Venezuelan dissident found dead in Chile as Nicolás Maduro tests US resolve

Ronald Ojeda, a 32-year-old former lieutenant in Venezuela’s military, had been living in exile in Santiago de Chile since 2017 — until he was found dead on Friday, 10 days after he was abducted.

On Friday night, Chilean authorities confirmed that they had found Ojeda’s body in a suitcase, buried beneath a cement structure in a Santiago suburb. A 17-year-old Venezuelan in the country illegally has been detained in connection with the case, Chilean prosecutors said.

“The approximate date of death was between seven and 10 days ago, coinciding with the date on which the kidnapping occurred,” Héctor Barros, the prosecutor leading the case, said on Friday.

CCTV footage appears to show three men in Chilean police uniforms and riot gear arriving at Ojeda’s 14th-floor flat at 3.15am on February 21 and marching him, barefoot and in his underwear, down the hallway. A fourth man in uniform stood with the doorman as a grey vehicle waited outside. 

With no ransom demand, Chilean authorities had said the abduction of Ojeda — who had protested against the revolutionary socialist government of Nicolás Maduro — may have been the work of Venezuelan agents. That would represent a new frontier in repression from Maduro, who is expected to run in elections later this year.

Chilean interior minister Carolina Tohá told local media before Ojeda’s body was discovered that if Venezuela were responsible, “it would be an unprecedented situation, of the greatest severity, unprecedented with respect to relations between Latin American countries”.

Ojeda’s disappearance follows a series of moves by Maduro against political opponents despite a decision by the US last year to lift some of its sanctions on Caracas in exchange for concessions such as releasing political prisoners.

Maduro’s crackdown poses a challenge for the US, which must decide in the coming weeks whether to restore sanctions and risk effects such as lower oil availability and greater migrant flows at a time Washington is also preparing for elections.

Ojeda had protested against Maduro before and after fleeing his home country. “To the people of Venezuela, keep spirits up! We have been knocked down but we will get back up,” he said in a video posted on Instagram in January last year, wearing a T-shirt with “Freedom” written on the collar and prison bars drawn over a map of Venezuela.

“The regime in Venezuela are a bunch of imbeciles, a pack of weak men.”

On January 24, Ojeda’s name was included on a list of 33 active and former soldiers accused of plotting “criminal and terrorist” activities against Maduro and charged with treason.

Before the body was discovered, Santiago had instructed its ambassador in Caracas to meet with the Venezuelan government over the kidnapping. Venezuela, however, has denied involvement. Diosdado Cabello, a grandee of the ruling United Socialists of Venezuela party, said on his regular TV programme that “Venezuela has nothing to do with the kidnapping, nothing”.

The assassination of a dissident on foreign soil would resemble the behaviour of Russia’s Vladimir Putin or China’s Xi Jinping, both allies of Maduro, according to observers such as Richard Kouyoumdjian, vice-president of Chilean security consultancy AthenaLab.

Already this year Venezuela has arrested Rocío San Miguel, a prominent opposition military analyst and lawyer, while members of her family briefly also went missing. It has expelled all staff at the UN Human Rights Commission in Caracas and upheld a ban on opposition contender María Corina Machado standing in the presidential election.

Local pollsters suggest that in a fair contest, the market-friendly Machado would beat Maduro with 70 per cent of the vote.

“The Maduro regime is clearly playing its own game and sending the message that continuing its hold on power is more important than any economic incentives or international legitimacy that it might get from a more free and more fair election,” said Ryan Berg, director of the Americas programme at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The crackdown comes as Maduro flouts a US-backed deal reached in Barbados last October with a faction of the opposition, in which his government pledged political reforms and releases of political prisoners ahead of an election expected this year.

In response, the US lifted sanctions on Venezuelan energy, mining and secondary debt trading, but said the relief would be cancelled if the Barbados deal was not honoured. 

Last month, Washington reimposed sanctions on state-owned gold miner Minerven, and said oil and gas sanctions would be next if progress on reforms was not made by April 18. But Caracas has done little to suggest it will change course.

On Wednesday the government said it was in talks with a larger group of opposition politicians, including some believed to be in Maduro’s thrall, about 20 possible election dates, ranging from mid-April to early December. Analysts worry that the new potential deal — described by Maduro as “more inclusive” than its predecessor — is an attempt to wrongfoot politicians who oppose the regime.

“They’re going to continue playing this game of trying to split the opposition,” Berg said. “It’s divide and conquer.”

Maduro, who assumed power after the death of Hugo Chávez in 2013, has overseen an economic contraction of about 70 per cent despite Venezuela boasting the world’s largest proven oil reserves.

Like Chávez, he has kept a tight rein on dissent. Some 7.7mn Venezuelans have fled the repression and economic hardship, with many making their way north to the US.

Lifting US sanctions on Venezuela’s critical oil industry was thought to be a help to President Joe Biden’s re-election prospects by freeing up oil in a tight market and stemming refugee flows by boosting the Venezuelan economy. That US approach now appears to be backfiring.

Maduro last week appeared to exploit his leverage over migration by refusing to receive repatriation flights from the US, according to US media.

One of the key architects of the US strategy, Juan González — Biden’s top Latin America adviser at the National Security Council — will step down this month. An NSC spokesperson said Gonzalez’s departure was at his own request to spend more time with his family.

“Our approach has always been to encourage and promote democratic governance,” the spokesperson said. “We’ve taken action in January, we revoked one of the general licences and, absent progress from Maduro and his representatives, the United States is unlikely to renew [the oil and gas sanctions exemption]”.

But despite the failure to nudge Maduro towards reform, analysts say the US may be hesitant to fully reimpose the sanctions on state-owned oil company Petróleos de Venezuela that compounded the country’s economic decline.

“The Barbados deal was signed without any promises to lift Machado’s ban, but the deal went ahead because it contained agreements on migration, prisoner release and oil, which rather than a concession to Maduro was of mutual benefit to the US,” said Luis Vicente León, who runs Datanálisis, a Venezuelan pollster and think-tank.

“If the US suspends the licences it has granted, it will own whatever happens next.”

Additional reporting by Michael Stott