Caracas Chronicles

Nicolás Maduro holds the events of February 1989 in very high regard. He’s not alone in his admiration for the Caracazo protests. Hugo Chávez recalled how El Caracazo was “a cry of freedom”, and “the most transcendental political act in all of the Venezuelan 20th century”. “February 27th, that’s where it all started. Three years later we rose up in our barracks against the giant”, said Diosdado Cabello back in 2019. 

Chavismo’s leaders hold the uprising of the working class in very high regard. Now they’re facing that exact situation on a scale they probably couldn’t have imagined before.

The morning of Monday July 29th, 2024 saw little traffic and spontaneous cacerolazos throughout Caracas, especially in barrios and low income areas. Many businesses did not open, with multiple offices across the capital city asking their employees to work from home. As the day progressed, the cacerolazos became protests, with people tearing down and burning Maduro’s election campaign flyers, cutting down Maduro billboards even setting some aflame. Along the day, many protesters across the country took down statues and paintings of the late Hugo Chávez. 

There were even some unprecedented scenes, at least since April 2002, with protesters walking right up to Miraflores Palace—the seat of the presidency—with very little resistance at first or facing security forces in El Silencio. Just a city block away from Miraflores, near the Basilica Santa Capilla, we witnessed armed gunmen firing at protestors who were forced to run. State security forces later intervened to remove whoever was left by firing tear gas at those who remained. Nearby, in the La Candelaria parish, National Guard forces were deployed in the streets well into the night.

The government may be pulling out the same old excuses they always have, but they’re applying them to a completely different situation.

There were many similarly bold scenes across poor areas of the country, with people congregating in front of the Base Aérea El Libertador (BAEL) near Maracay, the Venezuelan Air Force’s most important airbase, demanding the armed forces “fulfill” their duty. Outside of Fort Paramacay in Valencia, a large Venezuelan Army base, people climbed on top of the deactivated M18 Hellcats outside of the gates and tried to convince the soldiers inside to join the protest. 

But what’s even more interesting is that the protests weren’t organized by the opposition leadership. In her speech after the National Electoral Council announced a Maduro victory in the early hours on Monday, María Corina Machado was very careful not to call on people to take to the streets. She even spoke of how the truth isn’t proven with violence. In fact, Machado and the rest of the opposition leadership were quite silent on Monday, only offering public statements at 6:00 pm local time. The sudden outbursts across the country were, by all accounts, spontaneous. The exact way Chavismo has eternally described the events of El Caracazo.

But perhaps even more interesting, is the fact that the protests didn’t start up in traditionally wealthy, opposition-controlled neighborhoods. The most impressive public mobilizations came from barrios in Caracas, many of which used to be historical Chavismo strongholds.

A complete collapse of support

There were truly massive demonstrations across some of Venezuela’s poorest neighborhoods, especially those that Nicolás Maduro’s government claims to represent the most. People marched from Petare, South America’s largest slum, all the way to El Rosal, a more than 10-kilometer walk, something replicated on Tuesday with a large motorcycle parade. We saw protests well into the night in Ruiz Pineda, Caricuao, La California, El Silencio, the Cota 905 and even in 23 de Enero, a neighborhood in the literal shadow of Miraflores and the Cuartel de la Montaña, a place of religious importance to the Chavista mythology, where the caudillo’s remains are buried.

With no instructions or organization coming from opposition leaders, people took to the streets to loudly voice their discontent for Maduro’s decision to proclaim himself the winner of Sunday’s election. These multiple and sudden uprisings against the government have been met with pushback from Chavista officials, in both speeches and violent police repression. The Minister of Defense, Vladimir Padrino López, claimed on Tuesday that the country was facing a right-wing coup attempt, warning it would be defeated and insisting on the importance of a “great national dialogue”. Just a few minutes later, the country’s General Prosecutor, Tarek William Saab, claimed that security forces had detained some 749 people, as he recycled old narratives about how many of them were children while others were under the effects of narcotics. Jorge Rodríguez yelled in the National Assembly that there can be “no negotiating with fascism”, referring to the protestors that Saab had called “terrorists”, and said Machado and González should be jailed. 

The government may be pulling out the same old excuses they always have, but they’re applying them to a completely different situation. While the erosion in PSUV support was clear from a few years ago, this latest collapse—which shows the government losing by an almost unfathomable landslide—and the ongoing protests confirm that chavismo has lost whatever connection remained between them and the Venezuelan working class. Now, with voting results in hand, the Venezuelan opposition has finally shown how chavismo has been swept away in many of its traditional strongholds. Be it Altagracia, El Paraíso, San Bernardino, Macarao and even Petare, it has become quite difficult to find a place where the government still holds a majority, let alone any parish that could still be labeled a “stronghold”.Back in 2002, the Chávez government faced protests largely organized by the country’s association of business owners. In 2014 and 2017, Maduro could still count on a considerably large base of voters to stay home and help him cool down the streets. Now, the government has genuine trouble mobilizing any sort of support in their favor and they can no longer rely on the barrios to help them keep control. With so little support left, the government has only violence, violence which could escalate to truly dizzying heights considering the sheer size of the majority they wish to control.