The scorching sun of the Caribbean summer punished anyone who dared face it on the streets of Caracas. At noon, there was no shade on the dead-end street that leads to the gates of the Zone Seven Detention Center in Boleíta, in the eastern zone of Caracas.
Even so, hundreds of parents, siblings, cousins, children, nephews and uncles stood steadfast in a static single line. They were all there seeking information about relatives who had been arrested during the days of unrest and protest that followed the announcement of the presidential election results, which granted Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s increasingly authoritarian president, a third term after 11 years in power.
Hernán García, a 40-year-old man with brown skin and slightly indigenous features, was accompanied by his father. The two were seeking information about young Luis, who had just turned 19, and who had disappeared after following friends and neighbors toward downtown Caracas to protest the election results.
Maduro’s victory was considered fraudulent by the opposition and has not been recognized by various countries in the region or much of the international community. Hernán heard from neighbors that Luis had been arrested near his home as he returned from the protests.
Garcia said he was hoping to find out what Luis was accused of, and why.
“I mean, why don’t they tell me anything about him? And I go and ask, and they still don’t tell me anything,” he said nearly 48 hours after his son’s disappearance. It was the first time the young man had taken to the streets to protest.
Hernán and Luis live in Petare, a group of favelas with more than 400,000 inhabitants that has always been one of the strongholds of Chavismo. For the first time in 25 years of Chavismo — the late President Hugo Chávez’s 21st-century socialism project still running under Maduro — thousands of residents of the poorest neighborhoods in Caracas have taken to the streets in protest.
Chávez gained popular support for the movement through a successful income-transfer program that lifted millions of Venezuelans out of poverty. For the first time in Venezuela’s history, the money from the country’s abundant oil wells reached the poorest.
And Chávez was immensely fortunate. When he assumed the presidency in February 1999, a barrel of oil was worth about $23. The price then sharply increased, reaching more than $200 in 2008. Until his death from cancer in 2013, Chávez governed with oil prices almost always above $120 per barrel.
With so much money in national coffers, he expanded state subsidies, especially in programs for the poorest. Houses, cars, travel, health care – the government paid for everything, collected few taxes and did not diversify the economy.
A few months after Chávez’s death, the price of oil plummeted. And Maduro, a former bus driver and political heir to the Chavez revolution, faced perhaps the deepest crisis in Venezuela’s recent history. Between Chávez’s death and the contested July 28 election, in which Maduro has claimed his second reelection, nearly 8 million Venezuelans — 25% of the population — have left the country, fleeing hunger, repression and an absolute lack of prospects.
The wealthiest left during Chávez’s administration, in the first decade of the 2000s. But it was during Maduro’s years in power that the poorest emigrated en masse, fleeing an economic crisis that pushed Venezuela to the brink of a humanitarian crisis unprecedented in Latin American history.
Even with Russia and China supporting Maduro and preventing Venezuela from collapse, life remains difficult for Venezuelans who chose to stay.
In the 23 de Enero neighborhood, where Chávez’s body is laid to rest, Jorge, a retiree who declined to give his last name for fear of the colectivos — extrajudicial paramilitary groups that support the Bolivarian government — said he is tired of Chavismo.
“We are in misery, and [the government officials] are fat, driving around in their SUVs,” he said. “They get everything, and we get nothing.”
Beside him was Roberto, who said he still believes in the revolution, in Chavismo, and, in keeping with its official narrative, believes that Venezuela’s woes are the result of the U.S. economic blockade on the country.
“We can still talk, but here we are divided,” Jorge told me after Roberto, his pro-government friend, left for home on the eve of election day.
When the election results were announced in the early morning hours of July 29, there was no public celebration in Caracas, except for events at Miraflores Palace, the seat of government. The streets of the capital were empty — a sign that coming days would be tense.
Less than 24 hours after Maduro’s victory was announced, Caracas was in flames. For the first time in more than two decades, thousands of residents from the poorest areas descended from the hills, taking to the streets to protest.
Confronted by prepared security forces in waiting, demonstrators tried to break through barricades with sticks and stones, but they were no match for the armed men firing tear gas and rubber bullets — some of them real.
The opposition called for a demonstration the following day in an upscale neighborhood of Caracas, which attracted thousands. New clashes occurred, followed by more arrests. In the days to come, the government would target the poorest communities with a repressive campaign to strike terror in the heart of what had long been Chavismo’s reliably loyal base.
“They are patrolling every night, arresting whoever they find on the street, without seeming to have a specific target,” said Yessica, a woman from Petare waiting at the door a detention center, desperate for news of her daughter, who’d been missing for days. “It’s enough to be poor, enough to be on the street, and they’ll arrest you.”
In the two days following the election, more than 15 people had died, and hundreds had been imprisoned. By the end of the week, the government had reported holding 2,000 prisoners. Maduro appeared on state TV to say that all those detained were terrorists, guilty of attempting a fascist coup against his government. He said they would be sentenced to 30 years in prison, including forced labor to build roads.
“We have not had access to the prisoners, but we were informed that they are being taken to terrorism courts,” said Stefania Migliorini, an attorney with Foro Penal, a nongovernmental organization that provides legal aid to Venezuela’s victims of repression.
Word of the crackdown was effective. Within days, no protesters remained on the streets.
On August 3, Maria Corina Machado, the de facto leader of the opposition in Venezuela, called for a new demonstration to denounce what she has been calling electoral fraud, in an upper-middle-class neighborhood in Caracas.
Thousands attended. But few of those who took to the streets were from the poorest neighborhoods. This time, most of those protesting against Chavismo were middle-class, well-educated and predominantly white — very different from those in Venezuelan prisons for taking to the streets against the regime.
