Nélida Sánchez received an urgent phone call. Her boyfriend at the time had suffered a heart attack and was fighting for his life, the caller said. She and her mother jumped in a car and raced to the hospital.
Upon arriving, several men forced Ms. Sánchez out of the car and took her away.
Her relatives later learned that Venezuelan secret police agents had lured Ms. Sánchez to the hospital with a lie and then taken her into custody.
More than 16 months later, she is in El Helicoide, a notorious spiral-shape prison that human rights groups have described as a torture center.
“This is the most horrible thing I’ve ever experienced in my life,” said Nélida de Verenzuela, Ms. Sánchez’s mother, who saw her daughter being captured. “I haven’t slept, waiting for the phone on my night stand to ring. Waiting for the call to tell me to go pick her up.”
Like her, hundreds of people across Venezuela have been waiting for the potential release of their loved ones — many of them considered political prisoners of a systemic policy of repression that has spanned more than two decades.
When the Venezuelan government announced last week that it would start freeing “an important number” of political prisoners, many felt hope. One man packed a bag and flew to Caracas, the capital, desperate to reunite with his father. A woman stood outside a prison in Caracas for hours waiting to see her friend.
On Tuesday, Jorge Rodríguez, the leader of the National Assembly, described a “mass release of prisoners,” though he did not say who would be freed or when. So far, the releases have come just a few at a time.
A statement on Monday by the country’s prison system said that 166 people had been freed so far since the announcement. But as of Tuesday afternoon, Foro Penal, Venezuela’s leading human rights organization, had confirmed only 56 releases.
For those still waiting, every hour matters.
“I’m desperate. I don’t know how he is. I don’t know what he needs,” said Eliana Pacheco, 43, who has been sleeping in her car outside a prison in Miranda state, hoping that her husband, Félix Perdomo, who she said has renal failure and a kidney tumor, would soon be freed.
A lawyer and human rights defender, Mr. Perdomo was arrested in January 2024, when he arrived at the Bicentenary University of Aragua, a private institution, to teach classes. He was accused of inciting hatred and terrorism, Ms. Pacheco said, for supposedly making a video criticizing an ally of President Nicolás Maduro.
She added that her husband only reposted the video on his TikTok account; he did not make it himself.
“They are good people,” said Ms. Pacheco of the political prisoners. “My husband has spent 20 years educating judges and magistrates in this country. It is unfair that he is going through all this, because he is not a criminal.”
Elsewhere in Miranda state, in a town just west of Caracas, Ms. de Verenzuela lights a candle every day and prays to see Ms. Sánchez, her daughter, again.
“Your family is waiting for you, Nélida,” Ms. de Verenzuela, 76, said on a recent afternoon as she glanced at a photograph of her daughter. “This has hit us hard.”
Ms. Sánchez, a prominent electoral expert and accountant, worked for Súmate, a nonprofit focused on electoral transparency. She was the architect of the training program for thousands of election monitors who secured the tally sheets during Venezuela’s 2024 election. Mr. Maduro was named the winner despite overwhelming evidence that he had lost.
Ms. Sánchez was charged with unlawful association, incitement to hatred, conspiracy, terrorism and treason, according to Súmate.
Her daughter, Daneli Hernández, now lives in Argentina.
“What we feel is anxiety because we don’t know if the process is really going to happen,” Ms. Hernández, 32, said on a recent call about the prisoner releases. “And so far we hadn’t had a chance as real as this one. So we’re holding on to it.”
The prospect of total amnesty for political prisoners in Venezuela, estimated by human rights groups to number 800 to 900, is unclear. After his capture by U.S. forces, Mr. Maduro is now being held in a Brooklyn jail, but much of his administration’s repressive machinery remains largely intact.
His former vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, is now Venezuela’s interim leader. For years, she held official oversight of the agency responsible for most political arrests. Yet, the real keys to the cells may still belong to Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello. Though the secret police technically report to the presidency, insiders and former agents have long maintained that the agency’s leadership took its orders directly from Mr. Cabello, creating a parallel chain of command.
“This is purely a political problem, because if those at the top don’t say, ‘They’re leaving,’ nothing will happen,” said Francis Ramos, 59, who awaits for the release of her daughter, Nakary Mena. “They’ll stay right where they are.”
Ms. Mena, a journalist, was arrested last year along with Gianni González, her husband and cameraman, when they were reporting from the streets. Days earlier, she had published a broadcast about rising crime in Caracas. Mr. Cabello criticized it as part of “a campaign to instill fear in people.”
The couple, held in separate facilities, face charges of inciting hatred and spreading fake news.
The most agonizing part, Ms. Ramos said, has been the separation of Ms. Mena from her own daughter, who is 6 years old. To bridge the distance, Ms. Mena sends home drawings and letters from her cell to decorate the child’s bedroom.
“Our souls are connected, and there is no power in the universe that can separate them,” Ms. Mena wrote in one of her letters. “Mom loves you.”
Patricia Sulbarán contributed reporting.
Emiliano Rodríguez Mega is a reporter and researcher for The Times based in Mexico City, covering Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean.
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