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In 1998, 1999, 2000, 2006 and 2012… In the elections held in those years, Cristina Losada voted for the revolution. I saw Hugo Chavez as a leader; he followed orders to the letter, which is why he did not hesitate to vote for Nicolás Maduro in 2013. Today, his political vision is different. He no longer believes in 21st century socialism and wants to bring changes to his country.
Lozada is 54 years old; she works as a secretary and lives in the Ciudad Betania 2 urban development in Ocumare del Tuy, Miranda state. This is a residential complex built by the Great Venezuela Housing Corps, where Chavezmo won 88.17% of the votes in the 2018 presidential election, with 3,019 votes, when Cristina was still “on her knees”.
Although Losada moved out of the city planning area in 2022, his mother still lives there, so every weekend he goes to the city to reunite with his former neighbors.
“I took action to avoid political problems because different ways of thinking bring many inconveniences. There are some radical spokespersons who don’t accept that you can change your mind,” Lozada told Pitazo.
There was a time when she was also radical. Her dedication to revolution led her to confront neighbors and family members who did not agree with her ideals. He even threatened people who received bags sold by the Local Committee of Supply and Production (CLAP) because they did not participate in political activities. At elections, he would go from apartment to apartment so that voters could vote. Then he recorded them on a list.
“I practiced social control, it was an order. I will not deny that for years I was seduced by the language of Hugo Chavez, but little by little I became disillusioned. I realized that the social justice I preached did not exist. Today I am sorry,” she said.
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The turning point for them came in August 2020. Due to insecurity and the economic crisis exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic, their two children decided to leave the country. At that point they had been unemployed for two years, with their only income coming from government bonuses.
“From that moment I understood that young people have no future in this country. How can you buy a house? How can they become independent? Now I dream of them coming back, but they have the stability they can’t find here, and they’re afraid to come back,” he muses.
Cristina Losada has also experienced the failure of health services firsthand. In February 2021, his 24-year-old nephew came down with pneumonia, and he took him to the Ocumare del Tuy Hospital. There were no materials to make a plaque; nor were the required medicines, so they referred him to Caracas.
They went to four hospitals, but none of them treated him. He finally managed to get him admitted to the Dr. José Ignacio Baldo General Hospital (also known as El Algodonal Hospital). He died there two days later.
Inflation, shortages, low wages, corruption, the poverty of Venezuelans who rely on Clap bags for meals and poor public services also disappoint Losada. In the parish of Nueva Cúa, in the city of Betanha and in the municipality of Urdaneta, where he currently lives, they collect garbage every three months; water does not arrive regularly and there are daily power outages.
The border closure broke him down…
Luis Chacon*, an employee in the mayor’s office of Bolivar, a city in Táchira state that borders Colombia, shares Cristina’s frustrations.
Chacon supported Hugo Chávez and complied with all political decisions of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV); but in the process of doing this work he witnessed what he described as injustice in 2015.
That year, Nicolás Maduro ordered the border closed, leading to the deportation of more than 1,500 people, including the godparents of Chacón’s youngest son, who had lived in Venezuela for at least 40 years.
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“They were two hardworking and honest people who did not cause any problems in the community, even though they lived in the midst of an invasion. When they were evicted, they slept on the streets of La Parada, Colombia, until they rented a room,” she recalls with anger.
This was the first blow he received from the revolution. Then others came. Because the economic situation in the region had worsened since the border closure, many businessmen, some of whom were relatives of Chacón, were forced to close their businesses due to the crisis caused by the decision of the state administration in Caracas.
But the final blow came in October 2021, when the then mayor of Bolivar, William Gomez (PSUV), was arrested and forced to resign, replaced by another leader of the same party’s hopes.
For Chacon, this was an arbitrariness and an abuse of power, since Gómez was elected by popular vote and, in his opinion, governed well. From that point on, his support for the revolution disappeared, because at the same time he was disappointed with the failure to fulfill official promises.
“When Maduro won, they were going to give me a fridge, but it never arrived. When Freddy Bernal became governor, they promised to fix the leaks in the roof, but they didn’t do that either. I got claps, but I only ate sardines because rice had animals in it and flour was inedible,” he said.
Chacon is no longer considered Chavista. While the border has reopened, the consequences are insidious, and this part of Venezuela has yet to return to the way it once was.
The 57-year-old continues to work in the Chavista mayor’s office and hopes for a change in government in the country that will allow him to enjoy retirement and improve his later years.
Today, he is part of a group in the Pinto Salinas neighborhood of San Antonio del Tachira, and he actively supports the presidential candidacy of Edmundo González Urrutia, the Democratic Unity Platform (PUD).
“I won’t vote for them again.”
Basilio González voted for Hugo Chavez as President of the Republic five times and for Nicolás Maduro twice. In each election he worked hard for the victory of Chavismo until he felt himself destitute.
He was one of those who wore red, PSUV caps and T-shirts, attended every Chavista rally and joined CLAP as a street leader, but he resigned from this position in 2023.
“I always voted for Chavez, looking for hope, just as now I am looking for a way out, because this situation is intolerable,” the 60-year-old taxi driver told El Pitazo.
Corruption and declining purchasing power are two reasons why González threw away the PSUV costume. «Before 2012, I worked as a driver for a private company and used my driver’s salary to go to the supermarket to fill two cars. Now you don’t even have to be an engineer. “How could it be possible that a minister who was close to you, like your right-hand man, took your 23 billion without your knowledge?” asked González, who was detained for conspiracy to commit corruption.
González, who lives in the Las Marías neighborhood west of Maracaibo, a traditionally pro-government area, is the owner of two businesses, a security firm and a delicatessen, both of which have closed due to inflation, currency devaluation and failing public services.
“The disappointment started in 2015, when I closed the surveillance company. The salary was meager, not enough to sustain her. The breakup came in 2019, when I closed the delicatessen due to a power outage; the points were three days, the blackout lasted five, and I had to auction everything I had to pay. And then there was the disaster caused by Omar Prieto (then governor of Zulia),” he said, while hanging the Venezuelan flag and the Zulia flag on his terrace.
González voted for the ruling party’s Willy Casanova for mayor of Maracaibo in the 2018 regional elections, while Omar Prieto hopes the state will improve now that the three levels of government are from the same party. “I do regret those votes, what happened here is destruction.”
—What if you voted for Maduro?
-Of course. I have no regrets about Chavez.
Basilio received all the bonuses given by the Maduro government and the CLAP stock market, but he gave it away. “I received everything, but I will not vote for them again. There is a lot of corruption. They say that the sanctions affect us, but do not consider them as people, they are nice; fat, well-dressed, ”he claimed.
Taxi drivers washed Venezuelan and Zulia flags to attend a rally at the start of the campaign in support of opponent Edmundo González Urrutia on Thursday, July 4. “What I see in María Collina is the same thing I saw in Chavez when I first voted for him: a hope, a change,” he said, convinced that Maduriism has lost its followers.
However, Basilio already has a plan B, blurting out before the end of the interview: “If Maduro wins, I will go to the United States. I will be away for six years, until the next election.”
*Interviewee names have been changed for security reasons.
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Screenwriters: Rosanna Battistelli, Lorena Bonacelli and Natali Angulo
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