Photo: UVL
Complaint and protest are the only options left to the relatives of detainees in the post-electoral context in the state of Lara, and who were transferred to Tocuyito. They described the visit they were allowed after almost two weeks after their arrival at the Carabobo prison as a heartbreaking reunion. They saw them skinny and unrecognizable.
“I didn’t recognize my husband, he was emaciated, too thin, he was chivuo“, one of the affected people said in a broken voice from Barquisimeto.
Everything was shocking to her. Her husband could not speak, he did not have the strength to project his voice. “They told me that it is fine, but only them and the people who are there with them are the ones who know the day to day, because they tell us that they are fine, but the reality is that they are not.”
Before that visit that they were allowed on October 3, after several that were suspended since August 25 when they were transferred to Tocuyitothe relatives thought that they were being given at least three meals a day. But what they found is that they are not even allowed to receive natural light.
They were also not allowed to bring in personal hygiene items or medications. “He didn’t want to tell me any information, I don’t know if it was because there were guards around the visit.”.
The wife of another of the detainees also left Tocuyito shocked. “They are very skinny, without spirit, We don’t know how they are really being treated there.. That is why we ask that they be treated well, and that they be released, because they are all innocent.”
The experience of visiting Tocuyito
Traumatic. With that word the wife of another of the detainees in Lara defined the visit in the Tocuyito prison.
“I had never gone through this process in my life. I was scared because there were many officials, all hooded, they did not have identification or anything that would tell me a last name or a name, we did not see faces, only nicknames like the snake, the pirate, things like that.”
Upon entering the Tocuyito prison, they received a talk in which they were informed that they could not touch their relatives or approach them, otherwise they would be handcuffed and taken away or, if a second visit was authorized, they would not be allowed. would allow them.
“They escorted us to a room, to a place where they took some photos and some information of us, then to another room where they kept us there for a while to go into a long hallway. Before that they searched us, they put us through a machine, as well as to see the metals, then they put us in some rooms where we took off our clothes, they didn’t particularly touch me or anything.”
The next thing was to walk down a long hallway, where there were some long counters and there were his relatives with their hands tied with a seal. They couldn’t hug them, or get close, just talking for 40 minutes in front of armed and hooded officials.
“They looked totally neglected, my husband is fat and excessively thin and he looks pale, hairy and they did not even allow us to give him a bottle of water or bath soap.”
When they came out they gave them another talk. “They told us that we should be spokespersons that we had seen them well and that they were being cared for. I, sincerely, I left there in crisis and panic, I couldn’t stop crying”.
Their anguish increased when, before leaving Tocuyito, they were told that this would be their only visit. “The wait for answers extends to weeks, we have spent 15 to 20 days in uncertainty regarding the prison.”
Being residents of the Lara state, the situation for them becomes very complicated. “Moving to Valencia costs us a lot, the expense is quite heavy.”
His family nucleus is small with only three people who work. “We have neighbors and friends who have collaborated a lot.”
Protest and demand
Fear took over the family members until this Tuesday, October 8, when they decided to protest in front of the national building, where the Lara courts are located.
A group of relatives protested at the doors of the Lara courts (Photo: Courtesy)
“The days continue to pass, they have not been presented in court for the preliminary hearing and yesterday my husband called me again from Tocuyito and only asked how I was.”
Other detainees have expressed in these calls that they are desperate and ask their loved ones to do something to get out of jail.
“My husband is a father of a family, he has three girls, I don’t work, I can’t work because I have a month-old baby, he is the breadwinner of my home and he is innocent, because the day my husband was arrested, my husband “I was working.”
Access to information about the legal status of detainees is scarce. “We go to Caracas and they bully us, they don’t give us the names of their lawyer or details of their public defender“said the aunt of one of the detainees.
Although they know that there are lawyers from the Public Ministry involved, they lack clarity about their identity and role.
The situation is further complicated by the suspension of hearings. “Some were already scheduled for yesterday and today and they were suspended.”
Arrests without legal basis
On July 31, around 6:30 pm, one of these Laren residents was arrested. That day, like so many others, he was working at his job as a rubber tapper, repairing a motorcycle.
“He went out to test the motorcycle he was fixing and stopped at a warehouse near our house. That’s when a group of officials appeared and arrested him. They didn’t tell him why. He explained to them that he was working, that he was not doing anything wrong. But they pointed it out immediately: since he was full of grease and dirty, they told him that he was in the guarimba.”
From that moment, everything changed for that family. He is the father of three girls and is now in the Tocuyito prison, more than 100 kilometers away. “He has been there for 70 days. At the first hearing, on August 6, they told him that he would be subjected to 45 days of investigation, but those days have been extended without clear answers.”
She herself had to gather evidence and travel to Caracas to prove her innocence. Videos, testimonies from neighbors, all to show that her husband was not where the police said they had detained him. It was in Macuto, the neighborhood where they live, and not in Cabudare as stated in the minutes.
“I hardly know about him. “He has called three times, and he always talks quickly, just to tell me that he is fine, that he has everything he needs.” But when she managed to visit him, reality hit her like a closed fist.
Without notice, at 3:00 am on August 25 They took him to Tocuyito on one of the Transbarca buses that they enabled for this purpose and it took days to confirm their location.
Another case is that of a 34-year-old motorcycle taxi driver, who was approached by a commission of the Bolivarian National Police (PNB) when he was in front of a warehouse near his house. They told him to take off his clothes and sat him on the sidewalk. Without further ado, they took him away.
“The officials called him a guarimbero. They told him they were going to cut his hair. They took him from police station to police station. We went on foot, because no one wanted to take us by car out of fear. “We asked everywhere and no one told us anything.”
It was not until 11:30 pm that he managed to find him at the PNB headquarters on 48th Street. The next day officials posted a video on Instagram showing a group as “terrorists.” Since then, uncertainty has been his only company.
“They treat them all as if they were a criminal gang, but they didn’t know each other, they didn’t know who they were. They caught them in different communities and put them all in the same cause. How can they be a band if they didn’t know each other? “We got evidence, videos, that it was in broad daylight when they took them, not at night, as they say.”
The courts did not respond to them during the protest. They will continue to raise their voices until they achieve the freedom of their loved ones.
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