Caracas Chronicles

“Tell me if anything happens, please. This cannot stand,” Clara wrote as she woke up to find the streets deserted.

An unbearable quiet settled over La Dolorita in southern Petare on the morning of Monday, July 29th. No one in the barrio could believe Nicolás Maduro’s victory, which Elvis Amoroso, president of the electoral board CNE, had announced as “irreversible” with 20% of the voting tallies pending to be counted.

By noon, fireworks and gunshots mingled with the clatter of banging pots and pans across Distrito Capital and several low-income communities in Caracas. While the opposition worked to gather voting tallies to prove that the announced victory of Maduro was a fraud, multitudes took to the streets, claiming the triumph of Edmundo González Urrutia as their own.

The uprising—massive, spontaneous, and simultaneous—spread from areas like Petare, Catia, El Valle, and Minas de Baruta to the middle-class neighborhoods. On social media, videos showed crowds reaching places like O’Leary Square, near Miraflores Palace, something unseen since the events of April 2002.

“Things are getting scary,” Clara wrote then, as she walked down to the city with her neighbors from San Blas de Petare. “I’m praying to God for this to end, hoping there won’t be a massacre.”

Hundreds of people surrounded the Supreme Court, the Chief Prosecutor’s office, and the police line guarding Miraflores Palace.

Over the horizon, as demonstrators and anti-riot soldiers began exchanging tear gas canisters and stones, smoke covered the White Palace, which is part of the Miraflores presidential complex.

In a voice message to the ruling party leadership, Maduro summoned PSUV militants and his remaining supporters to defend his rule: “Coordinate with National Police (PNB) and Guard (GNB) to restore order,” he commanded. “We have to grab this by the head. Act immediately. Every little fire that starts must be extinguished.”

“In Catia, everyone was pouring into the streets, heading toward the city. We wanted to go to the CNE and demand answers because we knew Edmundo had won by a landslide. At the voting queues, we all knew each other; we know the truth,” Luisa explained. “They sent police and guard units, but we kept marching on.”

People from La Silsa, Gramoven, Propatria, Magallanes, and other parts of Catia reached the exit to the Caracas-La Guaira highway, but GNB and PNB contained them. The shock groups arrived next.

“When colectivos showed up, it turned ugly. They stole two bikes from the boys, beat another, and started shooting. We resisted for a while, but people kept coming out,” Ivonne added.

On the morning of July 29th, while the Comando por Venezuela celebrated a de facto triumph of more than 30 points over Maduro—after processing 73% of the voting tallies—demonstrators returned home under the watchful eyes and cannons of colectivos and security forces.

Two sovereignties in conflict

On July 28, Venezuela’s government—perhaps dazzled by its own misreading of the situation—became exposed to electoral reality. The barrio, emerging as a new agent of change, slapped chavismo in the face, forcing it to embrace the only version of sovereignty Maduro understands: the power to dictate who lives, who dies, and who goes to jail, echoing the words of Cameroonian social theorist Achille Mbembe.

For chavismo, sovereignty means the right to kill and subdue.

In a context where hundreds of thousands of people volunteered to defeat Maduro at the polls and then protect the evidence of their collective will, the brute force unleashed since July 29 seeks to destroy the spirit and hunger for change that Machado’s campaign activated.

As Chávez statues were toppled and Maduro posters torn down, the government, from its trenches in Miraflores and Fuerte Tiuna, tried to convince international mediators that Amoroso’s announced result wasn’t up for discussion. At the same time, it turned on all engines of its war machine, including an overblown rhetoric that doesn’t even pretend to be logical. Maduro, Diosdado Cabello, and Jorge Rodríguez have labeled those who oppose them—from local politicians to foreign governments, even on the left—as Nazis or fascists, describing demonstrators as drugged criminals from the U.S. and cells from the international criminal organization Tren de Aragua.

A week after the election, human rights NGO Foro Penal confirmed 1,102 arrests, with 170 of them in Caracas. Monitor de Víctimas reported 23 murders so far, with colectivos responsible for at least 9, operating in total sync with State security officers.

Colectivos and snitching networks

In just a few hours, government violence redrew the heatmap in the parts of Caracas that roared on July 29. “When night comes, we all need to be home, in Petare and here in Catia, because of colectivos,” Luisa told Caracas Chronicles. “We can go out, but by 6 pm, we must be indoors, because they aren’t accountable and can kill anyone on the spot.”

