Socialists Stone and Beat Opposition with Sticks in Venezuela After Biden Sanctions Relief

Maria Corina Machado
AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos
Frances Martel

Venezuelan opposition leader and banned frontrunner in the yet-to-be-scheduled presidential election against dictator Nicolás Maduro, María Corina Machado, announced that a mob of socialists attacked her campaign event on Wednesday, beating her supporters “with sticks and stones.”

“More than 100 regime colectivos attacked with sticks and stones and injured numerous attendees,” Machado wrote in a message on Twitter. “The police present, through their inaction, abetted the armed colectivos.”

The term colectivo is used in Venezuela to mean socialist regime-linked armed thugs who have waged campaigns of terror against known dissidents through street beatings, extrajudicial killings, and other violence since the time of late dictator Hugo Chávez. The colectivos, unlike the Bolivarian National Guard (GNB), are not official arms of the Maduro regime and thus offer some distance between the dictator and his oppressive forces.

The presidential candidate published a video in which a mob was hurling rocks at a vehicle, cracking its windows, as visible from within. She also released a video of a man dressed in a Vente Venezuela shirt covered in blood, apparently suffering from a head wound that bled onto his neck and shirt.

Vente Venezuela is Machado’s center-right political party.

Other videos that Vente Venezuela shared from the event, which occurred in the Venezuelan state of Miranda, showed a throng attacking the outside of the rally venue.

Machado is currently campaigning throughout Venezuela to win the presidency in an election that Maduro has only nominally agreed to hold and in which the socialist regime has banned Machado from participating. In October, the administration of leftist American President Joe Biden announced that it would lift sanctions on Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), the Venezuelan state oil company, and allow PDVSA to sell its oil products in America in exchange for a promise from the regime to hold a “free and fair” presidential election in 2024. The sanctions relief offered Maduro windfall profits — and entry into the lucrative American market — that the previous administration of former President Donald Trump had stymied, limiting the socialists’ ability to use violence against political opponents.

In the immediate aftermath of the sanctions relief — and Biden’s widely panned decision to free Alex Saab, who is alleged to be Maduro’s top money launderer and general financial adviser — the Maduro regime announced a new wave of repression against known anti-socialists known as “Bolivarian Fury” and declared the results of a primary held by the establishment opposition in the country illegitimate. Machado, a former lawmaker who has faced more than a decade of violence, personally, for opposing Maduro, won that primary with an overwhelming 93 percent of the vote.

Maduro also declared the agreement that led to the PDVSA sanctions relief “mortally wounded” in late January, suggesting he would not fulfill his commitment to hold a presidential election.

Machado’s persistence in campaigning appears to have attracted mob violence on Wednesday, Vente Venezuela asserted.

“Once again, they violate the freedom of association,” the party said in a statement. “Enough persecution and aggression!”

Machado, a former lawmaker, was ousted from her democratically elected position in the National Assembly in 2014. A year before her ouster, socialists beat her on the floor of the National Assembly, breaking her nose.

The Maduro regime removed her legislative immunity and refused to allow her in her office in 2014, using tear gas to keep her from entering the National Assembly complex. She remained a prominent leader in the opposition movement for years despite the physical attacks against her, resulting in more violence. In 2018, Machado and her party were the targets of a similar attack to that of this week in which a socialist mob armed with sticks and rocks assaulted them during a public daytime event to galvanize support against Maduro.

“The violent attackers used rock, sticks, pipes, switchblades, and other objects against those walking pacifically in Upata. They attacked María Corina directly,” Vente Venezuela said in a statement at the time.

Vente Venezuela has vocally opposed sanctions relief for Maduro.

“While the U.S. government makes concessions to the regime, such as the suspension of some sanctions, there are serious human rights violations in Venezuela,” the party said in a statement in late January, such as the arbitrary detention and forced disappearance of several Venezuelan regional leaders.”

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