54 Time April 6–13, 2020turnover in the State Department and National Se-
curity Council meant that the U.S. officials familiar
with t heir c ase kept leaving their positions, forcing
the families to explain their case to a new o fficial all
over again.
All the while, their loved ones were deteriorat-
ing. The drastic physical change is evident in pho-
tos from inside the prison obtained by TIME, show-
ing the men gaunt with shaved heads. “The shock of
seeing him like that, in deplorable conditions, was
indescribable—an innocent person, an honest per-
son who has never stolen as much as a pencil f rom
his o ffice,” said Cardenas, who managed to a rrange
a t rip f rom Houston to Caracas in summer 2018 t o
visit her husband Gustavo with her children.In January 2019, the political situation in Ven-
ezuela finally seemed to shift. Charging that
Maduro’s re-election the previous year had been
illegitimate, opposition leader Juan
Guaidó d eclared himself the c ountry’s
rightful i nterim President, and he was
backed by the U.S. a nd d ozens o f o ther
governments.
But Guaidó turned out to be no help
for the detained Americans. The oppo-
sition is treating the men with indiffer-
ence, at best. Guaidó officials tell TIME
it was just “one of so many cases that
show the lawlessness of the regime.”
Says Gustavo Marcano, the minister
counselor to the Venezuelan opposi-
tion’s envoy to Washington: “ No doubt
some of them are people who are vic-
tims, but this is not a separate case, it’s
part o f t he d rama that millions of Ven-
ezuelans are living.”
Nor has Guaidó’s success at winning
control of Citgo—depriving Maduro of that prize,
with the help of a U.S. court—changed the company’s
posture toward the families. It spent around $ 2 mil-
lion a year in both 2018 and 2019 on Washington
lobbyists to represent company interests, according
to filings. The families say the company has made no
visible efforts to push for the detained Americans’
release.
In March 2019, t he White House reached out to
the families of the Citgo executives. Pence hosted the
fa milies at the White House, reading out the names
of the six men as if in a solemn prayer. “The names of
all of them deserve to be known to the world,” Pence
said. The Vice President finally uttered the words the
fa milies had waited 18 months to hear from a high-
profile U.S. leader, promising that the Administration
would “use all means at our disposal” to secure their
release. “We are with you, we are going to stand with
you until your loved ones are free, until Venezuela is
free,” Pence told them. He said Trump was lookingat a “broad range of options.”
A year later, little seems to have come from that
meeting. The families compare the nice talk from the
Administration with the results the President got in
other cases, especially that of Joshua Holt, a Utah man
who was held for more than two years in a Caracas jail
for allegedly stockpiling guns and was personally wel-
comed home by Trump last year. “The President and
his team were very engaged and succeeded in bringing
him home,” said Jason Poblete, a Washington, D.C.,
lawyer who represents the Vadells.
The families of the Citgo executives say they feel
painfully aware that the same efforts aren’t being
made on their behalf. They worry it’s due to a bias
because t hey’re Venezuelan American, making them
second-class citizens when it comes to urgency for
the U.S. government, and the perception that the men
must have been complicit in something illegal. “As
American citizens, you never think something like
this c ould h appen t o you,” says Vadell’s
daughter Veronica. “You t hink i t would
be like in the movies, where the U.S.
would send a rescue team or do every-
thing possible to get you out. But s oon
you realize it’s all just being managed by
human beings, and that no one is going
to h elp you, nothing is going to happen
if the political will isn’t there.”
Last summer, the families watched in
disbelief as Trump repeatedly tweeted
about t he d etention o f American rapper
A$AP Rocky after he was accused of as-
sault following a fight in Stockholm.
When the President then dispatched
his special envoy for hostage affairs,
Robert O’Brien, to Sweden to oversee his
release, it felt surreal. For them, it has
been “a fight of 16 months from when
they t ook my father hostage to get their office to t alk
to us,” Cristina Vadell tells TIME. “This rapper was in
Swedish jail, in a country that unlike Venezuela has an
actual l egal process, and the U.S. sends O’Brien t here
to negotiate for his release in person,” she says. “Mean-
while the government is leaving our father, who is an
innocent 60-year-old man, out to dry.”In December last year, soon after the men had
marked a third Thanksgiving in prison, there seemed
to be a breakthrough when they were suddenly re-
leased o n h ouse a rrest in Caracas. Despite the armed
guards outside the doors, who came in every four
hours t o t ake photos of them, their families hoped i t
was a step in the right direction. In FaceTime video
calls, t hey s aw the men were regaining some weight
and their hair was growing back.
But in late January, rumors began to circulate in
Spanish- language media that a high-profile meet-
ing between Trump and Guaidó was in the works.‘AS AMERICAN
CITIZENS, YOU
NEVER THINK
SOMETHING
LIKE THIS COULD
HAPPEN TO YOU.’
—VERONICA VA DELL, DAUGHTER
OF ONE OF THE CITGO SIX
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