After a year behind bars as a political prisoner under the Maduro regime in Venezuela, one of the first things that Ángel Godoy did was apologize.
Freed last Wednesday, Mr. Godoy, a political activist and columnist, returned to his home in Los Teques, 40 minutes outside the capital, Caracas, where his son showed him a photo of his high school graduation.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there,” Mr. Godoy whispered.
“Now you are,” his son, Miguelangel Godoy Briceño, replied. “And I need you to help me study for university.”
Mr. Godoy, 52, walked along the walls of his apartment and touched the family photos to confirm that this was home. In the living room, there was a poster of his face that his wife had used as a backdrop for every video she recorded about her husband’s detention on Jan. 8, 2025.
He took a marker and wrote across it in big letters: RELEASED.
Mr. Godoy and his family had been waiting for this moment for 371 days, but their hopes grew earlier this month after President Nicolás Maduro was seized by U.S. forces in Caracas and the Venezuelan government announced that it would start freeing “an important number” of political prisoners.
Mr. Godoy is one of the lucky ones. To date, only 143 of Venezuela’s estimated nearly 900 political prisoners have been released, according to a leading human rights group, Foro Penal. And much of the Maduro government’s machinery of repression remains largely intact.
It was that very apparatus that snatched Mr. Godoy as he was getting home a year ago and accused him of terrorism, and incitement of armed actions and hatred. He has denied the charges, which are commonly brought against political prisoners in Venezuela.
Mr. Godoy said masked men had jumped out of an unmarked van with tinted windows and took him away. Although the men weren’t wearing official insignia, Mr. Godoy shouted to his neighbors that it was the country’s intelligence agency, which has been accused of numerous human rights violations, and asked them to tell his wife.
For the next 25 days, his family members did not hear from him. They did not see him for 96 days.
Mr. Godoy was held at several prisons, including El Helicoide, the infamous sprawling building in Caracas that was built as the world’s first drive-through shopping mall but instead became a torture center, human rights groups say. He called his judicial process and his over-the-phone arraignment “shameful.”
“He’s behind bars,” his wife, Adriana Briceño, said. “But so are we as a family.”
While in prison, Mr. Godoy and his wife of 19 years kept their hope alive through their love for each other.
For months, Ms. Briceño used candy to send messages, writing words of encouragement or notes about domestic news inside the wrappers. Mr. Godoy wrote back on tiny folded scraps of paper, smuggled out in the dirty laundry his wife collected on visiting days.
“I love you more than life itself,” he wrote in one.
Mr. Godoy kept all of the candy wrappers. But when he was transferred to another prison, everything stayed in his old cell. To his wife’s surprise, the guards gave all of those mementos to her when she retrieved his belongings.
The day Mr. Godoy was freed, his wife was given the news just as she entered the prison for a visit.
When Mr. Godoy heard his name called for release, “all hell broke loose,” he said. Fellow prisoners hugged him. “I said, ‘My God,’ he recalled. “I couldn’t believe it. Everyone was shouting: ‘Freedom, freedom, freedom!’”
Outside, Mr. Godoy saw a country marked by the U.S. strikes. Riding home with his wife and brother-in-law, he told them about his time behind bars.
“Let us not repeat this darkness,” he said.
Mr. Godoy’s neighbors greeted him with embraces and tears.
Inside Mr. Godoy’s apartment were reminders of an interrupted life.
The dining room table remained set with Christmas decorations. In the freezer was a traditional Christmas corn tamale that his wife had set aside for him — just in case.
Some of the objects had come from the prison, among them a craggy teddy bear made by other prisoners using scraps of fabric from a mattress in Mr. Godoy’s cell, a wedding anniversary gift for his wife. There was also a cloth ball covered in messages for his son. To get the ball out of prison through his wife, Mr. Godoy negotiated with the warden and allowed a thorough inspection of every word.
In one corner of the family’s apartment sat a worn plastic table. Mr. Godoy used the table in his cell, and his family recovered it after his transfer to another prison. On its surface he had written a verse from the Bible: “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.”
Even though Mr. Godoy is free, the Venezuelan authorities maintain control over him. He is prohibited from leaving the country and must appear in court every 30 days.
But that first afternoon out of prison, Mr. Godoy sat down at the very table his wife had kept decorated. And he ate the very foods she had saved for him.
He was indeed home.
James Wagner covers news and culture in Latin America for The Times. He is based in Mexico City.
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