Last week, the National Assembly, still heavily controlled by Venezuela’s interim regime, unanimously approved the Law of Amnesty for Democratic Coexistence. The law covers political crimes committed between 2002 and 2025. Even before its formal passage, nearly 2,200 people had already been released from prison. For the first time in two decades, the Venezuelan state has effectively acknowledged what it long denied: It held hundreds of people in prison for political reasons, regardless of the narrative authorities had constructed to disguise it. This step, by any measure, is a significant development.
But Washington cannot read this law as a milestone achieved. Instead it should be understood as a stress test of what Venezuela can accomplish after Maduro, and how it chooses to do so.
The right direction, with notable caveats
The law’s scope is broad in some respects. It covers 13 specific flashpoints of political unrest, from the 2002 coup attempt against Hugo Chávez to the contested 2024 presidential election and the 2025 legislative cycle. Courts are required to process amnesty requests within 15 days, and those in exile can file through legal representatives, in an unexpected concession from the ruling party, which initially insisted that those in exile return to Venezuela in person before they could be eligible for amnesty.
These are real changes, and they should be recognized as such. The unanimous vote, spanning both ruling-party and opposition lawmakers, is itself a political signal that would have been unthinkable three months ago.
Yet the exclusions embedded in the law raise serious questions. Military personnel convicted of “terrorism” offenses are explicitly excluded. So are individuals accused of “promoting, instigating, or facilitating armed or forceful actions” against Venezuela’s sovereignty. The language is broad enough, critics argue, to be wielded against virtually any political opponent the government chooses to target. Interim President Delcy Rodríguez has already leveled precisely such accusations against opposition leader María Corina Machado, who remains in the United States. If the same judges and prosecutors who unjustly accused political prisoners are now the ones tasked with interpreting the amnesty law and deciding who benefits, how come one do not question the process?
In other words, the amnesty is real, but it is also selective. The criteria remains in the hands of the very institutions that enabled the repression in the first place.
What this means for the U.S. reset
The Trump administration has moved at remarkable speed to reshape the U.S.-Venezuela relationship since Maduro’s capture on January 3.
The amnesty law fits neatly into the transactional framework that has defined this year’s engagement. The opportunity here is real. If the amnesty is implemented broadly and in good faith (if the 15-day judicial timelines are respected, if the parliamentary oversight commission functions independently, and if the hundreds still behind bars are freed), then Venezuela will have taken a meaningful step toward the political normalization that any credible economic recovery requires. Foreign investors evaluating the newly opened oil sector will take note. So will the hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan exiles weighing whether or when to return.
The risk is equally large. If the law becomes a tool for the ruling party to settle scores, amnesty will be remembered not as a foundation for coexistence, but as a sophisticated rebranding of selective justice. The United States, having accelerated sanctions relief and deepened energy partnerships without conditioning them on measurable human rights benchmarks, will have diminished its leverage precisely when it was needed most.
The leverage question
Washington should not make the mistake of treating amnesty as a box that has been checked. The law’s passage was a necessary step; its implementation is the actual test. U.S. policymakers should be tracking specific, verifiable indicators of the law’s success: How many documented political prisoners are actually released? Are military detainees receiving parallel due process through the military justice system, as Jorge Arreaza has suggested? Are the courts approving requests within the 15-day window, or are bureaucratic delays becoming a de facto denial mechanism?
The United States should welcome the amnesty law as a positive signal. It should also make clear, publicly and privately, that the depth and pace of the broader reset will be calibrated to the law’s actual rollout, not merely its existence. Venezuela deserves more than a gesture of democratic coexistence. It deserves actual change.
