Twenty-year-old university student Juan Pablo Pernalete was killed during anti-government demonstrations in Venezuela after he was shot in the chest with a tear gas canister. “That could have been my child,” Ruth Albornoz, 43, told the Sunday Guardian as her eyes filled with tears on Friday.
Albornoz is not just being dramatic. She is the mother of a 20-year-old daughter named Ruth Albornoz Chacon.
Albornoz held her daughter’s hand as she discussed Pernalete’s death.
According to reports, a definitive cause of Pernalete’s death is still to be determined, although doctors observed significant internal bleeding in his chest.
Pernalete is the latest in close to 30 deaths as a result of protests taking place in Venezuela this year.
“The last person who was killed was a student, only 20 years old, a child. Is that fair? That could have been my child,” Albornoz said.
Both mother and daughter stood on the pavement across the road from the Venezuelan Embassy in Port-of-Spain to protest what they called the “brutal repression” by government forces in their homeland.
Albornoz said while she has been living in this country for the past 15 years, she still has family that reside in Venezuela in areas such as Valencia, Margarita, and the country’s capital Caracas.
“The situation is they are desperate over there. They don’t have any food, they don’t have any way to be protected, police officers instead of protecting them, they are killing them. This is not fair,” Albornoz said.
Albornoz said her family’s needs are simple.
“They want food, they want freedom, they want protection and they want to be heard.”
Albornoz said she feels betrayed by the Venezuelan Government and as such joined a protest outside the country’s embassy with a dozen others to make their displeasure known.
While the group chanted anti-government slogans while holding Venezuelan flags and other paraphernalia bearing the country’s national colours, music blared from speakers in the embassy.
“They don’t want to hear what we have to say,” Albornoz said.
Apart from turning a deaf ear to their plights, Albornoz claimed that the protesters are usually victimised by the embassy.
This has, however, not dampened her resolve.
“They retained my passport in January and I was illegal for a few weeks. That is what they are doing, they are participating in victimisation they are taking pictures of all of us who are here protesting here now,” Albornoz said.
Albornoz said the world needs to open its eyes to the travesties taking place in Venezuela.
Her daughter called for people to have a conscience about what is taking place.
“Plenty people are coming to Trinidad, it is not that we don’t love our country it is because we fear for our lives that is why we are here,” Albornoz Chacon said.
“They are trying to make it look like the people who are coming to Trinidad and Tobago just want to be here and that everything is fine and dandy in Venezuela but that is not true.
“There is proof that it is not true. To me it is really disappointing, it breaks my heart, it is saddening that people are defending the murder of children.
“That is a big problem, that is a no no, that is against human rights,” she said.
Albornoz said two men that were living illegally in Trinidad and were going to be deported back to Venezuela were so fearful that they escaped and are now in hiding in this country.
“They are living in double fear. Fear because they are illegal here and fear that if they are caught they will be sent back. That is bad, you are constantly living in fear,” she said.
Albornoz Chacon said because media was being controlled by the State their family members in Venezuela had to contact them to find out what is taking place in the country.
“All the television stations that are disclosing information are being shut down, so for us to have to tell them what is going on that is how terrible it is,” she said.
Heidi Diquez agreed.
“We are in civil war,” she said.
“People are living in fear. Some states people are under curfew and they can’t go outside but some people are fed up, some feel like they have nothing more to lose so they are taking chances, we don’t have medicine, so what else?”
Yesenia Gonzalez said the country was in a dire state.
“There is no food in Venezuela. Our people are hungry, children are eating from the garbage.
“They don’t want me to say that. We don’t have medication, they are spraying people with tear gas,” Gonzalez said.
