Statues of Hugo Chavez across Venezuela target of post-election unrest

LA GUAIRA, Venezuela (AP) — Anti-government activists across Venezuela are toppling giant statues of Hugo Chávez to express their anger over the alleged theft of the election by the late president’s hand-picked successor, Nicolás Maduro.

In the coastal town of La Guaira, outside the capital Caracas, deformed rebar and chunks of concrete lie beneath a plinth where a group of protesters on Monday night pulled down an effigy of Chávez unveiled by Maduro in 2017.

Video provided to The Associated Press by a protester shows the moment the 12-foot-tall statue of the leader, known as El Comandante, was pulled down amid shouts of “this government is going to fall.” After the statue was removed, it was dragged through the square on motorcycles, doused with gasoline and set alight, the protester said.

“This is a powerful symbol for them,” said the protester, who asked not to be named for fear of arrest. “Every time we take one of their symbols, we take away some of their power.”

This is not the first time that monuments honoring the creator of the so-called Bolivarian Revolution have been attacked by angry crowds. The same phenomenon occurred during waves of anti-government uprisings in 2017 and 2019.

A statue of former President Hugo Chavez is removed from its pedestal, a day after opposition protests against the re-election of Chavez’s protégé, President Nicolas Maduro, in La Guaira, Venezuela, Tuesday, July 30, 2024, two days after the election. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)

Photo: ASSOCIATED PRESS/Matias Delacroix

But the simultaneous nature and high number of attacks — five in the past 24 hours — underscores the depth of the anger felt by many Venezuelans after the National Electoral Council declared Maduro the winner of Sunday’s presidential election. The opposition says its candidate, Edmundo Gonzalez, more than doubled the incumbent president’s vote.

A plainclothes military intelligence officer stopped journalists who were trying to take pictures of what was left of the destroyed statue in La Guaira. The officer, who did not identify himself, said the country was “at war” and that any attempt to disrespect Chávez was offensive to millions of Venezuelans who revere the former army paratrooper and anti-imperialist icon.

Maduro said several people had been arrested in the attacks, and compared the attacks to images of revolutions fomented by the US in former Soviet states including Ukraine and Georgia.

“What do these people have in their minds? In their hearts?” Maduro asked in a televised address Monday night, during which he aired images of some of the attacks. “Imagine what they could do if they ever got power here.”

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