The children of Victor Bustos wail and cling to his coffin in the living room of his modest home, struggling to comprehend his death during a protest against the disputed reelection of President Nicolas Maduro.
“They took his life unfairly, he was not a bad person, not a criminal,” said the victim’s weeping cousin Jennifer Ibarra.
Francisco Bueno, another cousin of the 35-year-old worker, said he was shot, “supposedly at the hands of the police” in Valencia, in the northern state of Carabobo.
He said security forces “were shooting, and they weren’t shooting with pellets but with real bullets. And now my cousin is dead.”
Victor Bustos was one of thousands of Venezuelans who took to the streets on Monday and Tuesday after officials declared Maduro the winner of the election.
The opposition cried foul, claiming its candidate, Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, was the rightful victor. The United States, the European Union and several Latin American nations have demanded the release of detailed voting data.
According to witness accounts, Victor, a former plastics worker and the father of a 16-year-old girl and two boys aged 10 and one, was shot in the chest on Tuesday.
“If you are at a peaceful protest, they should not use force or shoot at citizens. They cannot kill the country, the populace, the people who go out just to defend their vote, to fight for a better Venezuela,” said Bueno.
Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who was barred from running and is backing Gonzalez Urrutia, denounced a “cruel and repressive escalation by the regime” in a message posted on the social network X.
In an opinion piece published by the Wall Street Journal on Thursday, she accused state security forces of killing at least 20 Venezuelans.
“Most of our team is in hiding… I could be captured as I write these words.”
‘He’s not a terrorist’
The toll of these deaths is compounded by the imprisonment facing hundreds of protesting detainees who both prosecutors and the Maduro government describe as “criminals” and “terrorists” allegedly hired by the opposition to destabilize Venezuela.
Dozens of relatives have gathered in front of a military barracks in Valencia anxiously awaiting news of their loved ones.
According to the NGO Foro Penal, 46 people have been arrested in Valencia alone.
Niurka Mendoza, 38, has not heard from her son Angel, 19, since he was arrested during a demonstration on Monday.
“They told me that they arrested him because he was in the protests and they are accusing him of terrorism. It’s not true, he is not a terrorist,” says Mendoza. She said that her son was arrested along with two minors.
Attorney General Tarek William Saab said Wednesday that 1,062 people were being held.
The charges they face include “inciting hatred” and “terrorism,” a crime that carries the maximum penalty in Venezuela: 30 years in prison.
“There will be no clemency, there will be justice,” said Saab, a government loyalist.
Luis Armando Betancourt, coordinator of the NGO Foro Penal in Carabobo, said that detainees have not been granted access to their families or lawyers.
“A very popular phrase spoken by our liberator Simon Bolivar was: ‘Cursed be the soldier who raises his weapons against the people,'” said Adonis Alvarado, another relative of Victor Bustos, in reference to the Venezuelan military officer who led multiple countries to independence from Spain.
“And that is what happened. They raised their weapons against the people and my cousin ended up being killed on the spot.”
