CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was sworn in for a new term on Friday, extending his increasingly repressive rule in the face of renewed protests and rebukes from the United States and others who believe he stole last year’s vote.
Venezuela’s legislative palace, where he was sworn in and delivered a fiery speech, was heavily guarded by security forces who have become Maduro’s main hold on power since last summer’s disputed election. Crowds of people, many sporting pro-Maduro T-shirts, gathered in adjacent streets and a nearby plaza.
Maduro, likening himself to a biblical David fighting Goliath, accused his opponents and their supporters in the U.S. of trying to turn his inauguration into a “world war.” He said his enemies’ failure to block his inauguration to a third six-year term was “a great victory” for Venezuela’s peace and national sovereignty.
“I have not been made president by the government of the United States, nor by the pro-imperialist governments of Latin America,” he said, after being draped with a sash in the red, yellow and blue of Venezuela’s flag. “I come from the people, I am of the people, and my power emanates from history and from the people. And to the people, I owe my whole life, body and soul.”
The protest took place in relative calm but after it ended, aides to the popular former lawmaker María Corina Machado — the driving force behind what’s left of Venezuela’s beleaguered opposition — said she was briefly detained by security forces. Machado, whom the government has barred from running for office, emerged from months of hiding Thursday to join rally against Maduro.
On Friday, she posted a video online in which she described the confusing incident. She said national guardsmen fired shots on her convoy, then dragged her off a motorcycle from behind and said they were taking her to prison. She said her motorcycle driver was shot in the leg.
But on the way to the military prison, the guards changed their minds and instead forced her to record a proof-of-life video denying her detention, she said.
Maduro’s supporters accused the opposition faction of spreading fake news to generate an international crisis. It pointed to the 20-second video it released on Thursday — in which Machado says she simply dropped her purse as she was being chased — as evidence that she was not detained.
“Today Maduro didn’t put the sash on his chest. He put a shackle on his ankle, which will tighten every day,” Machado said on Friday.
Maduro didn’t mention Machado in his inaugural speech.
State TV said 10 heads of state attended. But far more governments around the world have rejected his victory claims, pointing to credible evidence validated by election observers that his previously unknown opponent, Edmundo González, won by a more than two-to-one margin.
To underscore Maduro’s growing isolation, the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and European Union announced a coordinated round of new sanctions Friday on more than 20 officials, accusing them of gutting Venezuela’s democracy. They include the loyalist Supreme Court justices, electoral authorities, the head of Venezuela’s state oil company and cabinet ministers.
The Biden administration, citing Venezuela’s “severe humanitarian emergency,” also extended for 18 months a special permission allowing 600,000 Venezuelan migrants to stay in the U.S. It also upped to $25 million a reward for the arrest of Maduro and Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello to face drug trafficking charges in the U.S., and placed a new bounty of $15 million on Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino.
In a video recorded from the Dominican Republic and released on social media, González thanked Venezuela’s “democratic friends” for their support, citing the latest sanctions.
“He’s crowned himself a dictator,” González said of Maduro. “The people don’t support him, nor does any government that can call itself democratic.”