Like paramilitary forces fighting a hybrid war, colectivos work as PSUV’s fist in the areas where the chavista State holds more economic and social power over a population now turning its back on them. Their priority is to defend their government sponsors at gunpoint.

The offensive reached the doors of those who took to the streets the Monday after the presidential election. A video from that day shows a man on a bike recording himself while chasing demonstrators, saying to the camera: “Here we are, prepared to defend peace and our principles. We want peace, but we are prepared for war. In Venezuela, it was our president Nicolás Maduro who won. Guarimberos (a slur for protesters) ran to hide in their homes. From now on, we take over the streets that have always belonged to us, not to oligarchs!”

Communal councils and what’s left of the Hugo Chávez Battle Units—PSUV grassroots structures forming a sort of parallel chavista State—have been ordered to identify, locate, and point out anyone who called out the election fraud in different communities.

Under this war logic, anyone who poses a threat to those in power becomes a target for colectivos and security forces: demonstrators hiding in safe houses, people who showed their voting tallies or denounced the fraud on social media, and community leaders and members of comanditos who promoted participation and defended votes for Edmundo González.

On Tuesday the 30th, in the densely populated (and formerly very chavista) 23 de Enero area, PNB detained four boys—three of them teenagers—who were banging pots on the eighth floor of a building. Caracas Chronicles obtained voice notes sent by leaders in communal councils in Distrito Capital. In one of them, a woman hoped that someone would “shoot escuálidos (classic chavista hate speech for opposition folk)” to get them in line “while Maduro decides to call the army. At least I saw colectivos giving them hell. If they catch anyone, they will make a pulp out of him… and they are hiding between our buildings.”

A WhatsApp chain message shared with neighbors in San José, in downtown Caracas, read: “We call on mothers, families: advise your kids and don’t help the Right. After all this, the opposition leaders wash their hands and continue their trips and lavish lifestyles while our young people fall under the weight of law and order. We can’t cry after that happens. Women, defend your households and protect them from destabilizing plans.”

Caracas Chronicles reached out to one activist who organized volunteers in Western Caracas on July 28, who has since gone into hiding along with about eleven colleagues. Colectivos started hunting for her the minute after the opposition rejected Amoroso’s results. From her hiding place, the woman sent videos showing how CICPC and DAET patrols have assisted colectivos in taking over the barrios.

DAET, which replaced the infamous FAES death squads, highlights the scope of Maduro’s policy against the poor, which has progressively mutilated human rights and living conditions for those with the least. Meanwhile, the regime sustains an oppressive minority of party militants, colectivos, CLAP clerks, police officers, and intelligence personnel with privileged access to institutional networks and State resources.

According to psychologist Andrés Antillano, these inequalities within low-income groups generate fear, distrust, and resentment in the barrio—where chavista groups impose the status quo by marking enemies and controlling those who criticize the government.

A noticeable pattern in this repressive wave has been the indiscriminate attacks on teens and young people who have known no other president than Maduro.

Foro Penal reports that 9% of detainees are underage. Among the 23 Venezuelans killed so far, 15 were between 15 and 30 years old. Four of them were teenagers.

For Luisa, young men in barrios are the most eager for a change in government: “They don’t want to leave their country. They registered to vote for the first time to oust Maduro.”

Knock-knock: the police are at home

At 9:00 pm on August 6th, María Oropeza was arbitrarily detained from her home by the DGCIM, the military intelligence corps deeply involved in atrocities under investigation by NGOs and international institutions. “They are entering my house. They don’t have any search warrant. They are destroying my door. I ask for help. I didn’t do anything wrong. I am not a criminal. I am only a citizen who wants a different country,” she said in a live video she managed to record while the officials were breaking into her property. One minute later, the screen went black.

María was the leader of the campaign team for Edmundo González in the Coche parish, and that afternoon, she helped the demonstration against Maduro’s electoral fraud reach Caricuao and La Rinconada. After a week of failed attempts to bring charges against her, DGCIM handed her to the prison system, which kept her in an overcrowded, inhumane, maximum-security prison: her legal status has not been determined yet.

Last week, late at night, the DGCIM posted a reel on their Instagram account announcing their new “campaign” and security operation, “Operación Tun Tun,” with the hashtag #sinllorader (#nowhining). In the background, a song played: “Children take care! Please be aware. All that you’ve done will come to bear!”

“They knock on your door, and if you don’t open it, they will destroy it,” said a neighbor from Quinta Crespo, Caracas.

