Venezuelan exile: Tyranny follows post-Christian culture

Solène Tadié, National Catholic Register

Thursday, January 29, 2026

Alejandro Peña Esclusa, a former Venezuelan presidential candidate and Catholic intellectual, who spent a year imprisoned without trial under Hugo Chávez in 2010 before being forced into exile, says the question is not only whether a dictatorship has fallen, but how a nation brutalized by decades of Marxism, corruption, and violence can now undergo a genuine moral and political transition. Peña Esclusa, now based in Italy, insists that while the removal of Maduro has brought widespread relief, it has not yet delivered freedom.