Caracas Chronicles

Over the past 15 years, I remember being truly afraid in several specific moments. In 2009, when I attended my first protest and the anti-riot units responded violently. In 2014, during the demonstrations that marked a generation. In 2017, when I joined my university’s student movement and a friend and teammate was arrested in the classroom, in front of everyone. In 2019, during the blackout, facing a family medical emergency while working on a report for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet. Between 2020 and 2021, when the siege on humanitarian organizations intensified with raids on their offices and the freezing of accounts.

However, nothing prepared us for the fear we have experienced in recent days. What we have felt since July 29 until now is unprecedented. Friends hiding for weeks. Or crossing borders. A few are still holding hope for a transition that seems to be in the process but without certainty that it will happen, in the face of a state violence we’d never seen.

Empathy has become a shield. Every day we receive messages asking: “Are you okay? Did you manage to sleep? Did you have nightmares?” Meanwhile, we share constantly updated security protocols, assessing the worst possible situations. We wonder what to do if our passport is arbitrarily canceled, if leaving the country is an option, or if arriving at Maiquetía airport means a prison sentence. We deal with paranoia, attentive to any strange sound, rushing to the window to ensure everything is in its place.

We navigate the uncertainty about our future, work, and how our loved ones feel. Also, how to handle early morning calls or messages notifying that someone has been detained, assessing whether to report or not so as not to be counterproductive. Sometimes, we feel guilty for pausing our lives for a moment to watch a movie or play a board game, or for lowering the volume of our opinions and remain silent to avoid exposing ourselves more than necessary. At the same time, we wonder if all the effort has been worth it.

We cannot disconnect from work or social media, where each video or story is more heartbreaking than the last. We see teenagers being torn from their parent’s arms in the middle of the night or mothers dragged out of their homes, still in their nightclothes, before the terrified eyes of their children.

The checkpoints, which already generated distrust, are now real guillotines where they check your phone without a judicial order, risking your safety. An incorrect message in a WhatsApp group could lead to you disappearing in a jail or paying a ransom of thousands of dollars. And yet, we try to put on a smile to encourage those outside Venezuela; to show ourselves strong so that our friends and family don’t have to worry too much about what we are going through.

“They took this woman you know in the early morning along with 20 kids from the neighborhood, they entered her house and dragged her in her underwear in front of her daughter, regardless of the screams from her family; they beat her, son, they beat her.”

Days are long and we spend them fighting the protective desensitization to which we unconsciously resort, in order to not being overwhelmed by so many detentions, stories of people we know that are abused, and the heartbreaking testimonies of kids who, because of a WhatsApp message or a TikTok video, fall in the most dangerous prisons, alone, unable to see their relatives and without the right to defense. Kids who live in a country that already deprived them of a sane childhood and now inflicts on them, as adults, physical torture, rape, psychological terror, and more, for which no school, university, or way of life can prepare them.

For me, the hardest day was July 31. Waking up to calls at 6 in the morning: “They took this woman you know in the early morning along with 20 kids from the neighborhood, they entered her house and dragged her in her underwear in front of her daughter, regardless of the screams from her family; they beat her, son, they beat her.” We knew repression was a possibility, but one thing is to call it and another to see it coming. Then, the day they approved the anti-NGO law: hearing how immediately people thought about implementing projects in secrecy, learned how hundreds of volunteers resigned out of fear, talking with friends who didn’t know how they would fund their activities or continue operating, and above all, the hundreds of people who, due to persecution, could lose their jobs and the thousands of Venezuelans who might lose benefits due to intimidation, from protection to abused minors to training in social organization.

But the most difficult part is to resist the guilt of wanting to safeguard ourselves. Some say that those of us in politics should not feel fear or hide. But, aren’t we more useful free and alive than imprisoned or dead? I still need to overcome the pangs of guilt for not attending a demonstration or moderating my social media presence. 

You know what’s frustrating? Spending more than 10 years of your life preparing because you know that politics is the tool you chose to change lives and leave a better legacy on earth, and yet not being able to work in it because you live in a system where thinking differently makes you a criminal, or in these cases, a terrorist.

I suppose I share this with you, if you are reading, to say that fear is normal and that it’s okay to feel it; it would be illogical not to. I also share this to remind you that those of us who have chosen to dedicate our lives to public service are as human as anyone. Even though we hope we are making progress, we also have our moments of weakness. Perhaps sharing this with you might help you feel less alone.

And above all, I write this to inspire others to tell their stories so that together we can continue the vital exercise of collective memory. Because when this dark period finally passes, we will be able to fill the pages of history books and museums with what is happening these days. So that future generations can proudly say: “Never again in Venezuela will thinking differently be considered an act of terrorism.”

The next months will be long. We knew that July 28 was the starting point, not the goal, and we must remember that everyone one of us should keep the pressure. The regime will try to placate our hope and it is an expert on that. They say that everything’s normal in Venezuela and that things are now in order to think about the next regional elections. But we’ve learned from our mistakes in 2014, 2017 and 2019. Street demonstrations are a means, not a goal, which must be used strategically while we support each other.

Venezuelans abroad will be critical to pressure their governments, especially in Mexico, Spain, Brazil and Colombia. They can also be our voice in social media, keeping Venezuela’s need to restore its democracy in the global conversation. Fear won’t stay forever, and when the dust settles, we will see that all this mattered.

Illustration by Cristina Estanislao