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González’s asylum should be understood as a chess game move—not a checkmate favoring the regime, as Maduro and his cronies would like it to be. Together with measures to take over the Argentine embassy’s security in Caracas, where six members of María Corina Machado’s team sought refuge, it should be a wake-up call regarding how far the regime is willing to go and its consequences.

The underlying reality hasn’t changed: The regime failed to back up its alleged electoral victory and is scaling up repression. The opposition published evidence showing that González won by a landslide. No democratic government in the region, including left-wing ones that in the past failed to distance themselves from Maduro, has supported the alleged official results. As Maduro loses international legitimacy, his chances of accessing markets and multilateral institutions fall, increasing his reliance on criminal networks to govern.

Maduro is buying time—to wear out the opposition’s legitimate claims for a transition, to scare people not to mobilize, and to push people out of the country, which would limit internal dissidence and increase remittances. González is now one of the 7.8 million Venezuelans who have been forced to leave the country. He is also part of a new, massive wave of migration that is expected if the crisis is not addressed properly, made up of people fleeing persecution who could present legitimate asylum claims.