Yusbelis Álvarez lives in Maca, Petare, with her mother and her little son. The photos of her sister and niece not only reignite in her the absence of her beloved; they also revive in her the horror of a night when a bunch of demons came in through the roof and took their lives.
As if they were replicas of an earthquake, the general blackout of the first days of March was followed by a looting spree in Maracaibo that left approximately 500 shops with basically no chance to recover. The Brisas del Norte Hotel, which is located in a neighborhood with the same name, was one of them.
Karina had gone to Barranquilla to look for a sustenance that she did not get in Maracaibo, in the northwest of Venezuela. On July 20, 2017, she received a call from home. Jean Luis, her second son, only 15 years old, had been shot dead during protests staged in her neighborhood.
The afternoon of January 23, a day of citizen protests throughout Venezuela, Luis José y Alexander were caught in a violence swirl that took place in the middle of the town of Tinaquillo, Cojedes state. Trying to flee, the high school students were intercepted by national guards who beat them savagely and took them to the command…
Amidst the protests that took place in El Limón, in the state of Aragua, the Special Actions Forces (FAES) detained 11 teenagers, on January 24, 2019. A judge ordered their detention, and eight days later, in a special court hearing – ordered by no law-, they were released under precautionary measures. This is the story of one of them.
On the night of January 23, hours after congressman Juan Guaidó sworn in as interim president of the Republic, the Bolivarian National Police’s Special Action Forces (FAES, by its Spanish acronym) repressed protests in low-income areas that had been long considered strongholds of Chavismo. They arrived in Petare’s José Félix Ribas, instilling terror among neighbors.
Thirty people were traveling from Falcon, a Venezuela’s Mid-Western, to the Dutch island of Curacao, in a speedboat with capacity for 15, which capsized in an area of turbulent waters. Among them were the husbands of Nereida and Normery, two sisters from a family in La Vela who know very well the meaning of illegally cross the ocean.
It was Sunday morning, March 10. The engineer Manuel Martínez and his thirteen-year-old son were coming back to their apartment on the 7th floor of a building in La Urbina neighborhood, in Caracas. Just after they got in the elevator, there was a blackout that left them caught halfway between two floors. Neighbors rushed to help.
Ana could not handle the great and constant changes involving her daily life. She ended suffering an adjustment disorder and an acute depression. Since her diagnosis, she has been resting, far from the school where she taught plastic arts and which became a hostile environment for her.
One November morning of 2015, one of the five children of Edgar Carpio and Eladia Guarisma borrowed a bicycle and rode away from his home located in San Felix, southern Venezuela. His plan was to begin a new life, but he never came back home. Witnesses saw police officers taking him away.
