Gradually, cracks are starting to appear in Venezuela’s repressive regime.
First, there was a trickle of political prisoners released from jails. Then reports emerged that El Helicoide, a notorious jail which human rights campaigners say is a torture chamber, would close.
And now Venezuela’s interim leader Delcy Rodríguez has proposed an amnesty law, which could free hundreds of other political prisoners from Venezuelan jails.
Pressure exerted by the United States, responsible for the capture and removal of ruler Nicolás Maduro last month, is generating changes previously considered unthinkable under the regime.
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On Thursday, Venezuela’s national assembly approved an amnesty bill for political prisoners, which will undergo public consultation and a second reading before being approved.
“The path of this law is going to be full of obstacles, full of bitter moments,” said Jorge Rodríguez, the head of the national assembly and brother of Delcy Rodríguez.
He said it would be necessary to “swallow hard” to help the country move forward.
“We ask for forgiveness, and we also have to forgive,” Rodríguez said.
[ Slow pace of Venezuela prisoner releases stokes frustration and doubt over change ]
While analysts warn that any relaxation of authoritarian measures could be reversed, the fact that such developments are happening in the first place is a reflection of how quickly the political landscape is shifting in Venezuela.
The announcement of an amnesty is of enormous importance, says sociologist Francisco Coello, academic director of the Mercedes Pulido School of Government.
“Not only from a human perspective – what it means for the people suffering imprisonment – but also from a political perspective,” Coello says.
“It is not a pardon. As an amnesty law, the Venezuelan government acknowledges that all these people should not have been imprisoned. And therefore it confirms what has been said for years: that they are political prisoners.”
The development, he says, creates space for citizens and civil society to “feel that it can demand many more measures in the direction of a transition aimed at seeking a restoration of full democratic institutions”.
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The gradual release of prisoners, meanwhile, continues.
At least 340 political prisoners have walked free, non-governmental group Foro Penal says, with conditional measures that prevent them from speaking to the media amid other restrictions.
Families of prisoners say the releases have progressed too slowly and Foro Penal says hundreds of others remain jailed.
The granting of pardons or amnesties has been a feature of modern Venezuela where it has typically been used as a mechanism of political control.
Hugo Chávez benefited from a pardon in 1994 by Rafael Caldera, then president, for his involvement in an attempted military coup two years earlier.
Ironically, Chávez’s freedom was a concession from a democracy he himself had attempted to overthrow.
The first amnesty granted under the so-called “Chavista” regime was given to those involved in a failed coup attempt in 2002, which saw Hugo Chávez, then president, ousted from office for just two days before being restored to power.
At the end of 2007, Chávez signed an amnesty law allowing the return of prominent figures who had participated in the two-day administration and the takeover of the state television channel, Venezolana de Televisión.
Some political figures were granted conditional freedom in this context, initiating what some analysts have described as a “revolving door” in prisons: some leaders were released, while others were arbitrarily taken to jail.
The decree, however, did not include those considered “fugitives from justice”, so some rebel leaders and officers never returned to the country. Others remain in prison to this day.
