A woman holds a candle next to pictures of political prisoners to demand their release outside of Helicoide prison in Caracas, Venezuela, Feb. 28. Juan Barreto/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Venezuela's National Assembly passed what it calls "the amnesty law" on Feb. 19. Dictator Delcy Rodríguez signed it almost immediately. Its title suggests the regime is moving toward national reconciliation by extinguishing the spurious records it created of crimes it claims its opponents committed. The text says something very different.
Yes, under this law some regime targets may be forgiven for crimes of which they were never convicted before an independent judiciary. Bravo. You're pardoned for something you never did. But many others, including opposition leader María Corina Machado, are excluded from the blanket absolution. Proclaiming this an amnesty, as one Venezuelan told me, "is pure propaganda." The question is whether the Trump administration will let the unpopular Ms. Rodríguez get away with it.
Two months ago she was the mere deputy to strongman Nicolás Maduro, and things didn't look good for the regime. U.S. sanctions meant Venezuela could sell its oil only on the black market at a discount, and Caracas was low on dollars. There was a huge U.S. Navy buildup off the country's Caribbean coast. Missile strikes on alleged drug-running boats were hurting the regime's narcotics trade, and a potentially devastating U.S. attack on land seemed imminent.
President Trump gave the go-ahead for Operation Absolute Resolve on Jan. 3. Shock and awe over the Venezuelan capital followed. Mr. Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were captured and taken to New York to stand trial on narco-trafficking charges.
But Ms. Rodríguez emerged unscathed and was immediately promoted, making her commander in chief of Venezuela's armed forces and security forces. More good news for Ms. Rodríguez came when the U.S. decided it could work with her. U.S. officials -- including Energy Secretary Chris Wright -- have traveled to Venezuela for photo-ops with the dictator. Mr. Wright has endorsed the police state as a destination for capital.
Venezuelan oil, previously restricted by sanctions, now sells at market prices. Some income from those sales -- which can include purchases by China and Cuba -- goes to the regime. It's supposed to use these profits to pay for imports and other economic needs. Daily life is improving for Venezuelans, and the regime is more secure than it has been in months.
Mr. Trump says the U.S. now runs Venezuela and he wants Ms. Rodríguez to release all political prisoners. But he isn't about to put troops on the ground to force her hand, so she's been slow-walking the process. Of approximately 1,000 behind bars six weeks ago, 568 remain in prison, according to the nongovernmental organization Foro Penal. This includes 182 members of the military. Those released have been told their cases are still open, and many released political figures have been told not to speak publicly.
Ms. Rodríguez is acting rationally. She can't afford to permit the freedoms of speech and assembly that an unconditional release of dissidents would unleash. Her refusal to obey Mr. Trump's orders has the backing of hard-line Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello, who formally or informally controls many of the weapons in the country. But she also needs to create the appearance of cooperation with Washington.
Enter the so-called amnesty law, a Kafkaesque piece of legislation to tie the opposition in legal knots while pretending to facilitate a democratic transition.
Writing in the Venezuelan daily El Nacional last week, Ramón Escovar León, an expert in Venezuelan constitutional law, noted that an amnesty law "riddled with exclusions" thereby "loses its reconciliatory nature and becomes a mechanism for managing the conflict in another form." The regime doubtless understands this.
"By excluding those who have 'promoted, instigated, requested, invoked, favored, facilitated, financed, or participated' in armed actions or the use of force against national sovereignty," Mr. Escovar León writes, "the text does not limit itself to sanctioning specific conduct." Ms. Machado, who welcomed the U.S. military intervention that removed Mr. Maduro, comes to mind. But many others too. "The breadth of the language allows for expansive interpretations and, consequently, the possibility of generating new threats of legal persecution," the lawyer notes.
The law's exclusions are far from the only trouble Venezuelans face in trying to recover a free and just society. As Mr. Escovar León points out, Venezuelan laws on the books can be used to "equate opposition with terrorism -- and the so-called law against hatred must be repealed if effective reconciliation is to be achieved. The end of one era cannot be proclaimed while the legal instruments that made the previous era possible remain in place."
The amnesty law asks the U.S. to forget the regime's crimes but makes clear the regime won't forget Venezuelan resistance to its rule. That's no transition. It's more tyranny.