Andres Bello voting center in Caracas. Photo: Brian Mier.
By Brian Mier – Aug 4, 2024
I covered Venezuela’s three-week presidential campaign season, the elections, and their fallout for TeleSur English, the multilateral public TV news network funded by the governments of Bolivia, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. I am an experienced analyst of Brazilian politics, but I do not claim to be a specialist in Venezuela. The following is not an analysis but a description of events I witnessed on election night. I invite readers to use it to help with their own assessments of the political situation.
I worked during Venezuela’s presidential election on Sunday, July 28, from 4:45 a.m. to 2 a.m. Monday morning, with two cameramen, a producer, and a Spanish-language reporter. Together, we spent the day producing live reports from inside and outside four polling stations around the city, finishing our day behind Miraflores Palace for the announcement of the election results.
We spent the afternoon inside the Andres Bello polling center in a primarily middle-class voting district in downtown Caracas, producing live reports at 2:30, 3:30, and 4:30, moving out to the front of the building shortly before the polls closed. From there, we had reported on the opening of the polls at 6 a.m. At that moment, the single-file line in front of the polling station stretched around the block. All morning long, the polling stations we visited were full, leading other journalists I spoke with to make wild predictions about voter turnout, some saying they expected over 70%. After lunch, however, the crowds began to thin out. From around 2:30 p.m. until the doors closed, Andres Bello, which was one of the largest polling stations in the city, had more volunteers gossiping than voters in its hallways.
By 2:30 p.m., the huge lines of voters at the Andre Bello polling station had thinned to a trickle.
We left the building at 5:50 to position ourselves to cover the closing of the polls. The government had ordered all polling stations to close their doors at 6 p.m., but Andres Bello stayed open for another 10 minutes or so to let a few stragglers in to vote—four or five people at most, including an elderly couple who had problems walking.
When they finally closed the doors, a crowd of around 40 television crew members and social media content creators had gathered with around 30 citizens who stood in front of the doorway and cheered as the doors shut and a group of around five police officers guarding the doors.
Shortly after 6 p.m., the doors closed at Andres Bello polling center.
Minutes later, a crowd of around 100 people rushed up to the door and started yelling, “Let us vote! Let us vote!” Suddenly, there were livestreamers everywhere. An Argentinian coworker pointed out a crew from Argentina’s Milei-aligned Channel 13 that was streaming everything as a dour, conservatively dressed reporter asked crying women and angry-looking men why Nicolas Maduro wouldn’t let them vote.
For TeleSur Portuguese: “As you can see, there are nearly as many journalists here as their are protesters, in this mini-turmoil, trying to delegitimize the election.”
Half an hour later, a group of hundreds of men rode up on loud motorcycles, some of which seemed to have had their engines adjusted to provide constant backfires, with some riders in black hoods and masks. They blocked off the road in front of the polling station and sat there, revving their engines as the crowd yelled things such as “¡Viva Venezuela!” As I prepared to record a report, a muscular white man in the crowd glared at me, said, “Nicolas Maduro,” and made a throat-slitting gesture.
Suddenly, a group of motorcyclists rode up onto the sidewalk to the entrance, and everyone else got off their bikes and left them blocking the road. Together, they marched into the crowd and rushed for the door, pushing at the police.
At this point, I moved about 50 yards back to avoid being trampled. From there, I saw a great deal of pushing and heard a lot of screaming. Two male police officers ran by me carrying a female police officer who was bleeding from the head. They loaded her up on a motorcycle and rode down the sidewalk past me toward a hospital. I saw no injuries in the crowd of Maria Corina Machado supporters.
Two Bolivaran National Police Force officers rush and injured police woman towards the hospital
A few minutes later, a group of motorcycles from the national police force rode up, two to a bike, with the passengers holding assault rifles, and most of the motorcyclists vacated the premises. The 5 police officers guarding the doors were replaced with a group of 20 female riot control police with plexiglass shields and helmets. Suddenly, the YouTube and Twitter streams of angry white men yelling at the police looked less heroic. It was a clever tactical move.
As the crowd dwindled, more security arrived. A small group of Maria Corina Machado supporters lingered on, yelling, “We want the results! We want the results!” with far-right social media filmmakers cutting in close on their smartphones to make it look like they were in the middle of a big crowd.
Later that night, when I met up with other journalists covering the election behind Miraflores Palace, I heard similar stories from other polling stations. One journalist told me where she was located, the crowd started yelling, “Shut the doors! Shut the doors!” at 6. As soon as the doors shut, they started yelling, “Let us vote! Let us vote!”
Venezuela: Far-Right Opposition Rejects Election Results, Attempts to Launch Guarimbas
MarĂa Corina Machado, Edmundo González, and the PUD announced weeks before the election that they were not going to respect the democratic rule of law and would tally their own election results. What I witnessed in front of AndrĂ©s Bello polling station on Sunday night appears to have been a form of theater—one of many tactics used to produce and disseminate videos to delegitimize the election, that was standardized at many polling centers across Caracas.
Brian Mier
Brian Mier is a writer, geographer and development professional who has lived in Brazil for 22 years. Former directorate member of the Fórum Nacional de Reforma Urbana (National Urban Reform Forum). Has lived in São Luis, Recife, Salvador, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. Author of “Os Megaeventos Esportivos na Cidade do Rio de Janeiro e o Direito á Cidade” (CEPR/Ford: Rio. 2016). Editor of "Voices of the Brazilian Left" (Sumare:Liverpool:2018). Irregular correspondent for the Chicago radio show This is Hell.
