On International Working Women’s Day in 2025, Cilia Flores, the wife of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, read a poem she wrote highlighting the historic role played by Latin American women in the fight against imperialism:

We’re not flowers the wind can pluck,we’re roots of rebel and loyal land,we’re grandmothers, mothers, daughters, granddaughters;we are woman. Our blood pulses with the Manuelas,Luisas, Josefas, Juanas, Cecilias,Apacuanas, Bartolinas, Eulalias,Martas, Anas Marías, Barbaritasand so many others who legacy inspires,commits, and strengthens usto continue walking and traveling our path.And in our hands and chestsa light is on that nobody will ever turn off:love, peace and liberty. —Cilia Flores, International Working Women’s Day 2025

One year later, she languishes in a cell in New York City, having been dragged out of her room and kidnapped by US forces on the January 3 attack on Venezuela. The first images after her abduction showed her face bruised. We later learned she had broken ribs, 23 stitches in her forehead, and deteriorating health inside US custody.

Flores is no ordinary first lady. She first rose to prominence in 1992 as a defense lawyer for a group of Venezuelan military officers who rose up against the government of Carlos Andrés Pérez, which had massacred thousands of people in the Caracazo of 1989–nationwide riots following the imposition of neoliberal austerity measures. Key among those officers was Hugo Chávez, the founder of the Bolivarian Revolution.

Out of solidarity with Cilia, with Venezuelan women in general, we must make it our cause to fight for her freedom.

In 1993, Cilia founded the Bolivarian Circle of Human Rights and aligned herself with Chávez’s revolutionary movement. In 2000, having helped Chávez win consecutive presidential elections, she was elected to the legislature. By 2006, she became the president of the National Assembly, the first woman in Venezuela’s history to occupy the post. Flores held important positions in the United Socialist Party of Venezuela and became the country’s solicitor general in 2012, a post she left to run Nicolás Maduro’s presidential campaign after President Chávez’s passing.

Cilia married Nicolás, her longtime partner, following the election. Feeling that the title of “first lady” could not capture her importance to the Bolivarian Revolution, her husband dubbed her the primera combatiente, or first combatant.

After working behind the scenes as a key adviser to President Maduro, she ran for election to the National Assembly and won in 2015, 2020, and 2025.

Today, she faces charges of conspiracy to import cocaine, along with possession of machine guns and destructive devices. The charges are absurd.

In the early 1990s, back when Venezuela was a key ally of the United States, over 50% of the world’s cocaine was trafficked through the country. By........

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