Américo De Grazia

Américo Giuseppe De Grazia Veltri (born 8 December 1959) is a Venezuelan opposition politician. A long-standing member of the party Causa R, he served two terms as mayor of Piar Municipality in Bolívar and was a member of the National Assembly for that state from 2011 to 2021, elected on the slate of the Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD). In November 2021 he was the gubernatorial candidate of the Ecological Movement of Venezuela (MOVEV) for the state of Bolívar in the 2021 Venezuelan regional elections.

Early career and mayoralty De Grazia was born in Upata, in the southern Venezuelan state of Bolívar. He began his political career on the ticket of Causa R, serving as a councillor in Piar Municipality and as the municipality's mayor for two terms (1992–1995 and 2000–2004). He was re-elected in the 2015 Venezuelan parliamentary election for the third electoral circuit of Bolívar, covering the southern part of the state. According to Transparencia Venezuela, in that election the MUD slate that included De Grazia carried all seven municipalities of the circuit ahead of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV). In the National Assembly he served as secretary of the Energy, Mines and Petroleum Commission and as a member of the special sub-commission investigating administrative irregularities in the pension fund of PDVSA.

Assaults in the National Assembly During a brawl in the National Assembly on 30 April 2013, De Grazia was hospitalised after reportedly being struck by pro-government legislators and falling down a staircase, according to contemporaneous reports in El País.

On 5 July 2017 De Grazia was among six deputies reportedly injured during the assault on the National Assembly by pro-government ; press reports stated that nine Assembly staff and several journalists were also wounded.

Conflict with the government On 20 May 2016 De Grazia reported the confiscation of the equipment of the radio station Especial 95.5 FM, owned by his family in Upata, in an operation involving the National Commission of Telecommunications. De Grazia attributed the action to political retaliation following his denunciations relating to the 2016 Tumeremo massacre and his accusations against government officials regarding alleged links to mining mafias in southern Bolívar. The National Assembly subsequently approved a resolution asking the international community to provide protective measures for the two deputies. The lawyer Tamara Sujú stated publicly that De Grazia was already the subject of precautionary measures granted by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).

On 8 May 2019, the National Constituent Assembly reportedly lifted De Grazia's parliamentary immunity at the request of the Supreme Tribunal of Justice and the Public Prosecutor's Office, on charges that included alleged treason and conspiracy in connection with the military uprising of 30 April 2019 in support of National Assembly president Juan Guaidó. By 26 August his family reported that they had been unable to obtain proof of life nineteen days after his detention. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights subsequently expanded its protective measures to cover his situation.

According to Infobae, De Grazia was released in the early hours of Sunday 24 August 2025, after more than a year held at El Helicoide, as part of a group of thirteen political prisoners freed by the Venezuelan government on that date.