Country Context
VENEZUELA
For two decades, Venezuela has been ruled by the Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV). During this time, which encompasses both the rule of Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro, PSUV has systematically empowered the presidency at the expense of all others state institutions.[i] Although he maintained high levels of popularity until his death in 2013, Chávez’s rule was characterized by manipulated elections, the elevation of military officers to civilian posts, attacks on the independence of the judiciary, harassment of the independent press and abuses against civil society and the political opposition.[ii] Maduro, Chávez’s chosen successor, continues this trend. Venezuela’s recent history is marked by a systematic closures of civic space, freedom of expression, freedom of thought and access to justice.
Oil prices sank from more than $100 per barrel in 2014 to under $30 per barrel in early 2016, which plunged Venezuela into economic, political and social crisis.[i] The country, a petrostate dependent on oil revenues, fell into a seven-year recession characterized by skyrocketing inflation and the scarcity of basic goods.[ii] As basic services ceased to function, the level of public corruption also became clear.[iii] The economic crisis eroded public support for Maduro and triggered a series of large demonstrations between the initial period of February–May 2014 and then again in April–July 2017. Thousands took to the streets to demand better living conditions and major structural political changes, but were met with violent state suppression. It is estimated that 18,000 people lost their lives due to violence from police and security forces between 2016 and 2019.[iv] Maduro’s popularity plummeted, but he won re-election in 2018 amid widespread reports of electoral fraud.[v]
Memory
Memory work in Venezuela can be characterized by two divergent paths. The first is the failure of state processes and institutions to promote public participation in truth-seeking and truth-telling. The second is ongoing efforts of CSOs and social movements to document state violence, repression and disproportionate use of force, particularly during periods of widespread social protest.
State and International Initiatives
The government of Venezuela has inaugurated a number of truth-seeking processes over the past decade, but none of them so far have resulted in meaningful truth-telling. Chávez established the Commission for Justice and Truth in 2011 under the Law to Punish Crimes, Disappearances, Torture and Other Human Rights Violations for Political Reasons in the Period 1958–1998.[i] This commission produced its final report in 2017, which included a list of victims of extrajudicial killing and enforced disappearance as well as recommendations toward non-recurrence. Maduro established two truth commissions, the National Commission for Truth, Justice, Attention to Victims and Peace in 2016 and the Commission for Truth, Justice, Peace and Public Tranquility (COVEJUSPAZ) in 2017, but neither has produced a final report.
Maduro inaugurated a fourth commission in January 2022 whose purpose is to investigate the historical truth of colonialism and its consequences.[ii] At the swearing-in of the members of the commission, several of whom are senior members of the government, Maduro announced that the commission “will show the looting that took place in Latin American and will demand justice and reparation from Spain, Portugal and other European countries.”[iii] The chair of the commission, Culture Minister Ernesto Villegas, later clarified that Venezuela would seek symbolic reparation in the form of apologies and requests for forgiveness.[iv]
These commissions, despite their ambitious objectives, have not improved the state of truth in Venezuela or meaningfully contributed to public memory. The membership of the commissions often represents a single political perspective and the commissions have not historically sought the participation of victims, their representatives, CSOs, academia or other sectors. They also do not uphold recognized international best practices for truth-seeking bodies. COVEJUSPAZ, for instance, lacked many necessary safeguards, such as an independent budget, civil society engagement, oversight or a regular reporting requirement. These failures have undermined the legitimacy of the commissions and made the public skeptical of any official truth-seeking process. In a 2018 report, UNOHCHR wrote that “all the relatives of victims who were interviewed indicated that they did not have confidence in [COVEJUSPAZ].”[v]
Memorialization and Public Memory
Civil society has also produced films, paintings and other art forms to commemorate victims and demand justice. “Lupa por la vida” is a virtual memory museum created by PROVEA, the Gumilla Center and the Center for Social Research and Social Action of the Jesuits in Venezuela, which uses testimonies from victims’ families to georeference extrajudicial executions in Venezuela’s recent history.[i] Organizations have also painted public murals to commemorate victims’ lives and experiences. For instance, a mural was painted in August 2022 to honor Juan Pablo Pernalete, a 20-year-old basketball player who was killed by the impact of a tear gas canister to his chest during the 2017 protests.[ii] The mural was painted on the house of Juan Pablo’s parents, who have sought justice for their son’s death for years, rather than in a public space, to symbolize the ways in which civil society has been constrained by the government.[iii]
Community and Civil Society Initiatives
Given the ongoing failure of the Venezuelan state to provide a transparent process through official truth commissions, civil society has carried the burden of preserving memory and seeking truth. Civil society efforts include initiatives to document past and ongoing human rights abuses, compile testimonies from the perspectives of victims and survivors and engage in public acts of memory.
