“Who Are We?” ​“Venezuela!”

Krisly Carreno teared up as she spotted dozens of yellow-blue-and-red flags on the backs of protesters while she walked down Church Street.

“It was so emotional,” Carreno said. ​“I had no idea how many Venezuelans [are] in Connecticut.”

Carreno joined over 100 fellow protesters Saturday evening outside City Hall from 6 to 8 p.m.

The group, organized by community activist Mariá Alejandra Hawke, gathered to speak out against President Nicolás Maduro’s claims of victory during that South American country’s July 28 presidential election.

Since then, protests have sprung up in Venezuela and around the world, demanding that Maduro recognize the results indicating that the opposition candidate Edmundo González won. Numerous countries, including the United States, have recognized González’s victory.

Maduro’s authoritarian regime has responded with violence, with some 100 protestors arrested and 24 killed. 

The New Haven protest was part of a larger effort in over 330 cities world-wide where Venezuelan expats gathered on Saturday to bring awareness to the election fraud — as well as to put international pressure on Maduro’s regime. (Click here to read a 2019 article about another protest that brought Venezuelans from across New Haven and Connecticut to City Hall to speak out against Maduro.)

The protestors chanted ​“Who are we?” ​“Venezuela!” ​“What do we want?” ​“Freedom!” as they walked up Church to Elm, before walking back to City Hall. Cars rolling down Church beeped in support, waving Venezuelan flags and cheering. One sign read: ​“I want to go back to a Venezuela that my grandparents and great-grandparents tell me stories about.” Participants ranged from small children to elders in wheelchairs.

“He’s facing all this mess out there,” Armando Vizcaya said of his son, who lives in Venezuela. ​“People from out there really can’t politicize anything from there. Whatever we get from our families is what everyone sees.”

Vizcaya was not alone in worrying about his loved ones. Nicole Viloria lived in Venezuela her entire life before moving to Miami in 2017. Viloria shared that her friends back home feel nervous sharing certain posts and videos about the election. In return, she is asking her friends to send them to her so she can post them herself here in the U.S.

“The idea is that we speak for the people who are in Venezuela who cannot speak up right now,” Viloria said. ​“They are in danger right now, but we have the privilege of being in a protest.”

She emphasized that people understand that election fraud has happened before. This time, she said, there is proof.

Protestors on Saturday carried around this proof, holding long tally sheets that indicate González’s majority vote count. For Viloria, alongside many of the other participants at Saturday’s rally in New Haven, the frustration lies in bringing awareness to the turmoil. Though she comes from Miami, which she noted has a larger Venezuelan population, she still felt empowered seeing the crowd in New Haven on Saturday.

“I feel very emotional about it because many people don’t care. I post on social media and I wish more people posted,” Viloria said. ​“But I have hope. I have faith.”