He is a dictator who has been condemned inside and outside his country as having stolen the nation’s last election. Yet on Friday, Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan president who has overseen his country’s dramatic decline — including inflation, blackouts, famine, mass migration and the unraveling of the nation’s democracy — was sworn in for a third term.
In an event held in Caracas, the capital, Mr. Maduro raised his left hand and announced that he would preside over an era of “peace, prosperity, equality and a new democracy.”
“I swear before history!” he shouted.
If he serves a full six years, it will extend his party’s reign to a third decade.
Mr. Maduro returns to Miraflores, the presidential palace in Caracas, even after millions of Venezuelans go to the ballot box to express their desire for change. And he will do so during his most brutal attack yet, with police and armed soldiers in riot gear on the streets of the capital; journalists, activists and community leaders in prison; and the extensive expansion of his patrol services.
The man the United States and others claim won the election, Edmundo González, is still in exile, forced to flee to Spain or be arrested, while the country’s most important opposition leader, María Corina Machado, has been hiding inside Venezuela.
On Thursday he appeared for the first time since August, joining street protests against Mr. Maduro in Caracas. He stood on top of a truck while thousands of supporters, all in danger of arrest, shouted “freedom! freedom! freedom!”
After that he was imprisoned for a while by unknown enemies and then released.
There have been few other recent anti-government protests, and the constant threat of security forces arresting citizens may make it difficult for Mrs. Machado to continue rallying supporters on the streets.
Mr. González said he will return to Venezuela on Friday to take the oath himself — but the government has put a $100,000 bounty on his head, and it’s unclear how he plans to avoid arrest if he does.
On the other hand, Mr. Maduro faces the possibility that President-elect Donald J. Trump, who has filled his foreign policy team with Maduro’s enemies, will take tough measures against him, perhaps imposing more economic sanctions.
In response, the Venezuelan leader has spent the past six months gathering a large number of foreign prisoners, which analysts and former US ambassadors say he hopes to use as a negotiating tool in talks with the United States and other nations.
Since July, Venezuelan security forces have picked up about 50 tourists and two passport holders from more than a dozen countries, according to the watchdog group Foro Penal.
“They are pawns that have to be changed,” said Gonzalo Himiob, founder of Foro Penal.
Mr. Maduro wants the lifting of US sanctions, which have crippled Venezuela’s economy, and international recognition, among other policy changes.
Venezuelan officials say they have arrested at least nine people with US citizenship or residency permits, and officials suspect some of them of plotting to kill Mr. Maduro.
The United States does not have an embassy in Venezuela, and a State Department representative said the US government is not sure where its citizens are being held.
Relatives of the three detained US citizens said they had not heard from their loved ones since they disappeared months ago and had received limited contact from their government.
David Estrella, 64, a father of five, crossed into Venezuela by land from Colombia on September 9, according to his ex-wife, Elvia Macias, 44.
Mrs. Macias, who is close to her ex-husband, described him as “a person who likes unpleasant things” who – full of hope that the situation in Venezuela is “not so bad” – had gone to visit friends.
He worked in quality control for pharmaceutical companies in New Jersey, was preparing to retire and had visited Venezuela before, he said.
Mrs. Macias cried a lot when she told about celebrating Christmas without him.
“This situation has had a big impact on our lives,” he said.
The organization of Mr. Socialist-inspired Maduro has ruled the country since 1999, when his predecessor, Hugo Chávez, took power. In July, Mr. Maduro faced his toughest electoral challenge yet, against Mr. González, a former diplomat who became Ms. Machado when the government prevented him from running in the elections.
Even amid a campaign of increasing repression, many Venezuelans have come out in droves to support Mr. González. And in the days following the election, the opposition collected thousands of vote tally sheets, published them online and claimed they showed Mr. González won in a landslide.
Mr. Maduro, however, announced that he had won, an assertion echoed by independent observers, including the Carter Center, the United Nations and a member of the country’s electoral council.
The United States saw Mr. González as the winner – even Maduro’s supporters such as presidents Gustavo Petro of Colombia and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil, both of Venezuela’s leftist neighbors, have distanced themselves.
They too will not attend the inauguration.
Mr. Maduro has arrested foreigners for political purposes before. But his government has never arrested so many at once, according to Foro Penal, a watchdog group.
Some analysts say Mr. Maduro has decided to arrest foreigners because he has realized that he gets what he wants.
In 2022 and again in 2023, the United States made agreements with the government of Venezuela, in which Washington released the Venezuelan allies of Venezuela in exchange for US citizens held by Mr. Maduro.
This was part of a shift in America’s relationship with governments and other captors of Americans abroad.
In the past, US policy was not to negotiate with the hostages, for fear that breaking the agreement would encourage the taking of hostages.
But this has left American detainees with little hope of rescue, and critics say it has even contributed to the deaths of people like James Foley, a journalist killed by ISIS in Syria in 2014.
The United States has since shown a greater willingness to negotiate. But some critics say that evokes the very trend Mr. Maduro did.
Tom Shannon, who served as a senior State Department official in the Obama and Trump administrations, said he believed Mr. Maduro has been encouraged by recent hostage deals with Russia and Iran.
Still, he didn’t think cutting deals was a mistake.
“I think one of our jobs is to take care of American citizens abroad,” said Mr. Shannon. “And it’s very difficult to just shut people up and say, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’
Instead, he said the US government should “give the hostages pain that makes it clear that this will never happen again.”
Other US citizens arrested in Venezuela include Wilbert Castañeda, 37, a Navy SEAL who went to Venezuela to visit his girlfriend, according to his mother, Petra Castañeda, 60.
Mr. Castañeda, a father of four, was arrested by authorities in late August. In September, Diosdado Cabello, Venezuela’s interior minister, was plastered on state television, accusing him and others of being involved in a plot to assassinate the president.
Ms. Castañeda, who lives in California, said her son is innocent.
“The whole family is very worried, we are desperate,” he said. “We are still holding on to the hope that America will be able to reach an agreement with Mr. Maduro.”
Stephen William Logan, 83, a retired teacher in West Virginia, said he did not even know that his son Aaron Barrett Logan, 34, had gone to Venezuela. Then, in September, his family received a call from State Department officials, informing them that he had been arrested.
Mr. Logan said his son worked in the United States for a major bank as a “penetration tester” – testing the bank’s security by trying to hack into its systems.
Mr. Cabello accused Mr. Little Logan for being involved in the same murder plot.
“I don’t even know how to visualize it,” said Mr. Old Logan about the conditions his son lived under, wondering if they were like a “concentration camp.”
The representatives of the transition team of Mr. Trump refused to speak. None of the American detainees have been declared wrongfully detained by the State Department, a designation that could get them more help from the US government.
In Caracas, many attended Thursday’s protest against Maduro, although similar rallies have been met with violence from security forces and the death of participants.
Among those on the streets was Laura Matos, 21, who said “everyone” had told her to “stay out.”
But “last night I couldn’t sleep,” she said. “I said, ‘I want something to happen, I want President-elect Edmundo González to be sworn in, I want Venezuela to have a change.’
“We don’t deserve to be like this,” he continued, as fellow protesters blew plastic horns at him. “We deserve a lot, to have a better future. Young people like me deserve to be able to study and work and live in our country.”
Alain Delaquerière research contributed.
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