Delcy Rodríguez
‘Comma By Comma, A Change Here, A Change There’: The Passage Of Venezuela’s Amnesty Law
Up until the final minutes before approval of the Venezuelan National Assembly’s amnesty law, opposition lawmakers debated over additions they considered essential. The process was a seven-hour marathon of closed-door discussions, with two hours of debate on the Assembly floor, and a nighttime visit to Miraflores Palace, the seat of government, to deliver the final law to the acting President Delcy Rodríguez. Despite its limitations and omissions, the law allows the Venezuelan government to make a case that it will be allowing greater political freedom after the capture of Nicolás Maduro by the U.S. government.
“Comma by comma, a change here, a change there.” That’s how opposition lawmaker Antonio Ecarri describes the final hours of the debate, which included tense exchanges with the National Assembly President Jorge Rodríguez. “It has been an extremely hard and extremely long discussion. Some things did manage to become public, after an intense battle,” says Ecarri.
Rodríguez ordered him to stop talking at one point because, in his opinion, Ecarri was out of order. On February 19, Ecarri was also chastened for calling out how “corrupt officials and judges” caused “disasters” in “very important matters.” Rodríguez said he had to present proof of his accusations.
Beyond the parliamentary wrangling, one article the opposition views as a victory is Article Seven. Discussion raged over the clause for an entire week. The provision requires those seeking amnesty to submit themselves to the justice system in order to benefit from it. The measure is geared towards those who were imprisoned for political reasons, rather than for acts that constitute crimes. But in the opinion of some advocates, it could lead to revictimization, and has generated enormous mistrust among countless exiles, who have fled to country precisely to avoid a prison sentence.
The opposition succeeded in ensuring that those outside the country can begin their amnesty proceedings through a legal representative, and that no one can be detained once they have initiated the process. Putting that guarantee in writing, opposition lawmakers argue, is a substantial safeguard, as is the possibility of a second hearing: if one court denies amnesty, the decision can be appealed before another.
Though Chavismo did not concede to all demands, the regime did negotiate its way to unanimous approval of the bill’s 16 articles. This was largely a symbolic achievement, given that opposition votes were numerically unnecessary. The United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) has a majority in the National Assembly, but current lawmakers were elected in 2025 amid widespread repression and under conditions even less transparent than previous elections. The main opposition forces aligned with leader María Corina Machado called for abstention.
The 12 opposition lawmakers in the Libertad bloc represent just 3% of the National Assembly’s 285 seats. On the day the first draft was brought to its initial discussion three weeks ago, Rodríguez summoned Stalin González, the bloc’s leader, to the dais and told him they would allow four of their deputies onto the commission. Nora Bracho — who negotiated her way to becoming the committees vice-president — Pablo Pérez, Antonio Ecarri and Luis Florido joined. “I think they included us because most of the political prisoners have ties to us,” says Florido.
The four were joined by González and Alejandro Rodríguez, and their presence means that half of the opposition bench is now on the committee. “We do not feel like a minority, and we represent the people who have wanted change since [the 2024 election on] July 28,” says Florido. The group will have to push to address the large number of cases that are not covered by the amnesty law.
The monitoring committee, which was established by the law’s Article 15, will be tasked with ensuring compliance with the bill, and constitutes the second small victory achieved by the opposition. In the debate’s final minutes, they managed to incorporate the word “expeditious” to describe the alternative measures that the commission may request to achieve amnesty in cases not covered by the law.
In addition to Chavista lawmakers, representatives of the public powers — including Attorney General Tarek William Saab, accused of responsibility for many of the detentions — took part in the debates. Several lawmakers said they laid out before them the serious failings of the judicial system. “We have said what is clear here: that justice was used as a tool to punish Venezuelans who thought differently. And that for Venezuela to change, and for the amnesty to achieve anything at all, all powers must be reinstitutionalized,” Florido said.
For the first time in a very long time, NGOs that have documented human rights violations — and have been increasingly targeted by the government in recent years — were also heard.
Florido has had a long trajectory as a member of the National Assembly. He himself was forced into exile and received a pardon from Nicolás Maduro in 2020, but he has been barred from leaving the country for nine years, his accounts in public banks are frozen, and several legal cases against him remain in limbo.
His own case should be subject to review, which is why he says that “the battle is just beginning.” “Let’s not burden the amnesty law with solving all of Venezuela’s problems,” he says. Florido notes that he witnessed “a parliamentary working environment” once again. He describes the process as follows: “There were proposals and counterproposals on the part of the Socialist Party and Libertad. Article 7 took about two hours to get through, two hours in which we never put down our pencils and paper. We saw the climate of this political moment, in which we must lower the spirit of pugnacity.”
