MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Angered Venezuelans take to the streets to protest against Sunday's alleged fraud

Maduro said a coup d'état was in the making

Venezuelans took to the streets Monday bringing down four statues of former Bolivarian leader Hugo Chávez Frías and storming key places nationwide in an apparent drive to overthrow President Nicolás Maduro, who they claimed, had won Sunday's elections through fraud.

Videos went viral on social networks of police taking off their uniforms and handing their weapons to the rebel groups, which would prove that Maduro is not as protected from society as he might have thought. However, some squads were reported to have opened fire against civilians. In addition, Chavist “colectivos” (paramilitary gangs) supported the government, which launched an appeal to all its followers to gather around the Miraflores presidential palace on Tuesday.

The opposition insists that it has the minutes to prove that their candidate had defeated the incumbent Maduro by a landslide and that what the National Electoral Council (CNE) was a fabrication. In a press conference Monday afternoon, disenfranchised opposition leader María Corina Machado and candidate Edmundo González Urrutia told foreign reporters that their struggle would go on. “I speak to you with the calmness of the truth,” González Urrutia said. “We have in our hands the tally sheets that demonstrate our categorical and mathematically irreversible victory.”

Machado said tally sheets showed Gonzalez Urrutia had received around 6.2 million votes against Maduros 2.7 million. “A free people is one that is respected, and we are going to fight for our freedom,” Urrutia concurred. “Dear friends, I understand your indignation, but our response from the democratic sectors is of calmness and firmness.”

Images of Maduro were turned down by angered crowds as riot police and soldiers were deployed in Caracas to keep protesters from approaching the presidential palace. Over 20 security personnel were injured, Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez said.

1.26pm | #29J Se prenden focos de protestas en Caracas: Catia, Petare, Caricuao, el Centro, La Dolorita, Barrio la Agricultura, 23 de Enero. Bloquean la autopista CCS-La Guaira. pic.twitter.com/CAEAAqAPy1

— Helena Carpio (@HeleCarpio) July 29, 2024

Maduro accused the opposition of attempting “a coup d’etat in Venezuela,” while Machado and Gonzále Urrutia insisted they were seeking to solve the issue through peaceful means.

“We have never been moved by hatred. On the contrary, we have always been victims of the powerful,” Maduro said in a nationally televised ceremony. “An attempt is being made to impose a coup d’état in Venezuela again of a fascist and counterrevolutionary nature.”

“We already know this movie, and this time, there will be no kind of weakness,” he added, saying that Venezuela’s “law will be respected,” Maduro went on as rioters were said to have blocked the road linking Caracas with the Simon Bolivar International Airport and other key sectors.

In the meantime, the Venezuelan regime announced it was withdrawing its diplomatic personnel from seven Latin American countries that did not recognize Sunday's official outcome, which Caracas dubbed as “interfering actions and statements” by “right-wing governments subordinated to Washington.”

“The Government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, in view of this nefarious precedent that attempts against our national sovereignty, decides to withdraw diplomatic personnel from the missions in Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Peru, Panama, Dominican Republic, and Uruguay,” Foreign Minister Yván Gil said through X. The note also demanded that these nations should pull their staff from “Venezuelan territory” given their administrations “openly” committing “the most sordid ideological postulates of international fascism” as they tried to reinstate “the failed Lima Group.”