In their customary Sunday message on X—sent from New York City, where they remain held in captivity and under arrest for 184 days—the presidential couple highlighted that today is a historic day and offered “words of faith, patriotism, love, and hope for our Homeland.”

They also remembered that 215 years ago, “God’s supreme will, expressed through the words of our founding fathers,” was manifested in Venezuela’s declaration of independence.

From that day on, the commitment and harmony with the Creator to begin the historic mission of breaking the chains of colonialism and building a great, humane, free, and sovereign homeland were clear, they stated.

The leaders—abducted on January 3rd in an illegal operation by United States special forces—evoked the “irrefutable words” spoken by Simon Bolivar on July 3, 1811, before the Patriotic Society when he was just 27 years old.

On that occasion, the Liberator declared: “Great projects must be prepared calmly. Are three hundred years of calm not enough? Let us lay the cornerstone of South American liberty without fear. To waver is to be lost.”

Maduro and Cilia affirmed that those words “remain alive; they call upon us not to waver, not to surrender, and not to lose faith in Venezuela’s great destiny.” They expressed that, 215 years ago, the path was found once and for all—the path of “dignity, equality, and liberty.”

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