Protesters at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico Demand the Release of Maduro and His Wife

ByIván Evair Saldaña

This article by Iván Evair Saldaña originally appeared in the July 22, 2026 edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premier left wing daily newspaper.

Mexico City. Dozens of members of the Mexican Anti-Imperialist and Anti-Fascist Front protested this Wednesday outside the United States Embassy in Mexico to demand the release of Venezuela’s kidnapped president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, Cilia Flores, while both were appearing before a federal court in New York on alleged “narco-terrorism.”

Irma Sofía Nava, spokesperson for the Front’s Liaison Commission, made up of 70 organizations nationwide, said the hearing and eventual trial against the Venezuelan should have no basis because he “was kidnapped” in his own country by Donald Trump’s government.

“A kidnapping, a crime perpetrated by that genocidal pedophile Trump, killing more than 100 Venezuelans and 32 Cubans. We are here to demand his freedom and, above all, the elimination of the unilateral coercive measures against Venezuela that are suffocating its people, at a moment of such vulnerability for the country because of the two earthquakes,” she said.

During the protest, the demonstrators burned photographs of U.S. President Donald Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom they called “genocidal.”

People of all ages came to the embassy, located in the Irrigación neighborhood of the country’s capital, with flags of their organizations and of Venezuela, Iran, Palestine, and Cuba, which she said are also currently being “battered” by the United States.

Irma Sofía and the organizations called for the annual march marking the anniversary of the assault on the Moncada Barracks, to be held next Sunday, July 26, at 10:30 a.m. in front of the Hemiciclo a Juárez in Mexico City, in defense of Cuba and to demand an end to the “genocidal blockade” that, they affirmed, the United States maintains against the island.