---
title: Five Years in Venezuelan Custody, and the Memoir a Citgo Executive Made of Them
description: Jorge L. Toledo spent 1,775 days detained in Venezuela. His memoir, published in August 2025, is an exact count of them.
author: Dr Marina Nani (Editor-in-Chief)
updated: 2026-07-28T13:17:42.999Z
canonical: https://richbooksmagazine.com/article/toledo-1775-days-captivity-venezuela-memoir
image: https://cdn.nanimediahouse.com/toledo-1775-days-captivity-cell-57685.webp
categories: Memoir & Biography
content_type: Profile
region: United States
publication: Rich Books
access: members
schema_type: Article
---

Jorge L. Toledo was called to a last-minute meeting at the Caracas headquarters of Petroleos de Venezuela just before Thanksgiving in 2017. He was vice president of supply and marketing at Citgo, the Houston company that is the US subsidiary of the Venezuelan state oil producer, and he had spent four decades in oil and gas to get there. Once he and five colleagues were inside the conference room, armed and masked security agents arrested all six of them.

They became known as the Citgo 6. Jorge did not come home for 1,775 days.

That figure is the title of the memoir he published in August last year, and it is a literal count rather than a round one. “1,775 Days of Captivity: Survival and Growth” runs to 288 pages from Archway Publishing, the self-publishing imprint Simon & Schuster runs with Author Solutions. It is his first book, written about a stretch of his life he did not choose and could not leave.

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