The night the socialist Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro was captured, thousands of political prisoners across the country shouted in celebration: "Down with the dictatorship!" For Jesús Armas, an activist locked inside the infamous prison known as El Helicoide, it seemed possible the regime that had abducted and tortured him was finally beginning to break.
It wasn't. Maduro is gone, American oil investment is returning to Venezuela, and yet the apparatus of repression remains intact.
