Venezuelan Alfredo Díaz, opposition political leader, former governor of the state of Nueva Esparta and former mayor of the city of Porlamar, died at the age of 56 following a heart attack, after spending a year in prison at El Helicoide prison, in Caracas. The Democratic Action party, to which he belonged, issued a statement declaring that “his detention was unjustly prolonged for more than a year and that during this period he did not receive the medical care he needed.”
The politician was arrested in November 2024, four months after the presidential elections, in the town of Ospino, in the state of Portuguesa, while trying to leave Venezuela. Those close to Díaz report that he spent the last year virtually incommunicado, except for a few isolated visits his daughter made to him.
Díaz was one of several opposition leaders who were jailed after Chavismo’s wave of arrests in the second part of last year, alleging the development of a plot to promote violence and chaos after presidential elections in which Nicolás Maduro was declared the winner.
Spokespersons for non-governmental organizations inside and outside the country say this would be the tenth political prisoner to die in custody in Chavista prisons since the presidential elections. Alfredo Romero of the Penal Forum said a total of 17 political prisoners have died in prison since 2014.
Díaz, a member of the Democratic Action party, was one of the most popular leaders on his native Margarita Island, one of the opposition’s electoral strongholds over the past two decades. Married and father of two children, he obtained a technician’s diploma in tourism business administration from the University of the Orient.
In 2008, Díaz was elected mayor of the city of Porlamar, capital of the island, supported by the coalition of opposition parties of the Round Table of Democratic Unity. He was re-elected in 2013.
In 2017, Díaz won elections for governor of Nueva Esparta, an entity composed of Margarita and the small islands Coche and Cubagua. His election took place in the middle of a very conflictual year, with thousands of people in the streets to protest against the cancellation by the Chavista public authorities of the National Assembly, which the opposition controlled, and in which the discourse of electoral abstention and ignorance of Chavista legality had taken off.
A moderate politician, won through political and electoral outings, Díaz agreed in 2017 to take an oath before the National Constituent Assembly created by Chavismo to eclipse the Parliament that the opposition then controlled. This constituent assembly did not fulfill any specific objective, except that of boycotting the already existing National Assembly. At that time, the Maduro government demanded that newly elected governors, including Díaz, accept the Chavista Constituent Assembly if they truly wanted to take power in their state.
Díaz maintained certain institutional relations with the Chavista hierarchy during his years as governor. He was arrested after participating alongside opposition forces in last year’s election campaign, contesting election results and demanding the release of election receipts.
To date, according to data from the NGO Foro Penal, there are 884 political prisoners in Venezuela, the highest number in Latin America.