From a window in a modest brick home perched on the mountains above Caracas, you can see a bridge that separates Urbina, a middle-class neighborhood, from Petare, one of Latin America’s biggest slums. On July 29 and 30, this bridge was a battleground of blockades, tear gas and gunfire as police, members of the National Guard and “colectivos” (armed pro-government paramilitary groups) attempted to suppress spontaneous protests triggered by fraud in a presidential election held on July 28.
The authoritarian incumbent, Nicolas Maduro of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, proclaimed himself victor despite presenting no voter tallies or other proof of the results. But opposition volunteers had collected over 80% of the ballots whose results were printed by voting machines after polls closed and published them online. These tallies show that the opposition candidate, Edmundo Gonzalez, received 7 million votes to Maduro’s 3 million.
This apparent overwhelming opposition victory stemmed from discontent following Venezuela’s perpetual economic, political and humanitarian crises. Hugo Chavez, Venezuela’s leftist president from 1999 until his death in 2013, leveraged an oil bonanza to finance social programs and foster political patronage. That model proved unsustainable: When oil production — and global oil prices — dropped following Chavez’s death, the economy fell apart. Venezuela’s gross domestic product has plummeted 80% in less than a decade, marking the largest economic collapse in a country not at war in at least half a century.
Combined with political repression, which intensified under Maduro, this has led almost 8 million Venezuelans to flee their country — only Afghanistan and Syria have seen more refugees leave, with Ukraine close behind. Almost 3 million of them have gone to neighboring Colombia; 1.5 million to Peru; and about half a million each to Brazil and Chile. Meanwhile, Venezuela’s humanitarian crisis spun out of control for the ones who remain, with more than half of them living in poverty.
According to Simon Rodriguez Porras, author of “Why Did Chavismo Fail?” and an editor of the website Venezuelan Voices, Chavez left Maduro to pay the bill for his reckless looting of the oil rent and huge increases in foreign debt.
“They are two sides of the same coin,” he says, with Chavez responsible for a mismanaged economic boom and Maduro for the subsequent mismanaged crisis. Instead of solving the country’s problems, Maduro became increasingly authoritarian and stifled any form of dissent.
Last year, a United Nations fact-finding mission issued a report documenting crimes against humanity committed by Maduro and other top officials in his government — including extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, arbitrary detentions and torture. The International Criminal Court has an ongoing investigation into violence following Venezuela’s 2017 election and says it is “actively monitoring” current postelection events.
These overlapping economic, political and humanitarian crises drove Venezuelans into the streets in 2014, 2017 and 2019. They know to carry sodium bicarbonate to counteract noxious tear gas. They have mapped out refuge spots to take shelter when the armed forces or colectivos drive by. They know not to leave the pack during demonstrations, lest they become easy prey for arrests.
But now there are thousands of demonstrators who don’t know the tricks. That’s because this time the protests are different. Unlike in previous waves, the people on the streets mainly come from poor neighborhoods that used to be strongholds of “Chavismo,” the socialist movement that Chavez inspired. Paranoid and humiliated, Maduro has launched his fiercest crackdown yet. The focus of his repression has been the barrios, or slums, he has long claimed to protect. According to a representative from Provea, a Venezuelan human rights organization, 80% of the arrests have been of members of the working class.
“In Venezuela, being a young, poor man makes you a target right now,” says Ali Daniels, co-director of Acceso a la Justicia (Access to Justice), a human rights group that defends arbitrarily detained Venezuelans.
The uproar in Venezuelan barrios is a problem for Maduro, who claims to lead a socialist revolution that seeks to represent the country’s poorest. But according to Rodriguez, the deterioration of this benevolent image is not new. He says the popularity of Chavismo was “already fading in Chavez’s last years in office, as his government became increasingly associated with corruption and the emergence of the Bolibourgeoisie,” a portmanteau of “Bolivarian” and “bourgeoisie” referring to a class of Venezuelans who became rich under Chavez’s so-called Bolivarian revolution. But while the current popular revolt is ideologically damaging to Maduro, it may not be enough to end his rule.
“Maduro’s power is not based on votes [anymore] — it is based on the armed forces. [So] if the regime is to fall, popular resistance needs to divide and neutralize the repressive apparatus,” Rodriguez explains.
“They [the Maduro government] no longer have anyone to convince,” says Jesus Armas, the Caracas coordinator for opposition leader Maria Corina Machado. “Their own base is with us; their own base is tired.”
On the morning of July 29, Venezuelans woke up enraged about how the government had seemingly rigged the election results the night before. Without any calls from the opposition leadership to do so, they took to the streets spontaneously, self-organized. Angry, they tore down several statutes of Chavez.
Cristian Jose Camacaro Guevara, 23, is one of the slum dwellers who has had enough. On July 30, he walked about 4 miles from his home in Petare to Chacao, an upscale Caracas neighborhood where I met him, to take part in demonstrations. After crowds had been dispersed with tear gas and with smoke about 100 yards behind him, he explained that the colectivos had just passed by, intimidating and stealing from protesters, who were pushed away by national guards firing tear gas at them shortly after.
