Written from fracture and hope
The Morning of Broken Flags
Guacamaya, April 11, 2002. Caracas woke up hot that Thursday, April 11, 2002—or so many have recounted. Not just from the sun heating the asphalt in the eastern part of the capital, but from a tension so thick it could be cut with a knife. For days, the entire country had been torn between shouts, marches, presidential broadcasts, and a bitter clash between irreconcilable visions of the nation. Polarization wasn’t just a buzzword. It was a reality you could breathe, scream, fear, sense, and live. A reality that, though denied, still lingers in the conflict.
Early that morning, the avenues began filling with people: students waving tricolor flags, workers holding signs, women shaking white handkerchiefs as if warding off fear. The march flowed like a human river from Parque del Este toward Chuao. The chants echoed: “This government has already fallen!” “Chávez, leave now!”—but no one knew if it was a slogan, a mirage, or a premonition. In Miraflores, a massive crowd dressed in red swore to defend “the revolution.” They shouted, “They shall not pass!”
The air was electric, tense, yet the word peace still lingered on many lips of different colors.
The Bridge Where the Country Split
By noon, everything changed. Without warning, the march shifted course toward the Miraflores Palace. That was the turning point. In that instant, the country held its breath. Some seemed to expect it—some newspapers had already declared that the “Final Battle would be at Miraflores.” And yes, the word final in a slogan isn’t new, nor is the epic imagery some media used to frame that day. As two trains barreled toward each other at full speed, with no sign of slowing or stopping, many chose to demand more speed, despite knowing the catastrophic consequences of such a collision.
The Llaguno Bridge and Baralt Avenue became the threshold of hell. Opposition protesters and Chavistas closed in on each other. The Metropolitan Police and National Guard did their part. Stones flew, tear gas spread, and then—gunfire. Dry, quick, precise. TV cameras captured raw footage: men shooting from rooftops, bodies collapsing onto asphalt, people running blindly. Each channel told a different story. For some, it was “revolutionary groups defending against a coup.” For others, “militias shooting unarmed civilians.” The truth was shattered in real time.
Amid the smoke and chaos, people—many without uniforms or slogans—began falling onto the pavement.
The Voices No One Heard
In a western Caracas neighborhood, María, a nurse and Chavista, clutched her battery-powered radio while her children hid under the bed. “They say Chávez was killed or that he resigned,” she wept. Meanwhile, in Altamira, Eduardo, an engineer and opposition supporter, toasted with whiskey as helicopters circled La Carlota. His neighbors chanted, “Chávez is gone, he’s gone!” For a few hours, both thought their side had won—or lost. Neither understood that, in this hall of broken mirrors, the entire country was losing.
That day, language broke. The other ceased to be an adversary and became an enemy. Dissent meant instant accusation. There was no gray—only red or blue, Chavista or escuálido, with dehumanizing labels in between. The country learned to shout but forgot how to talk and listen. Bullets replaced words.
Media outlets were taken off the air. The situation foreshadowed a darkness settling over the Republic in its hardest hours.
The Night of Ghosts
Night fell with 19 bodies lying in morgues, sidewalks, and avenues. The dead—on both sides—shared the same frozen look of surprise. Meanwhile, Chávez, dressed in olive green, was pressured to sign a supposed resignation in Fuerte Tiuna—or so the press claimed. Private media celebrated; community radios fell silent. But in the hills, where lights flickered like tired stars, people lit candles and whispered: “The Comandante is alive and hasn’t resigned.”
Pedro Carmona Estanga was sworn in at Miraflores as Venezuela’s new interim president, dissolving all public powers—a move accompanied by dark reprisals against those who had served in Chávez’s government. The scene showed Carmona surrounded by applause and praise, a full-blown celebration. It was as if the tragic hours from before had never happened. In that moment, power had been seized—regardless of the “collateral damage,” which, of course, were people: faces and stories now surviving only in the memories of their loved ones. Their names were part of a list of Venezuelans uninvited to this elite celebration—while a country mourned them in uncertainty.
Chávez’s supporters insisted he had not resigned. Protests erupted, clashes returned to the streets. Miraflores was surrounded by Chavistas demanding proof of life for their leader.
The news spread faster than the blood drying on the pavement. And 48 hours later, the leader returned by helicopter—a scene straight out of a movie—raising his fist. Hugo Chávez was back in Miraflores.
His supporters celebrated with the same euphoria Carmona’s backers had shown hours earlier—before his opposition government ended as one of the briefest in history. Another celebration where victims and pain faded into the background, overshadowed by the epic image of “total victory.”
In both cases, there were celebrations, proclamations of absolute triumph—when what really happened was an absolute defeat for a country that would never be the same. Something shattered that day, and we are still grappling with the consequences, with wounds that whisper and a nation that still bleeds.
The hope for dialogue faded behind the smoke of revenge and the wounds that remained—and still remain. The lost lives, irrecoverable forever, were not at the celebration—but they live in the heart of a fractured, broken nation.
The Days After the Hatred
The fracture was now irreversible. The opposition dug into plazas and buildings. The government hardened its rhetoric. The oil strike came, and violence continued. Media became digital trenches. And the dead of April 11 were trapped in limbo: for some, “martyrs of democracy”; for others, “victims of fascist coup-mongers.” Their families, however, shared the same silent grief, the same unanswered question: Was it worth it? To them, they were simply sons, fathers, mothers, brothers, husbands, boyfriends, lifelong friends—now eternal absences. And to me, Venezuelans whose dreams were extinguished forever.
