At least 16 people have been killed in clashes across the country since the vote Sunday, according to the rights group Foro Penal and a survey of hospitals. The dead include one soldier, the defense ministry said.
Jorge Rodríguez, president of the Maduro-controlled national assembly and brother of Maduro’s vice president, blamed Machado and González for the violence and demanded their arrests. The government, he said, doesn’t negotiate with “fascists.”
Earlier Tuesday, masked men in black forced opposition leader Freddy Superlano and two members of his team into a vehicle in Caracas and drove them away.
The attacks and threats are an escalation for Maduro, who claims to have won reelection Sunday despite exit polls and, the opposition says, the government’s own records that show González won twice as many votes.
While protesters across Venezuela and leaders throughout the world demand he prove he won, he is doubling down against opponents.
“There is clearly an absolute and total determination to not respect the popular will of the people through their vote, and to never respect peaceful protest in the streets,” said Alfredo Romero, president of Foro Penal. “It sends a clear signal of authoritarianism that has always existed but is increasing.”
Late Monday, opposition leaders uploaded printouts of voting center records compiled by thousands of citizen poll watchers, which they said proved González’s victory.
“We will defend every vote, and we will make sure the regime recognizes what the whole world knows,” Machado told a sea of people outside the U.N. mission in Caracas: “Edmundo is our next president.”
González addressed himself to the armed forces: “There is no reason to repress the people of Venezuela.”
“We insist that you respect the will of the people” as expressed in the election and “stop the repression of peaceful protests,” he said in a message on X. “You know what happened on Sunday … The truth is the way to peace.”
Thousands of Venezuelans descended on the capital, on motorbikes and by foot, many from working-class neighborhoods that once supported Maduro and his mentor, Hugo Chávez, the founder of the socialist state.
Some carried receipts. As González and Machado addressed the crowd, a man approached waving a long ribbon of paper — one of tens of thousands of voting records that together, the opposition says, show González won.
“We have proof!” the man shouted.
Maduro, speaking to supporters at the Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas, taunted González.
“Come after me. I’ll be waiting for you in Miraflores,” he said. “Come after me, coward.”
The United States rejected calls for the opposition leaders’ arrests.
“Venezuelans have the constitutional right to express their views freely & without reprisal,” Brian A. Nichols, assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, wrote on X. “Actions to detain or arrest members of the democratic opposition show that lacking any evidence to back Maduro’s electoral claims, he resorts to repression.”
The claim by Maduro’s electoral council that he won was contradicted by at least two independent sources.
A Caracas-based group that obtained official results from a random sample of 971 voting centers across the country estimated González received 66 percent of the vote to Maduro’s 31 percent.
New Jersey-based Edison Research, which interviewed 6,846 voters as they left 100 voting locations on Sunday, recorded 65 percent for González and 31 percent or Maduro.
Pollsters consider nearly identical results produced by two different methodologies strong evidence of accuracy.
The opposition, which has gathered what it says are more than 80 percent of the voting records Sunday, says they show González won with 67 percent to Maduro’s 31 percent.
The United States and several Latin American countries have said the government should release the records that prove Maduro won. They include Colombia and Brazil, neighboring countries with leftist leaders who have had friendly relations with Maduro.
“It is normal that there is a dispute,” Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a lion of the Latin American left, told Globo TV on Tuesday. “How do you resolve this dispute? Presenting the voting records.”
“If there’s any doubt between the opposition and the government, the opposition files a complaint and will wait for the courts to make a decision, which we’ll have to accept. I’m convinced it’s a normal, peaceful process.”
Venezuelan allies Russia, China, Iran, North Korea and Syria have expressed support for Maduro, as have Latin American friends Cuba, Nicaragua, Bolivia and Honduras.
In the Chacao neighborhood of Caracas, a caravan of hundreds of motorcycles was intercepted by the National Guard, who fired tear gas and rubber bullets at them.
Rafael Gutierrez, a 30-year-old mechanic from Petare, one of Venezuela’s largest slums, said the caravan was “protesting peacefully” until the National Guard arrived.
“We all saw how he cheated us,” Gutierrez said. “We don’t want a bloodbath. We have family and friends all supporting our cause. Now it’s in the hands of God.”
Outside the U.N. mission, protesters waiting for González and Machado waved red, yellow and blue signs and sang the national anthem. A banner advised: “Let’s go with the truth and without violence.”
“You can see it, you can feel it, Edmundo is president” they chanted — in Spanish, it rhymes — and the word that has echoed across the capital for the past two days: “Libertad!” “Freedom!”
Among the thousands waiting under the tropical midday sun was a group of women in their 60s who served as poll watchers on Sunday. Some stayed at their voting centers from 4 a.m. until past midnight to monitor the vote and collect the voting records.
“We’re on our way out of this,” said Virginia Castro Saporiti, 61. “Maduro has the power, but María Corina has the authority. … This will fall, with national and international pressure, and the strength of an entire country that wants change.
“We know the hours and days ahead will be difficult, but we’ll keep going until the end.”
On Monday, crowds marched to Miraflores, tying up traffic, banging pots and pans and demanding the end of the socialist state. Across the country, protesters burned billboards of Maduro and destroyed statues of Chávez.
At least 177 people were detained, Foro Penal said.
Forty-eight soldiers and police officers were wounded, Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López said, in what he called “violent actions promoted by the Venezuelan extreme right” during a “media coup d’état” supported by “North American imperialism.”
The apparently spontaneous demonstrations appeared to stand apart from the several waves of civil unrest aimed at the Venezuelan government over the years in that they included former supporters of Chavez, Maduro and their movement, called chavismo.
“The whole mountain is coming down. Nobody wants it anymore,” said Deivis Limis, 40.
He said he had walked along a highway on Monday for more than four hours from his neighborhood of Caucaguita to join crowds in the capital.
“We aren’t protesting, we’re asking for our votes. He lost a clear loss. He has to leave,” Limis said. “We can’t continue in this yoke that he has on us.”
In Petare, where large protests broke out Monday, the streets were empty Tuesday, and most businesses were closed.
A group of around 50 heavily armed men dressed in black with their faces masked were guarding the exits.
In the 23 de Enero neighborhood, colectivos — Maduro-supporting bikers — prevented residents from attending the rally outside the U.N. mission, according to a resident who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.
Maduro ordered security forces to quell the protests in a “maximum mobilization.”
“We’ve seen this movie before,” he said in televised remarks Monday. “We know how to face these situations and how to defeat the violent ones.”
Maduro is under investigation by the International Criminal Court, the first investigation of its kind in Latin America, into claims that his security forces participated in the torture and extrajudicial killings of dissidents during street uprisings against him in 2017.
Scott Clement in Washington and Marina Dias in Brasília contributed to this report.
