Caracas Chronicles

I wrote my last post for Caracas Chronicles almost 3 years ago, in October 2021, weeks before the last regional election. It was a sad piece, a rant against attempts from the opposition to make that process look important, and marked by a crushing feeling of defeat. That was also the last time I was able to vote in a Venezuelan election. I happened to be visiting back then.

While I write these lines today, the situation couldn’t be more different.

Like millions of Venezuelans, I have been waiting for this day to arrive with a complex mixture of excitement, fear, and, I have to admit, a steadily decreasing dose of learned self-helplessness.

In normal conditions today’s election would be a mere transaction. All credible pollsters give Edmundo González Urrutia, the unexpected opposition unitary candidate, an advantage of 20-30 points over Nicolás Maduro, who, also against significant odds, has clinged to power for the last 11 years, in the middle of the worst economic and humanitarian crisis observed in the continent in decades.

But Venezuela is no normal country.

The Maduro regime knows how deeply unpopular it is. They are well-aware that by only significantly suppressing opposition votes they stand a chance to win the election without committing a blatantly evident fraud. Thus, they have done everything in their power to make themselves look invincible. Despite enormous challenges, and against the full force of a deeply authoritarian and resourceful state, the Venezuelan opposition managed to mount a competitive electoral campaign, probably the best in its history, that has resonated among a formerly unmotivated and demobilized base, reconnecting millions with our troubled politics, and forcing us to reopen wounds we thought long-closed. 

I went to bed last night to images of people sleeping outside of their voting centers. Scaring away the pro-government paramilitary groups sent to harass them. After a few hours of troubled sleep, I woke up today to see the first Venezuelans in Australia voting. In Venezuela, and four hours before the election officially started, the queues from last night had multiplied all over the country, growing both in frequency and in length. 

I’ve talked with family and friends that describe a common picture. In each and single one of those queues around the country, there are people tired and hurt, but also willing to show the dictatorship that no matter how hard they stomp on us, we will not give up our hopes of ending this 25-year long nightmare. Our hopes of reuniting with our loved ones. Our hopes of taking back the country that they have so keenly tried to take away from us.

I’ve been abroad for the last 5 years, and like 99% of the 4 million electors who have left the country, my right to vote was curtailed by a government that is perfectly aware of the existential threat it faces. I was unable to be in Venezuela for this momentous event, but I’ve never felt more represented by those who never have and never will give up.

The day is far from over, and the regime and its minions still have plenty of tricks to try to silence the overtly evident voice of the country, but Venezuela is not the same place it was in October 2021 and we have made one thing clear to Maduro and to the world:

We will never stop fighting.