The commission’s president, Chavista lawmaker Jorge Arreaza, was respectful and did not deny anyone the right to speak, according to those who formed part of the discussions. However, on social media, he warned amnesty recipients “not to repeat insurrectionary behavior.”
Debate was intense and fast-paced, in part due to pressure from family members who have been protesting in front of prisons since the beginning of January. In Zone 7, the National Bolivarian Police ended a hunger strike on February 19, after celebrating the law’s passage, while in other prisons, there was criticism of its shortcomings.
Four failed articles
The opposition proposed four additional articles that were left out of the final law. They dealt with lifting administrative disqualifications imposed by the Comptroller’s Office, repealing repressive laws, and introducing a labor amnesty, since political persecution in Venezuela has also involved unjustified dismissals and administrative sanctions.
Chavismo, for its part, managed at the last moment to exclude from the law’s protection anyone who had “incited armed actions” from abroad against the country’s territory and sovereignty — an accusation frequently leveled at María Corina Machado and her team. “In our view, that addition was unnecessary; we didn’t see it as being aimed at anyone in particular. It’s something that’s obvious to Venezuelans. We didn’t oppose it because we don’t want events like those of January 3 to happen again,” Florido says.
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Since January 3, Venezuela has opened its natural resources to the United States. First it was oil. Crude extracted from Venezuelan wells has returned to what was for years its main customer, and Washington has reciprocated by granting the necessary licenses. Then, the Venezuelan parliament, led by Jorge Rodríguez, the brother of acting president Delcy Rodríguez, amended the hydrocarbons law, and a few days ago, the first contract with Shell was signed. The same pattern is now being repeated for mining operations.
U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum paved the way during his two-day visit last week, which also included representatives from some 20 U.S. mineral companies, many of which operated in Venezuela in the past but ended up leaving due to expropriations during Hugo Chávez’s tenure.
Upon his return to Washington, a license was issued authorizing transactions with the Venezuelan state-owned gold mining company Minerven. According to the license, as was also the case with oil, individuals and companies from Russia, Iran, North Korea, and Cuba are not authorized to enter into contracts with Minerven. The following day, the first shipment of gold, valued at $100 million, arrived in the United States. According to Burgum, it will be used for both industrial and commercial purposes.
“Venezuela has got $500 billion of resources of gold, but they’ve also got other critical minerals. Bauxite for aluminum, which we need for defense and for consumer goods,” the official said in an interview with a U.S. media outlet upon his return. “They also have coal resources that can be used to generate energy.”
The Venezuelan Parliament is currently debating a new mining law that was placed on the agenda this Tuesday. The legislation seeks to “establish new rules for the management of the country’s mineral resources.” During the presentation, lawmakers indicated that the law addresses legal security, foreign investment, and the incorporation of new contracting mechanisms for the administration of mineral resources. These are the same aspects that were central to the reform of the hydrocarbons law, but further debate is needed before its approval.
Burgum has asserted that the Venezuelan government provided security guarantees to mining companies interested in investing in the country. The reference to security was reiterated several times in the official’s statements while in Venezuela. However, the mineral-rich areas in the south of the country have long been controlled by guerrillas, criminal gangs, and other illegal groups.
When Donald Trump initiated the siege against Nicolás Maduro last year, he made clear his interest in the South American country’s resources. The deployment of military vessels in the Caribbean was accompanied by statements in which the president asserted that Venezuela had stolen oil from the United States. The military intervention and the capture of Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, ultimately precipitated these plans.
In addition to possessing the world’s largest oil reserves, the Caribbean nation boasts enormous gas fields—the sixth largest globally; vast gold reserves, the most significant in Latin America; iron ore, ranking 12th in the world; bauxite, ranking 15th; and diamonds. Before the collapse of the Chavista regime, the country had made significant progress in the exploitation and export of several of these commodities, particularly oil, gas, iron ore, and processed aluminum and steel products, cornerstones of contemporary Venezuela.
Added to all this is a significant supply of so-called “rare earth elements,” especially coltan and thorium, chemical elements with magnetic and conductivity properties essential for modern technology: mobile phones, electric vehicles, weaponry, and renewable energy. The so-called black sands—a market largely dominated by China—are emerging as a prize that the U.S. president hopes to wrest from his trade rival by restoring relations with Venezuela through a political transition overseen by Washington.
This year marks a decade since Maduro signed the decree creating the Orinoco Mining Arc, a 112,000-square-kilometer area encompassing nearly 12% of the national territory, in search of new revenue for a country whose oil industry was in ruins. Chavismo had made its survival contingent on gold, after oil sanctions were imposed in 2019.