Later, the government crafted its own version of events, writing the history of that day as an epic. The opposition remembers it as a “lost opportunity” but frames it as an unfinished epic. Both sides magnify it—when in truth, April 11 was an absolute defeat for Venezuelan coexistence.
It’s not a pleasant memory. It’s a necessary, painful, difficult one. But propaganda will always find it profitable to romanticize tragedy, ignoring that there was no epic—only proof of our failure as a society to talk, dialogue, and resolve our conflicts. The same conflicts that still plague us, reminding us daily of the enormous price ordinary people have paid in the darkest, hardest times.
That day, the country stopped recognizing itself in the mirror. Fear of the other took up permanent residence—and still lingers, still causing harm.
Peace as an Uncomfortable Memory
Today, over twenty years later, the memory of April 11 remains alive. Not as a cold monument, but as an open wound. Not because of nameless bullets, but because of half-truths, unfinished narratives, and the lack of accountability.
Peace in Venezuela won’t be a pact among elites or a staged political embrace. It might come, perhaps, the day a Chavista and an opponent can sit together before the grave of a young man who fell on Llaguno Bridge, Baralt Avenue, or Altamira Plaza—and admit, together:
- That day, everyone was both victim and perpetrator.
- The dead did not choose a side when they fell.
- Inherited hatred is a chain only broken by justice that seeks truth, not vengeance.
- Building peace is the only way to build a sustainable future.
True peace is built when we stop using the past as ammunition and start listening to it as a shared lament. It’s not about forgetting, but learning. Not about imposing, but reuniting—no matter how difficult, painful, or unpopular.
Maybe that’s the first line of a book we’re still learning to read—one we’re trying to write. It doesn’t mean skipping or tearing out the pages we dislike or wish to forget. It means having the courage to keep reading, to interpret the whole book, and to give meaning to new chapters.
If you look at the faces of the figures from April 11, you’ll recognize names still relevant in Venezuelan politics today—on both sides. The real problem is that the logic that led to April 11 hasn’t been abandoned. It’s more alive than ever: the talk of “sacrifices” in the name of supposed causes that have never represented the fair demands of Venezuelan society. Sacrifices, of course, borne by ordinary people—with the false promise that it will change a reality that demands deep transformation. A transformation that will never come unless we, as a society, build peace and abandon the belief that peace can be imposed by decree or slogan.
April 11 was perhaps the first of many “epic” dates sold to Venezuelans as “total victories” or “final battles.” A terrible tradition began: assigning climactic dates—February 23, July 16, July 28, January 10, and so many others. In politics, there are no finales—only episodes of pain and sorrow for the country.
We must not forget the roots of that event—the geopolitical interests, the struggle for oil—the forces that have shaped so much of our history.
An Exercise in Imagination
Close your eyes. Imagine April 11 without manipulative cameras. Without leaders inciting hatred or calling for final battles. Without the urgency to be right or the will to impose. Instead, picture an opposition mother and a Chavista mother sharing coffee in the rain. They don’t talk politics. They talk about their children, their fears, their country, shared memories, what unites them as Venezuelans, what they want to preserve with their lives. One may no longer have her son—taken by violence on April 11, or simply because, like millions of Venezuelans, he had to leave the country to dream of a life Venezuela can no longer offer.
In the rain, tears may fall—just as water runs over the same asphalt where so many have stopped dreaming. Both stand, perhaps, on the fragments of a broken country—one whose repair seems to demand too high a price from elites, but for those who remain, it’s the only option.
That fragile, small, everyday image may seem insignificant. But perhaps—just perhaps—that’s where peace begins.
In that sense, it’s worth remembering Pedro Nikken’s words, reflecting on his experience as a UN advisor in El Salvador and Guatemala:
“Building the model of society designed in peace negotiations means achieving solid, substantial, and irreversible progress in respecting and guaranteeing human rights. It’s not just about electing leaders, but democratizing society and incorporating all sectors into social progress.”
That is the great challenge for politicians, civil society, and especially citizens: to push for understanding. Sooner or later, everything will come down to negotiation—the question is whether it will happen before or after the cost grows even higher.
Peace—not its imposition—requires everyone’s participation, no matter how difficult or unpopular. Without that pluralism, there will be no way forward, no way to build the future millions of Venezuelans demand.
These words aren’t meant to change the truths many have already written for themselves about that day—about what they believe or were made to believe. That won’t be changed by the words of a 24-year-old. This is just a reflection on what we’ve lost along the way—and an invitation to look beyond dogma, beyond confirmation bias. Always with human dignity at the forefront, as the core of any action.
April 11 was not a victory or a lost opportunity. It wasn’t a revolutionary epic or a final battle. It was one of Venezuela’s many total defeats.
Building peace, talking about it, even suggesting it, is deeply unpopular today. Some may see these lines as idealistic, utopian. I see them as a longing worth fighting for—especially as a young person, because the young have the most to lose in a conflict like Venezuela’s.
Maybe one day, there will be the will to talk honestly about April 11—and so many other events in Venezuela’s recent history—to move forward. It won’t be easy. Society will see who’s willing to take that step.
