Hostages to the Pandemic
WHEN SHE WALKED INTO THE LARGE CELL DEEP INSIDE VENEZUELA’S MOST NOTORIOUS PRISON IN JULY 2018, DENNYSSE VADELL COULD NOT FIND HER HUSBAND. SHE FRANTICALLY SCANNED THE FACES OF THE ASSEMBLED MEN IN DARK green uniforms until finally one of them raised his arms and called her name: “Dennysse, I’m here.” It had been less than nine months since masked security agents had stormed a conference room in Caracas and arrested Tomeu Vadell and five other Citgo executives, but he was unrecognizable. The usually robust, 6-ft. 1-in. Louisiana businessman had lost 60 lb., and his skin was tinged with gray after months without sun. “I couldn’t believe it,” Dennysse says. “When I hugged him, he was all bones.”
Nearly two years later, the six men, five of them American citizens, face a danger graver even than their continuing imprisonment in Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro’s El Helicoide prison: COVID-19. Already there have been four cases of the new coronavirus reported in El Helicoide. The men have been trying to protect themselves in a crowded cell with no running water, armed only with undiluted bleach, which burns their hands and releases fumes that worsen their respiratory ailments. For the detained men—weakened by malnourishment and underlying health conditions—the virus would likely be a death sentence, their families say. “We are all absolutely desperate,” said Carlos Añez, whose stepfather Jorge Toledo is one of the imprisoned Americans.
The coronavirus pandemic is only the latest of the powerful unseen forces that the Texas- and Louisiana-based executives have faced during their 28 months in prison. First among them is Maduro’s need for pawns in his long-running political and economic battle with Washington and the Trump Administration, which has called for Maduro’s ouster. Then there are the business interests of the men’s employer,
