Caracas, Venezuela, during the Pérez presidency (1989) | Jose Angel Murillo V / Shutterstock
Highly charged protests continue to erupt in Venezuela following President Nicolás Maduro’s blatantly forged electoral results at the end of July. The US and 10 Latin American states have rejected Maduro’s unsubstantiated vote certification. But rather than face mounting pressure from the opposition to release evidence of the votes behind this so-called victory, Maduro’s brutal regime has opted to intensify ruthless repression. His government crackdown against protestors has already imprisoned at least 1,600 people—from teenagers to high-ranking politicians, former deputies, and electoral observers—and claimed 27 lives.
Since President Hugo Chávez died in 2013, his successor, Maduro, has been challenged with holding onto power without the benefit of sizable oil revenues or the charismatic appeal of his predecessor. The Maduro regime has instead resorted to widespread violence and electoral fraud, as evidenced by the widely rejected elections of July 28. Faced with a contested election that robbed them of a regime change, thousands of Venezuelans took to the streets in protest against the despotic government—many of them from low-income and rural areas. The Maduro regime responded with brutal repression, imprisoning and killing protestors. Opposition leaders remain confined in torture centers, and human rights advocates like Rocío San Miguel have been incarcerated and isolated since February 2024.
This wave of protests is reminiscent of those I witnessed as a child in Venezuela. In 1989, disaffected Venezuelans denounced a political class that had ignored their suffering. Instead of addressing growing poverty amongst the populace and corruption among the ruling class, then president Carlos Andrés Pérez implemented a neoliberal adjustment that enraged and alienated many. The resulting violent clash between the people and the repressive state marked a profound fracture in Venezuela’s representative democracy. Known as the Caracazo, “the big one,” this six-day uprising highlighted the devastating consequences of social exclusion and marginalization, exposing a political elite deaf to the people’s cries for justice. Official figures claim that approximately 300 people were killed in the protests; other estimates put the number closer to 3,000.
A few years later, Chávez orchestrated a coup against the same political class that had stained the streets with Venezuelan blood during the Caracazo. He quickly became a symbol of hope for marginalized Venezuelans. Chávez was a man of the people from humble origins, a soldier, and a coup leader embraced by the international left as a leader committed to redistributing wealth and combating injustices within Venezuela and beyond.
Chávez has been compared to Simón Bolívar, Venezuela’s most celebrated military and political leader, and his natural charisma and the substantial oil revenues of the time enabled him to rule with exceptional popularity. But under his increasingly corrupt leadership, Venezuela’s crumbling democracy faltered.
Chávez appointed loyalists to the Supreme Court and allies to Congress. Governors and mayors, eager to maintain the benefits of their proximity to power, danced to his tune. As human rights organizations looked on with growing alarm, dissenters like Judge María Lourdes Afiuni were imprisoned by presidential decree and subjected to severe mistreatment.
Yet the bond between Chávez and his followers seemed unbreakable, even as oil revenues plummeted and rampant corruption eroded any tangible benefits to the populace.
Now, the same supporters who once rallied behind Chávez’s regime face imprisonment and violence for supporting the opposition—while Maduro continues to invoke Chávez’s legacy as a justification for human rights abuses. The popularity that allowed Chávez to advance an anti-liberal agenda is being weaponized to destroy what remains of Venezuela’s fragile democracy. Even leftist leaders like Lula da Silva, who were previously prepared to overlook Maduro’s excesses, are distancing themselves from the regime in response to the bloodshed and suffering inflicted on Venezuela’s many low-income citizens.
The very people who stuck by Chávez as their champion have been betrayed outright by his heir, a tyrant who seems to have forgotten the lessons that oppressed Venezuelans taught the dismissive political classes in 1989. The country remains locked in a struggle between despotic brute force and brave civil resistance. The Caracazo of 1989 was the spark that ignited the Bolivarian Revolution led by Chávez. I can’t help but imagine the intense flame young Venezuelans are stoking in the streets today as they fight for their freedoms.