Maduro, now imprisoned in New York, went so far as to distribute mines to governors, mayors, and ministers to cover government spending. In gold trading, Chavismo has partnered with Turkey and South Africa. In production, however, it operates a network of “strategic alliances” with companies close to the ruling elite, under the supervision of the Venezuelan Mining Corporation. These alliances coexist with irregular actors such as the Colombian guerrilla group National Liberation Army (ELN), FARC dissidents, and criminal gangs like the Tren de Aragua.
The result has been devastating. Far from becoming a development hub, the Orinoco Mining Arc has transformed into a dangerous breeding ground for crime, political and military corruption, and smuggling, against the backdrop of a major environmental disaster that has expanded the extractive frontier into protected natural areas of the states of Bolívar and Amazonas. This is not large-scale mining of the type sought by U.S. companies interested in returning to the country, but rather a chaotic and uncontrolled exploitation fueled by the global rise in the price of gold.
United Nations reports have documented serious human rights violations in this territory, including slavery and trafficking. For some environmentalists, the gold extracted from Venezuelan mines can be considered “blood gold.” The organization SOS Orinoco, which has denounced the critical situation in mining areas for years, has warned that license 51, granted by the Office of Foreign Assets Control to Minerven, “perpetuates ecocide and launders criminal wealth.”
In a statement, the NGO criticized the pro-business agenda for ignoring southern Venezuela as a mining region devastated by the ongoing conflict. “The United States is becoming complicit in the plundering of our natural heritage, rewarding a regime that continues to violate human and environmental rights. The U.S. government is naive to think that these licenses will reduce smuggling or unsustainable mining.”
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Ataque Estados Unidos a Venezuela
La Esposa De Leopoldo López Denuncia El “saqueo” Y Destrucción De Su Casa En Venezuela
La casa en la que Leopoldo López pasó años en arresto domiciliario y que dejó cuando se refugió en la embajada de España y luego escapó al exilio a Madrid ha sido tomada por las autoridades, según ha denunciado su esposa. La activista Lilian Tintori, compañera del opositor venezolano, denunció este viernes el “saqueo” y la destrucción de su casa en el país suramericano por una orden, aseguró, de la presidenta encargada de Venezuela, Delcy Rodríguez.
“Delcy Rodríguez ordenó entrar, vaciarla, robarla y tumbarla”, indicó Tintori en un video publicado en Instagram, en el que aseguró que también se llevaron a sus dos perros y loros que todavía estaban en la residencia, ubicada en el noreste de Caracas, en la urbanización Los Palos Grandes.
Tintori dijo que luego de su partida de Venezuela ya habían sufrido robos. Pero ahora asegura que de “forma violenta” entraron a su casa, sin especificar si fueron funcionarios de seguridad o particulares, y se llevaron todo lo que estaba dentro, como fotos, libros, así como mesas.
“Entraron a la casa, se robaron todo, la vaciaron completa y tumbaron la casa, las paredes por dentro están destruidas”, apuntó. Tintori exigió la devolución de su propiedad y el cese de la persecución contra su familia.
En mayo de 2019, luego de que López se escapó del arresto domiciliario y se refugió en la residencia del entonces embajador español Jesús Silva, su domicilio fue allanado y robado por supuestos agentes del servicio de inteligencia de Venezuela. En 2020, el dirigente de Voluntad Popular se fue al exilio con su familia.
Denuncias de este tipo se han repetido en las últimas semanas entre opositores venezolanos en el exilio. El pasado 25 de febrero, la organización Vente Venezuela denunció la confiscación de la casa de Laura Acosta, asistente de la líder opositora María Corina Machado. La vivienda fue asegurada por cuerpos de seguridad como si se tratara de un proceso de confiscación arbitrario, sin órdenes judiciales.
Ese mismo mes, Magalli Meda, colaboradora de Machado, también denunció que “16 hombres armados” entraron a su casa en Caracas para “destruir y llevarse o sembrar lo que les dé la gana”. Meda está fuera de Venezuela tras escapar el año pasado junto a un grupo de opositores con los que estuvo asilada en la residencia de la Embajada de Argentina en Caracas. La dirigente detalló que estas personas llegaron en “seis camionetas” y “estuvieron horas adentro para robarse todo y dejar en la puerta carteles que dicen ‘Asegurado’ e ‘Incautado”.
Estas medidas contra los opositores corren a la par que Delcy Rodríguez intenta una apertura política con la ley de amnistía, la excarcelación de centenares de presos políticos y las revisiones de medidas de miles de personas perseguidas a quienes les han otorgado libertad plena.
En 2023, el chavismo aprobó la Ley Orgánica de Extinción de Dominio que permite la incautación de bienes presuntamente adquiridos de forma ilícita para que pasen a ser propiedad del Estado. Pero sus críticos advirtieron que se podía usar para perseguir a la oposición.
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