“Operación Tun Tun,” which translates to Operation Knock-Knock, isn’t new. Diosdado Cabello first announced it on his TV show “El Mazo Dando” in 2017, during three months of Venezuelan protests, to target people he considered “terrorists.” This time, the DGCIM, along with other police forces like the CICPC, led by Douglas Rico, not only released this video with its intimidating song but also shared images with WhatsApp and Signal phone numbers, urging people to report anyone allegedly involved in a “physical or virtual hate campaign through social media.”

This operation targets everyone who worked on election day as witnesses or as part of a “comandito” (the opposition grassroots group involved in collecting voting records), those who protested, and even people posting on social media in support of González Urrutia, Machado, or anyone expressing disagreement with chavismo.

On Saturday night, Cabello showcased various Venezuelans detained under “Operación Tun Tun” across the country on his TV show, using the hashtag #PeaceHasArrived.

“They’re entering the homes of anyone who speaks badly of Maduro. They have all the data: address, name, age, everything,” said someone from Valencia, a city two hours away from Caracas.

Other security forces, like the Táchira Police, published “wanted” notices with pictures of young men, labeling them “leader guarimberos.” Even before the elections, Nicolás Maduro had warned that there would be a “bloodbath and fratricidal civil war caused by the fascists” if he didn’t win on July 28.

Checkpoints, Curfews, and Surveillance

In addition to raiding homes, various security forces, including DAET, PNB, GNB, and local police, have set up checkpoints in different Venezuelan cities to seize and inspect mobile phones.

“They threaten you and demand your phone. Then, they order you to open WhatsApp and search for key phrases like ‘hasta el final,’ María Corina Machado, comandito, etc.,” a person from Caracas revealed.

The surveillance, targeting, and persecution of citizens extend to other social media platforms like Telegram. Public figures and activists have reported the existence of various Telegram channels created to post pictures of people involved in election day activities or peaceful demonstrations. Some of these channels, like “Caza Guarimbas” or “Controla las Guarimbas,” were shut down by the platform after being reported for promoting violence.

In these channels, users could see messages like “Edmundo is a killer” or pictures of young individuals accused of being responsible for hate crimes (as defined in Maduro’s Hate Law).

This manhunt has created a new environment in the country. People are deleting WhatsApp chats, activating disappearing messages, and sending important information to relatives abroad so they can spread the word about what’s happening inside the country. Some have had to leave their homes and find places to hide.

The situation has also changed how people gather in the streets. For example, during María Corina Machado’s demonstration last Saturday, journalists refrained from recording participants’ faces. Even Machado, who had recently expressed fear for her life in The Wall Street Journal, appeared in public covered with a hood before climbing onto a bus.

Resistance and Collective Awareness

“Terror, an essential ingredient of totalitarianism, seeks to rule over anyone—guilty or not, activist or bystander—to turn the population into a compressed mass, depleted of any discourse, agency, or capacity to act.”

— Hannah Arendt

Understanding that loneliness and despair are fertile ground for totalitarianism, Maduro and his elite are trying to break the connections people have built, isolating citizens once again from the democratic cause—even more so those who directly promoted and defended the vote in the presidential election.

How can we fight this? If terror seeks to deny what happened at polling stations on July 28th and the intrinsic political condition of voters, the first step is to raise the voice of truth, convinced that, no matter the violence that followed, on that day, Venezuelans spoke with resounding clarity.

Secondly, being strong and resilient doesn’t only mean protesting in the streets. To remain active in defending the true results, we must protect ourselves, stay alert, and manage our energies carefully.

“They want to intimidate us, to prevent us from talking to each other. Fear won’t paralyze us,” Machado said on August 3rd to demonstrators in Bello Monte. “Don’t let yourselves be intimidated, don’t fall into depression, don’t lose your morale under the forces that seek to sever our communication and sow fear in us.”

For those who risked their lives in the last several weeks and months of campaigning, protection from state terror means moving between hiding places and waiting for an embassy in Caracas to process dozens of refugee requests.

“I’m asking for international help to see if I can get asylum inside my country because I’m not leaving,” said another activist from Petare that we contacted for this story. In her organization alone, three people have been arrested. “If I don’t get it (asylum), I have to keep moving and go out and march. Maduro has to give up power. We don’t want more blood spilled on our streets.”

For others, staying in the streets protesting to the very end is just impossible. “Now, the end of this is in God’s hands,” said Richard, who volunteered on the 28th and went out to demonstrate in Catia the next day. “I’ve been running around on my bike and saw things are getting quiet again. We already took a huge step.”