Documenting Human Rights Abuses
Organizations such as the Committee of Relatives of Victims of the Caracazo (COFAVIC) and the Venezuelan Program for Human Rights Education (PROVEA) have collected and organized testimonies from across Venezuela. Their work focuses on different periods of recent Venezuelan history to establish a comprehensive picture of what Venezuelans have suffered over the past 60 years. For instance, PROVEA has spent 30 years “reconstructing the history of Venezuela from a human rights perspective.”[i] Its emblematic report, 25 Years of Extrajudicial Executions in Venezuela: 1995–2020, is an investigation of police and military lethality in the context of security operations and the excessive use of force in the context of social protests under the three governmental periods of Rafael Caldera, Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro.[ii]
The purpose of this documentation work is not only to document the past but also to oppose official narratives that minimize or ignore the role of state institutions. One example is Voices under Repression, an investigation conducted by COFAVIC that documents in detail the stories of 10 young people who were victims of extrajudicial execution and torture by state forces between 2014–2017 while exercising their right to protest. The publication’s main objective is to counteract the official story with “a rigorous investigation,” thus rescuing the history of emblematic cases, narrated by family members and highlighting the fight against impunity from a collective vision.[iii] Similarly, PROVEA’s FAES Does Not Depend on Anyone report investigates “the interventions of the National Police Special Forces (FAES) that produced fatal results on the Venezuelan population, from the moment of their activation, on July 14, 2017, until December 31, 2020.”[iv] The report reveals special forces as perpetrators of serious human rights violations and as an official expression of “vigilantism.”
Justice
Achieving justice in Venezuela requires overcoming a number of challenges. Justice sector institutions have high levels of corruption, have little transparency and have been largely controlled by interests within the current government. As a result, Venezuelans rarely consider the formal justice system as a means to resolve disputes, much less advance social cohesion.[i]
State-Led Accountability and Justice Mechanisms
One of the most serious ongoing concerns about the Venezuelan justice system is that judges are routinely subjected to political pressure to render judgments favorable to those in power. In 2021, a UN report concluded that “the independence of the judiciary has become deeply eroded…judges and prosecutors have…played a significant role in serious violations and crimes against real and perceived opponents, committed by various State actors.”[ii] Judicial branch sources reported that judges at all levels routinely receive orders on how to decide rulings, sometimes directly from high levels of the government or channeled through the Supreme Court of Justice leadership. Those judges who have not yielded to political pressure have been persecuted, denigrated and intimidated.[iii] These findings were echoed in a 2021 investigation by the International Commission of Jurists, which found that increasing executive control over the Supreme Court of Justice has negatively affected judicial independence at every level of the Venezuelan judicial system.[iv]
The National Assembly has adopted judicial reforms in recent years, although it is not clear that these reforms will improve the provision of justice. For instance, the National Assembly amended the Organic Code of Military Justice in September 2021 to prohibit trying civilians in military courts, but the Supreme Court of Justice ruled in December 2021 that military courts may retain jurisdiction over a civilian if approved by a military judge.[v] Similarly, a judicial reform bill approved in January 2022 reduced the number of Supreme Court magistrates but did not make other necessary changes related to the public prosecutor’s office or the use of discretionary appointment and removal of provisional judges.[vi]
International Accountability and Justice Mechanisms
In the absence of effective, unbiased state justice mechanisms, international justice actors have taken their own action. The ICC opened a preliminary investigation in 2018 into crimes committed by Venezuelan state agents since April 2017. This is a period not covered by any of the extant truth commissions. The weakness of the rule of law in Venezuela helped justify the preliminary review, particularly poor separation of powers, a high degree of impunity and the lack of impartiality of institutional procedures.[vii]
Other international mechanisms, such as the UN Fact-Finding Mission and UNOHCHR reports, have provided ongoing reporting on patterns of serious human rights violations.[viii] The Fact-Finding Mission concluded its last visit to Venezuela in July 2022, where it concentrated its investigations on the situation of people forced to flee Venezuela to escape abuses. In its subsequent report, released in September 2022, the Fact-Finding Mission said it had documented allegations of torture, SGBV and politically motivated violence by Venezuelan law enforcement and security services; a continued high level of extrajudicial killings in urban neighborhoods; ongoing intimidation and threats against independent press and human rights defenders; and extrajudicial killings, forced labor and sexual exploitation in border areas.[ix] The UN Human Rights Council (UN HRC) has renewed the mandate of the Fact-Finding Mission through 2024.[x]
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) has also established a monitoring mission for Venezuela. The Special Follow-up Mechanism for Venezuela (MESEVE), created by the IACHR in 2019, is responsible for documenting systematic human rights violations and supporting claims before the Commission.[xi] It is also tasked with working with victims and CSOs. The IACHR, drawing on MESEVE’s work, has filed numerous complaints with the Inter-American Court for Human Rights regarding violations of civil and political rights in Venezuela.
