‘The rejection we're feeling this time is widespread’
Originally published on Global Voices
Photo of Yeni, used with her permission.
A longer version of this article was published on the Romanian media website HotNews and is republished on Global Voices with permission.
It is July 29 in the morning, and Yeni (name changed), 26 years old, is on the bus that takes her from Valencia to Caracas, Venezuela. The next day she will be flying back to Romania, where she has lived for three years. She traveled to Venezuela to see her family and to be able to vote in the presidential elections that took place on July 28.
The streets of Venezuela are wrapped in an atmosphere of mourning: there is silence and people are sad. Nobody celebrates the result of the elections given by the National Electoral Council the night before, there is no music playing as in previous elections. According to the National Electoral Council, Nicolás Maduro has won the elections, an outcome the opposition and people from different backgrounds dispute.
Voting was not easy: she had to wait eight hours. “Although the tables were supposed to open at 6 a.m., it was almost 10 a.m., and they kept making excuses like the voting machines weren't working, the witnesses hadn't arrived … All this to discourage us from voting. They opened only when an elderly person fainted and some journalists showed up,” Yeni says.
Yeni believes that something has changed in Venezuelan society. “Now you can no longer tell who is pro-government and who is not,” Yeni tells me. In the past, she explains, you could tell better, by the way people spoke or their mannerisms. People from disadvantaged social groups used to have frequent meetings with members of the government who would instill ideology in them and distribute food parcels.
Specialists define the polarization created by the socialist government during the last decades as the radicalization of individuals or groups towards one or the other side of the debate. In this polarization, each side denies the legitimacy of the other, generally with a strong emotional charge and with repercussions in personal relationships.
“Even members of my family didn't talk to each other for years, until recently. I was 11 years old when a schoolmate came and told me we couldn't be friends with another girl because she and her family were Chavistas … You wonder: why do kids talk about these things?” Yeni ponders.
She explains that she grew up in a country where, in every neighborhood, there were people paid by the government, called “jefes de calle” (street bosses), to hand out food packages, along with leaflets of political ideology: “If they knew you were against the government, they wouldn't give you food. The same people would take pictures [of people] at the protests and file complaints against them.”
While traveling on the bus to Caracas, Yeni sees military groups amidst the silence, “as if someone had died, as if the country had died,” Yeni explains.
However, when night falls, and she passes through one of the poor neighborhoods perched on the hills surrounding the city center, she hears the sounds of pots and pans (a “cacerolazo”), a form of peaceful demonstration that has characterized popular protests against governments in Venezuela.
“These neighborhoods have never protested because they have always been easy to buy. Those who used to protest belonged more to the middle class, because their standard of living was really affected. What is happening now is totally different,” Yeni says.
Florantonia, a Venezuelan journalist, confirms. “The truth is that the rejection of Maduro's government is enormous. This time there is a very big difference with respect to other protests (of 2014, 2017 and 2021), and that is that the lower social strata have come out en masse,” she says.
According to the tally sheets collected by the opposition, 70 percent of the population is against Maduro. Maduro and the National Electoral Council have not yet published the minutes that would confirm that Maduro won the elections.
Florantonia states that Maduro appears on television up to five times a day, comparing the opposition to Nazis and talking about Hitler all the time. She also says that nighttime is when there is the most repression against the protesters, when most of the arrests and violence take place. “Even though there is an atmosphere of mourning, people feel that this situation is not like the previous ones because the rejection we are feeling this time is generalized,” she says.
Yeni was greatly affected by hearing the sound of protests in this neighborhood; at that moment she understood that society's walls had fallen, just as her own family experienced in the weeks she had spent at home.
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Adela (not her real name), 38, left Venezuela in 2016, lived in Peru and returned to Venezuela six years later. She found everything different: from food brands to the mentality of the people.
“When I left, people blindly supported the government. The area where I live now is a popular city, an area that nearly 100 percent supported Chavez and where it was difficult to have a conversation where you criticized the government or suggested that a change was needed. Since I returned, I have noticed a huge change, as if a veil had been removed from people's eyes,” she says. “I have seen the same people, who used to blindly support Chavismo, crying the day after the elections because the government refuses to accept its defeat.”
Adela tells me that in the area where she lives, there have not been any demonstrations in the 25 years since the start of the Chávez government, since “red shirts” (government supporters) were the only ones who lived there.
For Adela, this turnaround is the most beautiful thing that could have happened to the Venezuelan people: to realize the deep division they have been victims of for so many years and to close this cycle.
“The government says the protesters are fascists, but that is not true. They are ordinary people, from popular neighborhoods, who finally take to the streets to condemn the fraud and ask for transparent results.”
Adela adds that “María Corina Machado [the leader of the opposition] has traveled deep into Venezuela and visited working-class communities, understanding the needs of the people. Throughout this time, she has held fast to her convictions and has demonstrated a genuine commitment to the common good.”
Adela believes that the only chance for the people to win is for state law enforcement to side with the people.
