Edinburgh, Scotland – Venezuelans living abroad in 460 cities around the world gathered Saturday for the “Gran Protesta Mundial” (Great Global Protest), a demonstration organized by opposition leader María Corina Machado to protest the country’s July election results. .
The protest came two months after a highly disputed presidential election in which the country’s National Electoral Council (CNE) declared Nicolás Maduro president for a third term.
Maduro’s government has yet to provide evidence of his election victory, and members of the opposition, as well as third-party election observers, have argued that opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia won by a wide margin based on tabulations. voting available at the regional level of the opposition. has collected.
One of the cities where protesters gathered was in Edinburgh, Scotland, the capital of about 515,000 people. About 20 demonstrators met in Royal Academy Square, wearing flags and waving signs.
They called for international recognition of González Urrutia as the winner of the election and demanded that Maduro leave power on January 10, 2025, the inauguration day for the new presidential term. Protesters also demanded justice for crimes against humanity allegedly committed by Maduro’s government during his two terms as president.
Nicole, a 23-year-old who agreed to speak if we didn’t press her last name, said Latin American Reports that she attended the rally to “continue to give visibility to the censorship and repression that is happening in Venezuela right now.”
Since the election, Maduro’s government has unleashed a wave of repression against dissidents and opposition members. According to the government, around 2,200 people have been arrested, including children, human rights activists and opposition politicians.
Nicole said she believes that “on the European continent, the news about what is happening in Venezuela can be very distorted.” She said that Venezuelans abroad have the opportunity, “if not the responsibility”, to shed light on “the harsh reality of what happens in the country, given our first-hand experience”.
During the protest, participants carried Venezuelan flags and held placards reading “Freedom for Venezuela,” and some participants spoke into a megaphone in English and Spanish.
Demonstrations like Saturday’s are a space for Venezuelan migrants to find community, especially in places like Edinburgh, where Venezuelans are few and far between.
While there are 25,000 Venezuelans within the UK, the community in the northernmost country remains small. According to 2019 reports, there were approximately 2,000 Venezuelans in Scotland.
Nicole highlighted how Venezuelan immigrants in Edinburgh “are very spread out” and there is little communication between them.
“It is thanks to these protests that I have met so many people from the Venezuelan community,” she added.
Another protester, 31-year-old Pedro Luis Guarema Paniccia, said that “preserving unity within the Venezuelan community abroad is very important as we have the responsibility to communicate what is happening in our country.”
While Pedro has been in Scotland for 10 years, he said that participating in these protests helps him keep alive the “hope for freedom” in his country.
Pedro is holding out hope for political change. “There is a limit,” he said, and that limit was reached on July 29 and 30, when spontaneous protests against Maduro’s re-election erupted in Maduro’s former strongholds, including parts of the capital, Caracas.
Saturday’s protest culminated in the heartfelt singing of Venezuela’s national anthem accompanied by musician Hugo Zuleta García on the cuatro, a four-stringed instrument from Venezuela and other Latin American countries.