Community and Civil Society Contributions to Justice
CSOs have consistently advocated for an end to impunity, accountability for past abuses and reforms to prevent recurrence, including in the justice sector.[xii] In addition to public advocacy such as protests and information campaigns, civil society groups have also taken the lead in seeking accountability outside Venezuela’s compromised justice system. In September 2021, for instance, the Centro de Justicia y Paz (CEPAZ) published a legal analysis of how international courts could claim jurisdiction over Venezuelan human rights cases.[xiii]
Women-led organizations have worked particularly hard to draw attention to the diversity of human rights violations Venezuelans have experienced at the hands of the state, including widespread sexual violence and limited access to adequate employment, health care and justice.[xiv] Their impact can be seen at all levels, from community-based advocacy to the international sphere. At the community level, groups such as those that make up the Plataforma Con Ellas coalition compile credible information and reliable data, fight discrimination, provide gender-sensitive health care and employment opportunities and advocate for the particular needs of female migrants and refugees. Nationally, they document trends in violence against women and girls.[xv] Some examples include the work of the Venezuelan Observatory of Women’s Human Rights or the 2021 CEPAZ report Mujeres víctimas de la persecución y la criminalización en Venezuela.[xvi] At the international level, a group of feminist organizations testified before the IACHR in October 2021 about the challenges facing women and girls who seek justice in Venezuela. They identified a fundamental lack of information about women’s rights in the judicial system, insufficient protocols to protect victims who report crimes and a systemic failure to treat female victims with dignity.[xvii]
Civil society has also worked to build effective advocacy coalitions. In December 2022, a group of Venezuelan human rights organizations issued a statement reaffirming their commitment to ending “impunity for abuses and arbitrariness, grand corruption and irregularities, denial, deprivation of rights, discrimination and violence of any kind.”[xviii] They also promised to continue fighting for increased citizen participation in truth-seeking and accountability efforts.
Education
It is difficult to obtain current and reliable data on education in Venezuela, as the last census was conducted in 2011. The long-running economic crisis has caused 120,000 teachers to leave the profession.[i] Some parents have turned to private tutoring instead of sending their children to school, but this does not cover the educational deficit and reaches only a small portion of children.
The government of Venezuela does not provide public information on how Venezuela’s history of conflict is treated in the current standard curricula, but past administrations have used education as a tool to disseminate a narrative favorable to the ruling party. Educational policies implemented over the years have been based on the idea of using “education as a mechanism of ideological cohesion around the political project that orients the nation toward the model of 20th century socialism.”[ii] Chávez’s administration promoted the Bicentennial Collection, a set of history and mathematics texts for primary and secondary education with pro-Chávez propaganda.[iii]
CSOs have tried to provide alternative sources of information. For instance, PROVEA published El acecho de una silenciosa exclusión, a book about Venezuelan rock music that has been excluded from public media because the government only provides space for those who echo a pro-government ideology.[iv]
Recommendations
International donors should support Venezuelan-led efforts to bring diaspora communities together for collective memorialization, creating and preserving memorials and broadening channels for disseminating information about the past.
The government of Venezuela should establish a Steering Committee for the COVEJUSPAZ to ensure accountability and compliance with its mandate. The Steering Committee should be independent of state authorities.
COVEJUSPAZ should develop and implement protocols to share information with victims, survivor communities and CSO, not only to address its trust deficit but also to demonstrate how education can include narratives from diverse political perspectives.
Notes
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