April 23, 2026 — Families of political figures, business leaders, and military personnel in Venezuela continue to search for answers years after their loved ones vanished following detention by state security forces, according to a report published by Infobae.
The disappearances, which began to rise during Nicolás Maduro Moros’s administration, are linked to arrests carried out by the Dirección General de Contrainteligencia Militar (Dgcim) and the Servicio Bolivariano de Inteligencia Nacional (Sebin). Relatives say they have received no communication — not a call, message, or word through former detainees or guards — and certainly no official update from police or judicial authorities.
Among the earliest reported cases are those of Alcedo Mora and the brothers Jesús Esneider and Eliécer Vergel Prado, who disappeared days after Mora’s detention. Hugo Enrique Marino Salas was taken by Dgcim agents at Maiquetía airport on April 20, 2019. The family of Lieutenant Colonel Juan Antonio Hurtado Campos says they still hope to find him after General Vladimir Padrino López announced his degradation and expulsion, along with 32 other military personnel, at Fuerte Tiuna’s courtyard.
Carmen Teresa Navas has been visiting prisons since January 2025 in search of her son, Víctor Hugo Quero Navas, with no trace found to date.
The report highlights a broader pattern of forced disappearances tied to Venezuela’s penal system, where families insist they have received no acknowledgment of their relatives’ fate despite years of advocacy.
Although the Bolivarian revolution, launched by Hugo Rafael Chávez and allied commanders in 1998 under a banner of humanism, is now represented in an interim capacity by Delcy Eloína Rodríguez Gómez, it faces renewed scrutiny over these unacknowledged cases that remain absent from official records.
