Opponents of President Nicolas Maduro who have taken to the streets day after day in Venezuela now find themselves rallying in support of an unexpected hero: the chief prosecutor who helped throw many of them into jail.
Until recently, Luisa Ortega was seen as a hard-line loyalist of the socialist administration, responsible for dozens of arrests on trumped-up charges against anti-government protesters. But now she is being lionized by the opposition and disaffected supporters of the late Hugo Chavez alike for her decision to break with Maduro, the hand-picked successor to "El Comandante."
Roberto Marrero, a lawyer for the nation's most-emblematic political prisoner, Leopoldo Lopez, found himself among thousands at a recent street demonstration in support of Ortega, whose office prosecuted Lopez.
"Every Mandela needs a De Klerk," he said, referring to the white president who oversaw the end of apartheid in South Africa.
The Venezuelan opposition's embrace of Ortega, however tactical and awkward, underscores a stark truth after three months of paralyzing but so far unsuccessful protests: Removing Maduro will require winning over some of his backers.
Ortega, the most prominent defector so far, brings a unique combination of impeccable revolutionary credentials, intimate knowledge of the government's inner workings and a semi-autonomous post with which to challenge the government's moves to centralize power and crush the opposition.
"What most worries the government is a schism inside the ruling movement," said Francisco Toro, editor of pro-opposition blog Caracas Chronicles. "In that regard, she's more of a threat than 200,000 people on the street."
Until recently, Venezuelans knew little about the bespectacled 59-year-old lawyer other than watching her on state TV for years closely toeing the government line.
The daughter of a cattle rancher from Venezuela's central plains, Ortega studied law in the city of Valencia, where she helped organize protests of students and textile workers in the late 1970s as a member of the legal wing of a clandestine guerrilla group known as the Party of Venezuelan Revolution.
Douglas Bravo, who led the now-disbanded Marxist group, remembers her as a hard-working and talented foot soldier.
"She was always someone who stood for the principles of democracy, respect for human rights and anti-imperialism," he said.
After Chavez took office in 1999, Ortega moved to Caracas to work as legal adviser to a state-owned TV channel. She became a federal prosecutor in 2002 and was handed some of the highest-profile cases, including prosecution of people who organized a brief coup against Chavez that year.
She was named chief prosecutor in 2007 and was re-elected to the post by the then pro-Maduro National Assembly in 2014 over a rival candidate reportedly close to first lady Cilia Flores.
Her transformation occurred gradually, according to her husband, socialist party lawmaker German Ferrer.
After Chavez's death in 2013, Ortega was irked when top government officials moved to stifle some corruption probes, he said. She also began to distance herself, sometimes publicly, from Maduro's increasingly heavy-handed approach to policing in poor neighborhoods, as well as the use of firearms and pro-government militias to control protests. In 2016, she shocked many by publishing homicide statistics — something that hadn't been done in years by the government, which was embarrassed by spiraling violence.
For the most part, though, she kept her misgivings under wraps.
"The moment we stuck our neck outs we knew what the consequences were going to be," said Ferrer, a partner in his wife's carefully planned rebellion. "A misstep at the wrong time could have proven fatal."
An opening came when the government-stacked supreme court gutted the now opposition-led National Assembly of its last powers in late March, triggering protests that have so far left more than 90 dead and 1,500 injured. Ortega broke her silence, accusing the government of a democratic "rupture."
Since then, she has sharpened her criticism, accusing the government of "state terrorism" and Maduro of dismantling Venezuela's democracy with plans to rewrite the constitution that was sponsored by Chavez.
She has also brought charges against the head of the national guard and intelligence police alleging human rights abuses in the crackdown on protests.