The news reports about Nicolás Maduro being apprehended by US authorities, whether ultimately confirmed, contested, or politicized, took me back instantly to 2019. Not to headlines or sanctions lists, but to a classroom where, as part of a rigorous academic exercise, different student groups were each assigned a country facing mass human rights violations. My group was assigned Venezuela, and with that assignment came the responsibility to grapple seriously with one of the most complex political and humanitarian crises of our time.
That year, in my course Accountability for Gross Violations of Human Rights, Venezuela became more than a case study. We were tasked with negotiating a political and legal settlement as if the stakes were real, because for millions of Venezuelans, they were. I represented the opposition alongside an extraordinary group of peers shaped by Latin America, Europe, and the international human rights system itself. Carlos Marcos Cremadas from Spain brought the precision of someone working within the United Nations and a shared grounding in international human rights law. Carlo Novero, an exchange student from Italy, added a comparative perspective. Leslie Mendez, my batchmate, a fierce and principled voice from Belize, reminded us constantly that courage and compassion are not mutually exclusive.
Across the table sat the interim government, represented by three remarkable women. Mariana Brocca of Argentina and Nancy Bautista of Mexico were my LLM batchmates, and MarÃa José Daza was then studying international peace studies at Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs. Their clarity and restraint helped me understand Venezuela not as a binary conflict, but as a layered crisis of institutions, legitimacy, and human suffering.
We also sought guidance from Bernardo, an SJD student from Venezuela, whose lived knowledge grounded our abstractions. He did not need to dramatize the situation. Reality did that on its own.
What distinguished our Venezuela negotiations was not just what we discussed, but how we engaged. While some groups assigned to other countries approached their negotiations with visible tension and, at times, open confrontation, our group chose a different path. We negotiated peacefully. We listened. We drafted.
As headlines continue to shift and power changes hands, or claims to, my memory returns not to the spectacle of enforcement, but to a classroom where students assigned different countries chose to take their responsibilities seriously. In our case, Venezuela was not a theoretical problem to be solved, but a reminder that peace does not announce itself with sirens. It begins quietly, often in rooms where people decide to listen.
The result was an Agreement for Democracy and National Reconciliation in Venezuela, symbolically concluded in Montevideo, Uruguay, a neutral space far from coercion or spectacle. The agreement reflected a belief that accountability and peace are not opposites, but sequential necessities.
We proposed a National Unity Government with equal representation, ensuring continuity of governance while preventing exclusion. We insisted on free and fair elections with guarantees for both winners and losers, recognizing that democracy cannot survive if defeat equals political death. We reimagined the Supreme Tribunal of Justice, breaking institutional capture through balanced appointments. We called for depoliticization of the armed forces, an often overlooked prerequisite for civilian rule.
Crucially, we rejected vengeance masquerading as justice. Instead, we proposed an Ad Hoc Criminal Tribunal, Venezuelan in composition and supported by the United Nations, focused on those most responsible for crimes since 2014 and grounded in truth telling and reparations rather than extradition or punitive excess. Alongside it, a Truth Commission would examine the economic and political roots of the crisis, acknowledging that collapse does not emerge in a vacuum.
We demanded the release of political prisoners, the entry of humanitarian aid through neutral actors such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, and the lifting of economic sanctions, not as concessions to power, but as obligations to people. We envisioned a comprehensive reparations framework, including youth employment, restitution of expropriated property, and pathways for migrants and refugees to return home with dignity.
Looking back now, amid renewed talk of arrests, indictments, and foreign enforcement, that exercise feels less academic than prophetic.
International law is clear on one point that is often conveniently forgotten. State sovereignty matters. Not because governments are beyond reproach, but because the violation of sovereignty through unilateral coercion, regime engineering, or selective enforcement rarely produces justice. It produces precedent, and precedent, once set, rarely stops where its authors intend.
Our Venezuela negotiations underscored a harder, less glamorous truth. Durable accountability must be negotiated within the state, supported but not supplanted by the international community. Neutral mediation conducted in a neutral country allows parties to preserve dignity, protect civilians, and maintain the possibility of future coexistence. Without that, even victory becomes unstable.
That project reaffirmed for me the enduring relevance of peaceful dispute resolution, not as idealism, but as pragmatism rooted in human rights. Violence hardens positions. Humiliation entrenches resentment. Dialogue, however slow and imperfect, creates ownership.
As headlines continue to shift and power changes hands, or claims to, my memory returns not to the spectacle of enforcement, but to a classroom where students assigned different countries chose to take their responsibilities seriously. In our case, Venezuela was not a theoretical problem to be solved, but a reminder that peace does not announce itself with sirens. It begins quietly, often in rooms where people decide to listen.
