'Big Brother is Watching': How My In-Laws Survived Dictatorship in Venezuela

In the dark years of Chávez and Maduro's rule, many Venezuelans, mostly youngsters, abandoned their homeland.

I was married to a Venezuelan woman for 11 years, until we got separated just a few months ago. Hailing from Maracay, one of the most important cities in the country, she had just moved to India to live with me in 2014. That year, her hope for change met brutal reality.

(Photo: Aroop Mishra/The Quint) 

Just after reports of another street protest in 2014, I remember the call with my former mother-in-law, Mirta Navas, a Venezuelan citizen.

I was back in India, newly married. She asked when I'd come back to Venezuela to see her. I said, half joking, “Maybe when [Nicolas] Maduro steps down.”

She replied, “Si Dios quiere” (if God wills), and started laughing—not out of humour, but because it felt like the most impossible joke in the world.

Even then, we could see the cracks forming: everyday basics were becoming scarce, and soldiers and tanks were starting to patrol the streets.

Vaibhav Wankhede with his former mother-in-law Mirta Navas. 

(Photo Courtesy: Vaibhav Wankhede) 

One thing that stood out for me everywhere in Venezuela was the stencil drawing of former President Hugo Chávez's eyes. It gives a sort of 'Big Brother is watching' vibe. It’s on the bridges, the streets, and the institutions, including the marriage registration offices. Even though he is long dead, he's still omnipresent, with his shadow looming large.

A billboard of Hugo Chávez’s eyes in Caracas.

(Photo Courtesy: X)

He followed the usual dictator playbook—lock up those who oppose him under sedition laws, ban TV and radio channels, and blame foreign powers for his failures. He even had a TV show called ‘Alo Presidente!’ (Hello, President), where he'd talk to people directly.

Maduro's Violent Rise to Power

I was married to a Venezuelan woman for 11 years. Hailing from Maracay, one of Venezuela's most important cities, she had just moved to India in 2014. That year, her hope for change met brutal reality.

From the cold-blooded highway murder of former Miss Venezuela Monica Spear to the surrender of Opposition leader Henrique Capriles and Maduro’s claim of election victory, all of it added fuel to the fire that had already been burning over hunger and hyperinflation.

Young students and ordinary citizens poured into Caracas and other cities in protest. The response was ferocious. Back in India on our WhatsApp family group, we were watching videos of brutality unleashed by the Guardia Nacional (National Guard) tanks rumbling into crowds of fleeing demonstrators, unleashing tear gas, rubber bullets, and officials beating people indiscriminately.

Along with the Guardia Nacional were the 'Colectivos'—government supporters who were armed (illegally) by the regime to destroy such protests from within. They were entering protesters' homes inside residential complexes, firing rockets, and capturing civilians to make an "example" out of them. For many of us abroad watching helplessly, it was a wake-up call: Any dissent would be met with violence.

A Downhill Trajectory

The economy was crashing. By 2015-16, price controls and subsidies fuelled a destructive black market. Societal collapse was imminent—and every man was for himself.

My father-in-law was out of work, doing manual labour just to survive. My wife’s cousins and her family used to wait hours in line for rice or eggs, only to walk away empty-handed. Trucks bringing food to supermarkets were being looted en route. Twitter was awash with videos of middle class Venezuelans, trying to find food in garbage cans and washing the food in bleach to survive.

Las Delicias Zoo in Maracay had to shut down because if there was nothing for the population, what would they feed the animals?

Billboard graffiti with a call to save Las Delicias Zoo in Maracay. 

(Photo Courtesy: Vaibhav Wankhede) 

Most of my wife's friends had already left for Spain, Colombia, the US, Mexico, Peru, Portugal, and Panama. My brother-in-law dropped out of engineering college and went to work in Trindad and Tobago, later settling in Argentina.

By 2017, Venezuela’s inflation rate had topped one million percent, effectively wrecking the economy. We'd send our family money through illegal remittances due to the unstable currency.

Every month, that money bought less and less food.

In 2019, my father-in-law was diagnosed with last-stage cancer. My mother-in-law had to buy syringes and bandages because the hospital had none. She herself was a patient of acute fibromyalgia, and was also impacted by a lack of medicines.

