It is a special kind of madness to celebrate when a kidnapper decides to stop kidnapping just one person. But here we are, watching the international community react to the **Venezuela political crisis** like trained seals. **Edmundo González**, the opposition leader who by all reasonable accounts actually won the **Venezuelan presidential election**, has announced major news: his son-in-law has been released from detention. He was locked up for more than a year, a pawn in a high-stakes geopolitical game.

Let us pause and optimize our understanding of that sentence. A man was put in a cage for a year. Not because he hurt someone or stole money, but because he married the daughter of a man the **Maduro regime** fears. This is not justice. It is not law and order. It is hostage-taking with a fancy government stamp on the paperwork. In the theater of the absurd that constitutes current Venezuelan politics, family members are not people; they are poker chips. You collect them, you hold them, and you trade them when you need a favor regarding **US sanctions** or diplomatic leverage.

**Edmundo González** is a tragic figure in this play. He did everything right. He ran for office. People voted for him. He won. In a sane world, this means he would be sitting in the president's chair, making boring decisions about taxes and infrastructure. Instead, the current regime looked at the votes, shrugged, and decided that counting is only necessary when the numbers act the way you want them to. González had to flee, and the regime turned its eyes toward those he left behind, specifically targeting family members like his son-in-law.

This release is being painted as a "gesture." We will hear diplomats and news anchors talk about it as a sign of progress. They will say it is a "step in the right direction." This is the kind of thinking that drives a rational person to drink. If I steal your car, drive it around for a year, crash it into a wall, and then give you back the keys, I have not done you a favor. I have just stopped committing the crime for five minutes. We should not be handing out gold stars for basic human rights compliance.

Why did they release him now? It certainly isn't because they suddenly found a conscience tucked away in a desk drawer. Regimes like this do not have hearts; they have calculators. Someone, somewhere in the gray concrete buildings of Caracas, did the math on **political prisoners**. They decided that keeping this man in a cell was costing them more than letting him go. The cynicism of it all is suffocating. The regime uses human beings as leverage. They take a son-in-law, a brother, or a friend, and they wait. They wait for the opposition to break. They wait for the world to lose interest. And when they finally let the person go, they expect gratitude.

Think about the son-in-law. More than a year of his life is gone. It vanished into the air of a detention center. He cannot get that time back. He missed birthdays, holidays, and simple quiet moments. And for what? To send a message to his father-in-law. It is petty. We often think of evil as this grand, dark force, like something out of a movie. But in reality, political evil is usually just small, insecure men being mean because they have the power to do it.

The saddest part is that this changes nothing regarding the **Venezuela election results**. The fundamental rot is still there. González is still the winner who cannot rule. The people who lost the election are still sitting in the palace. The economy is still a disaster. One man is free, and for his family, that is everything. I am happy for them. But for the rest of the country, the prison walls are still up. The release of one pawn does not mean the game is over. It just means the players are resetting the board for the next round of misery.

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### References & Fact-Check * **Original Event:** This analysis is based on reports confirming that Rafael Tudares, the son-in-law of opposition leader Edmundo González, was freed after being detained in Caracas since late 2024. * **Source Authority:** For the baseline reporting on this release, see The New York Times: [Venezuela’s Edmundo González Said His Son-in-Law Was Freed From Detention](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/22/world/americas/edmundo-gonzalez-rafael-tudares-detention.html). * **Context:** Edmundo González remains a central figure in the dispute over Venezuela's recent presidential election, having fled to Spain amidst the crackdown on opposition figures.