Five days later, Camacaro and his mother, Jessica Guevara, 43, guide me through the now mostly empty streets and narrow stairways of Petare leading up to their home. His father stands ready with fried chicken and rice. Despite their limited means, Camacaro insists that in the barrio, you cannot have a guest without sharing a meal.
Downstairs sits the household’s 76-year-old patriarch — Guevara’s father and Camacaro’s grandfather — who remains a staunch Chavista. His daughter says that “he is stuck in the past,” idealizing the Chavez era and disregarding the fact that the country has fallen apart since his death a decade ago. She says that her father would not have to carry products up and down the hills of Petare to secure an extra income if the government had paid him a decent pension. But the grandfather does not blame the government. Instead, he says that U.S. sanctions have caused his current misery. “When he’s around, there’s no talking politics,” his daughter says.
It is not the only tension that politics has stirred within the family. Camacaro’s 15-year-old sister remains isolated and anxious in her room. “She cries when Cristian goes out to protest,” Jessica says. As a mother, she is fretful when her son leaves but understands the importance of the cause. “I would have joined the protests myself,” she explains, but instead she stays at home participating in “caceroladas” — the loud banging of pots and pans to create a resounding noise of discontent — because she cannot leave her teenage daughter alone.
Fabiana Fernandez, Camacaro’s neighbor and friend since primary school, is afraid to leave her home. So along with the rest of her family, the 22-year-old also takes part in the caceroladas.
Fernandez stands at the window, pointing down: “Do you remember, Cristian, that house used to have Maduro and Chavez’s faces painted on the side?” This week, Fernandez noticed that the faces had been covered with fresh blue and red paint. She says there are many other former Chavistas in this barrio who are now fed up.
Some Chavistas view Maduro as a distortion or betrayal of the Chavista legacy. Although Maduro relies on the symbols of Chavez’s legacy, the social gains of those years have vanished, and he lacks Chavez’s charisma and has nowhere near the same level of popularity. “Chavez was more democratic, in the sense that he held more or less competitive elections, in part because he had popular support and was able to win a majority of votes, something impossible for Maduro,” Rodriguez explains. Maduro, on the other hand, did not even run a campaign to try to persuade undecided voters. He focused on addressing his own narrow social base and intimidating his critics, openly using threats, as when he announced a “bloodbath” and “civil war” if he was not declared the winner.
The two friends, Camacaro and Fernandez, know nothing other than the United Socialist Party of Venezuela’s 25-year rule. Yet they dream of something different, and July 28 offered them a glimpse of what it might be like to live in a free Venezuela, with families reunited.
Like most Venezuelans, they celebrate their birthdays and other significant events with family members joining in via video calls from abroad. If Maduro remains in power, Camacaro’s family will consider leaving the country too — as will about 40% of all Venezuelans remaining in the country, according to a postelection survey by Meganalisis, a Venezuelan polling organization.
Following mass protests came mass repression. In just three weeks, security forces and colectivos have killed at least 24 people and arrested over 2,200, according to government figures. Human rights organizations like Foro Penal have been able to confirm about 1,500 arrests. Many of those arrested have been charged with terrorism, incitement to hatred and criminal association. Meanwhile, most of the opposition leadership sits in hiding.
Armas, the Caracas coordinator for Machado, is one of them. Despite having worked as an activist and politician for more than two decades, he says he has never seen this level of government repression.
“We’re all sheltered now, hidden in a hundred places,” he says. He fears that the government will no longer repress the opposition but seek to exterminate it entirely.
Those who have not even been near the protests feel the repression too. Among them is Edni Lopez, a humanitarian worker who vanished on her way to Argentina for a vacation after encountering issues with her allegedly expired passport. (The annulment of passports is another form of repression that the government is increasingly deploying.) On Aug. 4, Lopez’s boyfriend, Gordy Palmero, gave her a farewell kiss and told her, “I love you” before leaving her at the international airport near Caracas. After that, Lopez disappeared and was later found in prison.
Palmero, along with family and friends, launched an intense campaign to free her. On Aug. 9, Lopez was released with precautionary measures, but many others remain behind bars.
At an opposition rally, people repeatedly shout, “We are not afraid.” However, these chants contrast with the silence in Petare, where residents increasingly avoid leaving their homes.
Camacaro tells me that on the morning before protesting, he looked himself in the mirror, took a deep breath and tried to shake off the fear. Similarly, Armas admits, “I have never been as afraid as I am now.”
For Camacaro and everyone else in Petare, uncertainty defines life these days. “You never know if the next person they arrest will be you,” he says, adding that he has no idea how this struggle will end. “I feel like this is the last opportunity and if it doesn’t happen now, it will be very hard for it to ever happen,” his friend Fernandez says.
Yet Camacaro insists it is not over. He believes people are simply waiting for a signal to take calculated risks. That is precisely what Armas encourages Venezuelans to do. He says that this will be a long fight and that “it is important to pace it; nobody can be out there giving their all every day.” He acknowledges that Venezuelans need to work to make ends meet in a country in crisis.
“We don’t know if the breaking point is just around the corner,” Camacaro says hopefully, gazing out over his neighborhood.
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