Venezuela’s rulers have deployed #armed #militias to patrol streets, operate checkpoints and check people’s phones in a crackdown to consolidate authority after the US attack on Caracas.
Paramilitary groups known as #colectivos criss-crossed the capital with motorbikes and assault rifles on Tuesday in a show of force to stifle any dissent or perception of a power vacuum.
🔸The patrols stopped and searched cars and
🔥demanded access to people’s phones to check their contacts, messages and social media posts
in a stark demonstration to the population that the regime remained in charge despite the abduction of president Nicolás Maduro.
🔸Anyone who was suspected of supporting Saturday’s US raid was liable for arrest, said Mirelvis Escalona, 40, a resident in the western Caracas neighbourhood of Catia.
🔥“There’s fear. There are armed civilians here. You never know what might happen, they might attack people.”
A semblance of normality returned to much of the city, with shops and bakeries reopening and people going to work – but uncertainty over what will happen next created a febrile mood.
The interim president, #Delcy #Rodríguez, has sought to project a sense of calm and control since being sworn in on Monday -- but there was no disguising the government’s shock and jitteriness.
On Tuesday, Rodríguez appeared to harden her tone against the US, saying in a televised address that
⭐️“no external agent governs Venezuela”
– a clear rebuttal to Donald Trump’s claim that the US was running the South American country.
It marked another shift in tone from Maduro’s former vice-president who released a conciliatory statement late on Sunday in which she “invited the US government to work together on an agenda of cooperation”.
In addition to the humiliation of Maduro’s appearance in a New York court on narco-trafficking charges,
authorities in Caracas face the risk of a fresh US attack, economic collapse, internal regime fracture and the return of overseas-based opposition leaders.
🔸Gunfire erupted on Monday night when security forces shot at unauthorised drones which reportedly were mistaken for another US operation.
“There was no confrontation, the entire country remains completely calm,” Simon Arrechider, the deputy information minister, told reporters.
But it is a tense calm.
On Monday at least 14 #journalists and media employees, including 13 members of international media organisations, were detained in Caracas. All but one were later released.
An emergency decree has sought to stamp out any public celebration of Maduro’s ouster
and ordered police to seek and
🔥detain “everyone involved in the promotion or support for the armed attack by the United States”.
Footage posted on social media showed colectivos – some wearing masks – blocking highways, roving pro-opposition neighbourhoods and questioning residents, prompting people to warn friends and family via WhatsApp and other platforms 💥to leave phones at home or to scrub them of political content.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/07/caracas-venezuela-paramilitary-groups?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
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