after an initial propaganda wave.  

The other question is how will this affect the small traction that the pro regional elections opposition was starting to get. No doubt that this event sweeps the May elections out of the conversation and most definitely increases Machado’s traction after months of a fading local political presence.