type: timeline_event Venezuela's National Assembly unanimously passed the Amnesty Law for Democratic Coexistence on February 19, 2026, a sweeping measure covering political prisoners prosecuted since 1999 under the Chavez and Maduro governments. By February 25, the Rodriguez government claimed more than 3,200 individuals had been released under the law. However, Foro Penal, Venezuela's leading independent human rights monitoring organization, verified only approximately 540 confirmed political prisoner releases—a fraction of the government's claims and a discrepancy that underscored the gap between official rhetoric and verifiable reality.
The law contained a significant exclusion clause barring amnesty for those involved in "promoting armed actions against sovereignty by foreign actors," language critics said was broad enough to exclude opposition figures who had cooperated with US-led pressure campaigns against the Maduro government. This carve-out suggested the amnesty was selective rather than comprehensive—a tool for managing international perceptions while retaining the ability to prosecute political opponents who posed the greatest threat to the new government's consolidation of power.
The amnesty was widely understood as a transactional gesture toward the United States, offered in exchange for normalization of oil trade and the lifting of secondary sanctions. The Trump administration had used military force to oust Maduro, and the amnesty law was one of several concessions by the successor government aimed at securing favorable economic terms. The dynamic illustrated how US military coercion could reshape Venezuela's domestic politics toward American corporate interests—particularly in the oil sector—while the human rights framing of political prisoner releases provided diplomatic cover for what was fundamentally an economic arrangement between unequal powers.