‘A World of Terror’: Inside Venezuela’s Rodeo I Prison for Political Opponents
Former political prisoners from Rodeo I say they still cannot escape the punishments they endured inside the maximum-security tower on the outskirts of Caracas, a facility reserved for opponents of Venezuela’s government and widely considered one of the country’s most notorious detention sites.
Rodeo I is one of four towers in the El Rodeo prison complex. Several former inmates have decided to describe what happens behind its walls, even as they fear retaliation from the authorities who sent them there.
Whillfer Pina, a 47-year-old math teacher and activist, recalls arriving with a hood over his head and thinking, “This was it. The movie’s over.” The prison director, a man known as “Shark,” offered no comfort. “No one gets out of here alive,” Pina said he was told.
Pina had been accused of plotting an attack against then-President Nicolas Maduro in 2024. He was released in February as part of an amnesty for political prisoners led by Delcy Rodriguez, the interim leader who replaced Maduro after his ouster by U.S. forces in January. Many others, however, remain locked up in Rodeo I and prisons across Venezuela.
According to the rights group Foro Penal, at least 20 political prisoners have died in state custody, including one at Rodeo I. The group says more than 344 people are currently imprisoned for political reasons in Venezuela, dozens of them in Rodeo I.
‘A world of terror’
Conditions inside are designed to break people down, former prisoners say. Each two-by-three-meter cell has a cement bunk bed, a corner that serves as both toilet and shower, and a tiny barred window. Scarce water helps insects and disease thrive. Pina joked that he set a record for killing the most flies in a day — 34 — but his tone changes when he describes running a high fever for 21 days without medical attention.
“There was a time when I prayed so much to God. ‘If I have to go, please let it be with dignity,’” he said.
Other former inmates say they lost all sense of time. Sleep-deprived prisoners were forced to listen to endless government propaganda on television. Guards hid their faces, and human contact was practically nonexistent.
Freddy Superlano, an opposition politician arrested after challenging Maduro’s claim to a third electoral victory in 2024, passed the hours watching birds and the moon through his narrow window. He was also released in February.
The prison “is meant to drive you insane,” said Superlano, 50, calling it “a world of terror.” “It’s completely black … the atmosphere is very eerie.” It is “more a concentration camp than a prison,” he added.
The ‘time capsule’
The place no one wanted to end up was the fourth floor, where Pina said he saw fellow detainees sent after the slightest sign of disobedience. The harshest punishment, he said, was the “time capsule”: a small cell where prisoners could only stand, kept hooded and handcuffed.
“They give you a little bit of water and a little bit of food once a day,” Pina said. When prisoners needed to use the bathroom, “you’re going to have to go on yourself.” Many foreigners were held there, he added.
U.N. investigators have reported that authorities tortured 64 political prisoners at the facility, all after Maduro’s ouster. Pina described the abuses as systematic. “It’s not only physical, it’s not only psychological, it’s not only mental. It’s programmed, built into that prison,” he said.
Human Rights Watch called earlier this month for Rodeo I to be closed immediately during a visit to Venezuela, 18 years after the group was expelled from the country.
The testimony comes at a fragile moment for Venezuela. The amnesty has allowed some prisoners to leave, but the accounts from Rodeo I are likely to increase pressure on the interim government and complicate its efforts to present the transition as a break from the past. If the abuses described are systemic, rights advocates say, closing Rodeo I may become a test of whether that break is real — or whether the prison remains a symbol of how political dissent is still treated.