From a television studio, Venezuela’s feared interior minister would brandish a plastic club and call out the names of government critics — who knew what that usually meant. They could expect government agents to show up and take them away.
That’s exactly what happened last year to Juan Pablo Guanipa, a prominent opposition politician, after the interior minister, Diosdado Cabello, ripped into him on his weekly show. Mr. Guanipa was arrested, charged with terrorism and treason and sent to prison, where he remains.
For over a decade, Mr. Cabello’s show, “Con el Mazo Dando” (With the Club Striking), is one way, experts say, he has overseen Venezuela’s machinery of repression.
When the United States raided Venezuela this month and seized its president, Nicolás Maduro, the Trump administration called it a law enforcement operation, pointing to a new indictment accusing Mr. Maduro of narco-terrorism.
Another name prominently featured in the indictment? Mr. Cabello. And like Mr. Maduro, the U.S. government has placed a bounty for his capture.
Yet Mr. Cabello remains firmly in power, part of interim leader Delcy Rodríguez’s core circle, seen by her side in televised events.
But with Ms. Rodríguez needing to placate Mr. Trump, one of her biggest challenges could be Mr. Cabello, arguably the second most powerful figure in her government whose fate is now intertwined with the fate of the political movement that has ruled Venezuela for more than two decades.
Through allies he controls security services, pro-government militias known as colectivos that are deployed to stamp out dissent and has deep ties to Venezuela’s military. In late 2024, he helped install a cousin to run the country’s secret police, known as the SEBIN.
