Carmen Teresa Navas has died. She had traveled through Venezuela for 16 months like the mothers of ancient wars: asking the living about their son and searching for him among the dead. His heart gave no more. Sadness finally defeated her.
But this was not what killed her.
Venezuelans are in mourning, a deep and indignant mourning. For weeks, they had followed the search on social networks for their son, Víctor Hugo Quero Navas, disappeared by the security forces in the first days of January 2025. This is how they knew that they were trying to find out his whereabouts. He always received evasion, rudeness and humiliation. “They call me annoying. What are you doing here complaining!” she said. When she applied for amnesty for her missing son, a judge argued that she did not qualify. But she didn’t let up. Due to his insistence, the Ministry of Penitentiary Services finally had to recognize that Víctor Hugo Quero had died in July of last year, the victim of a gastrointestinal condition aggravated by the physical deterioration resulting from inhumane prison conditions.
Discovering that his death had been hidden for almost a year, keeping Navas’ hope of recovering his son alive, generated a wave of indignation inside and outside the country. But this didn’t break her either. On the contrary, with the strength she had left, the octogenarian identified his body in a common grave and had it moved to another cemetery. Their love and tenacity had managed to unearth an atrocious truth that power had done everything they could to hide underground, bringing to light the darkest mechanisms of a dictatorship. In solidarity, many Venezuelans accompanied her last week to a massive mass to honor the memory of Victor Hugo. “You see me here upright, with my body present, right? But you don’t know how I feel inside,” it is said on the networks that she said days before she died. By then, this street vendor’s heart had survived too long, and it suddenly gave out.
It has been repeated a lot in these hours that it killed her to find the truth about the death of Victor Hugo. It is a valid opinion. But I dare to guess that it was not the discovery of the truth that killed her. The uncertainty, cynicism, violence and lies behind the forced disappearance of her son killed her. It is, in reality, a double state murder: those who disappeared Victor Hugo, hid his traces and wanted to erase his death, also took his brave mother to the grave. The terror begins with the arbitrary arrest of a man and ends with a mother becoming a psychological hostage of deception, uncertainty and bureaucratic humiliation.
The tragedy of Victor Hugo and Carmen Teresa can be summarized as follows: a mother who goes through the ruined labyrinth of a tyrannical power to rescue her son discovers, in the end, that it is too late. It is a story as Venezuelan as it is universal. Since the time of Euripides, mothers like Carmen Teresa and Hecuba have failed to rescue their children when they collide with historical forces that overwhelm and destroy them.
But Carmen Teresa is not the only Trojan of Chavismo. He remembered it this week: “There are already five mothers of political prisoners who have died in recent months. The mother of Dr. Yéspica Dávila, who died hours after her son’s release, without being able to hug each other. Yarelis Salas, who died of a heart attack while guarding outside the prison where her boy was. [Kevin Orozco]. Omaira Navas, whom she did not see two weeks after her son Ramón was released. Jenny Barrios, who left with her son, Diego Sierralta, still imprisoned. Five mothers in six months, dead outside prisons without anyone counting them as victims. Without appearing in any record. As if his pain was invisible. As if their lives did not matter.” In each of these cases, the State was an active agent of death by breaking the contract that obligates it to ensure the well-being of its citizens. Five Venezuelan Hecubas that no one counts among the fallen.
The case of Víctor Hugo and Carmen Teresa also offers a devastating lesson. In Venezuela, political violence did not end on January 3 with the capture of Nicolás Maduro by the United States. It continues despite the decrease in repression, changes in discourse, the amnesty and the supposed re-institutionalization of the country. It is overwhelming: 336 people were murdered by police officers and members of the Armed Forces in 2025. This year, arbitrary arrests have continued. As of May 11, there were 454 political prisoners in prisons, including 187 soldiers, 41 women and one teenager, according to the .
Beyond the numbers, the underlying problem is that the repressive structure is still in place: torture, solitary confinement, concealment of information, impunity, henchmen, the DGCIM, the Sebin, the GNB, the PNB, the DAET, the armed groups. All that is still there, and so are their bosses. Until they leave, the Rodrigato It will be nothing more than a de facto regime. And as long as they continue, there will be more mothers in the labyrinth.
This morning other Venezuelans carried the remains of Carmen Teresa to the cemetery, where she would be buried next to Victor Hugo. The crowd that accompanied her until her last rest cried out:
For justice to arrive, Venezuela can no longer be governed by force and fear. We must put an end to the repressive apparatus. This is the acid test for the brothers Delcy and Jorge Rodríguez. But what matters most in politics is the human: no transition will be real as long as Venezuelan mothers continue looking for children in prisons, hospitals, morgues, and mass graves. Enough already!