Graffiti in Caracas which roughly translates to "No way, Maduro isn't going anywhere". 

(Photo Courtesy: Vaibhav Wankhede) 

Dolar Paralelo (parallel dollar) was the default currency value—and the exchange rate on the streets was 20 times higher than the official exchange rate.

The global price plunge in oil didn’t help. Even during the boom years, Venezuela never saved for a rainy day. Chávez and his “socialist policies”— which were nothing but nationalisation of everything and bringing his military friends to run public sector companies—had already cost over $1 trillion in losses.

My former wife would reminisce about her childhood, saying:

"My dad had two cars, and we used to have shopping carts filled up."

That was until Chávez came in—and changed the country's name from Venezuela to Republico Bolivariano de Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela), in a bid to appropriate Latin America's most famous freedom fighter Simon Bolivar.

A paradox grew glaringly clear: the ruling class was enjoying luxury lifestyles abroad.

In 2017, journalists and citizen activists began exposing the lives of the Bolivarian bourgeoisie, noting how Chávez and Maduro’s children lived overseas—indifferent to shortages at home. Their Instagram posts went viral among Venezuelans: luxury cars in Miami, Christmas dinners in Europe, and multiple designer bags.

Caracas bus terminal. 

(Photo Courtesy: Vaibhav Wankhede) 

Bolivarian Symbolism vs Political Reality

Mirta once sent me a video of someone in a shop, supervising the customers. CCTV cameras didn’t function because of frequent power cuts, and people used to shoplift. The inflation reached such dizzying heights that for a carton of eggs, the price was different in the morning and in the afternoon—in the very same shop.

The Maduro regime launched the CLAP food boxes, containing monthly handouts of rice, pasta, oil and other staples. They were stamped with Chávez’s face, and distributed by pro-government committees, often to party loyalists first. If you were tagged as being part of the 'opposition', you could go hungry.

And it gets worse—you needed a homeland card, a new QR code-based card which has your socioeconomic status registered, so that they can make an educated guess about whether you voted for the regime or not. This was in addition to the Cedula, the national identity card.

CLAPs were no charity, but the government’s most powerful weapon for buying votes. Thus, the regime weaponised hunger to stay in power.

My in-laws resisted getting the homeland card, until it was made mandatory for everything, including hospital visits.

My former father-in-law died in 2020 due to failing health and lack of medical care. My wife couldn’t visit her father in his last months or even attend his funeral because it took more than a year to get her passport renewed. The excuses ranged from: "We don’t have money" and "Passports are printed but stuck in Spain", to "The machines aren’t working" and "We don’t have support staff".

Every time I visited the Venezuelan Embassy in New Delhi, it grew smaller. It went from occupying the entire ground floor to becoming a tiny apartment.

Looking beyond the markets and streets, it became clear how deeply the regime had co-opted the state. From 2020 onwards, over half of Maduro’s cabinet members were active military officers. Even the Governors of many states, supposedly local leaders, were generals.

The Aftermath of the 'Dark' Years

My mother-in-law, who visited India in 2022-23, was surprised to see people brandishing cellphones in public, among other things. Doing that back home is an invitation for robbery, she says.

Mirta, whose grandfather migrated from Spain to Venezuela, had once promised never to leave her homeland. Now, she has sold her big house for a paltry sum and moved in with her son in Argentina. When I texted her recently saying that Maduro will face jail time, she sent a 'smiley' emoji and said, “Si dios permite” (If God allows).

Data from the United Nations show that roughly 8 million people have fled Venezuela since 2014.

Look around any Latin American city, and you’ll see Venezuelan faces: doctors, students, mothers, who’ve left behind homes, jobs, entire families, just searching for safety.

I don’t support the US' invasion of Venezuela. But I won’t pretend that the picture of Maduro handcuffed and blindfolded didn’t stir something in me. For the first time in years, many Venezuelans I know felt hope that perhaps the nightmare could end soon. They have already sacrificed so much—careers, homes, and whatnot, that the idea of a new beginning, however drastic, feels like a lifeline.

All of us, in one way or another, are still waiting for that miracle.