The Life of Us: With both hands form a heart

The letter was handwritten in pencil on a crumpled piece of paper. The letters were not uniform, some looked more like scribbles. Perhaps, as he wrote, his hand trembled (from fear, anger, tiredness, sadness?), but from the syntax, and in general from the careful writing, it was clear that behind those trembling lines was Paul, the young thesis student in social communication, the one who already worked as a journalist and cameraman in Valera, the city of Trujillo where he was born and raised.

Reading the letter on August 5, 2024, his family felt relieved. Five days had passed—five endless days—without any certainty, drowning in the anguish of not hearing from him.

Paul had never been involved in politics. A student at the University of Los Andes, he was best known for being a sports announcer and presenter (a big fan of the Trujillanos Football Club), and because He founded, with friends from university, Voces Solidarias, an NGO that helped malnourished children.He was also known for his relationship with alternative music movements in Valera.

On the morning of July 30, the same day he would be arrested, he had left his house early to meet Daniela, his girlfriend, at a fast food stand in the city.

They sat down to breakfast and, while they ate, they talked about what all Venezuelans were talking about at that moment. About the elections of July 28. About the results announced by the National Electoral Council, according to which Nicolás Maduro had been reelected. About the voting records that the opposition had collected and that, published on a web portal, indicated a very different result from the official one. They talked about their state, Trujillo, which was clearly no longer a bastion of Chavismo: according to the page that houses the records, the opposition member Edmundo González had obtained the vote there. 64 percent of the vote.

They talked about the country, the uncertainty they felt, the future. Daniela, also a journalist, had suggested to him in December 2023 the idea of ​​leaving Venezuela. However, he, despite having a brother and many friends abroad, was reluctant: no, he was not going to leave.

Now yes?

Valera, with a population of about 600,000, is a large, always quiet town. That morning, things seemed duller than usual: most shops were closed, and the streets and sidewalks were littered with rubbish carried by the wind rather than cars and pedestrians.

Soon there would be more movement. The people, without much organization other than word of mouth, had called for a demonstration at 11:00 in the morning, very close to Avenida Bolívar. It was one of the hundreds that sprang up in the country from the moment the CNE announced its results: between July 29 and 30 alone, the Venezuelan Observatory of Social Conflict document 915 protests.

After breakfast, Paul headed there to meet with journalist Mayra Linares, his colleague at the VPItv channel. Although he usually covered sports topics, the situation made it necessary for him to collaborate with this coverage: he would be a cameraman.

On the way, he noticed that some people were also heading to the meeting place. And that there were police pickets at different points along the road. He and Mayra became tense, but they continued on, with their credentials, cameras and microphones.

The demonstration had not even begun when, at around 10:30, about 10 motorcyclists in Bolivarian National Police uniforms approached them. They were told they could not film. They defended themselves by saying they were journalists. The police ignored them and tried to detain them without giving them an explanation. Mayra ran, tried to ask for help from those around her, but everything happened very quickly: he did not resist, they took the bag in which he kept his equipment, snatched his cell phone and grabbed him roughly, forcing him to put his arms behind his back.

They made him get on a motorcycle and took him away.

Minutes later, Mayra Linares made a telephone contact with VPItv, in which she narrated what happened and ended by saying:

“I don’t know where Paul is.”

Perhaps that was why, a few minutes later, a co-worker called Daniela, the girlfriend, to tell her what was happening. She then called Paul’s mother to let her know, went to the place where the arrest had taken place, and recorded a video that she posted on social media at 11:22 in the morning:

“This is the situation in Valera. We can see the presence of police officers in the background. We are informed that the VPI cameraman was arrested (…).”

His voice struggled not to break.

And then the search began. Relatives made calls, went to police stations and detention centers. They didn’t say anything to them. But around 1:00 p.m. they heard a rumor that they had him at the Police Coordination 2.0, in Valera.

His family went there to look for him.

They were not given answers. There were also dozens of people there, like them, trying to obtain information about the detainees. Mothers, fathers and siblings of other prisoners asked themselves the same questions: “Where are they? Why did they arrest them?” Unanswered questions that seem to echo throughout the city, throughout the country: between July 29 and August 17, the Penal Forum verified 1,416 arrests, of which 26 occurred in Trujillo, governed by Gerardo Alfredo Márquez, a military officer and member of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela.

“We have never seen a repressive peak of this intensity,” said lawyer Gonzálo Himiob, director of the Penal Forum, astonished by the number of arrests in such a short period of time.

Paul grew up in a house on the outskirts of Escuque, a small, mountainous municipality in the state of Trujillo, in the Venezuelan Andes, with his two brothers, his father, his mother and his paternal grandparents. It is a small family that, although it began to disperse around the world, always tries to meet again. Paul was the one who insisted the most on organizing these meetings, the most “family-oriented.” The news of his arrest shocked them all.

They sought information, consulted with lawyers, and called anyone they thought could help them. But they were not even able to obtain clear details about his whereabouts. Without being certain that he was in the police coordination they were told about, they gave the officers food, clothing, and personal hygiene items for him. They received them. After a while, they returned the empty food containers to them.

Outside, they saw Nicolás Maduro on social media talking about two new prisons for the “terrorists of the riots”that the penalties would be 15 or 30 years in prison for “traitors to the country.”

“Are they going to take Paul there? Oh, God!”

His mother, his girlfriend, and the rest of the family began to go there every day, and they continued to try to get information. His mother prepared wheat arepas with butter, his favorite food, in the hope that he would eat them. She couldn’t help but think about the possibility that Paul wasn’t there, that he wasn’t getting anything, and that wherever they had him, he thought they had abandoned him.

For hours, she stared at the walls of the Police Coordination, the windows, the hallways, the corridor… any space where she could see any sign of her son. She thought about him so much, she remembered him so much, that her mind made her believe she saw him, that she heard him. Her 26-year-old son.

On Wednesday, July 31, the day after the arrest, they began to put up large white tarps outside. What for? Was it to put the detainees in there? The rumor they heard was that they would be presented in a telematic preliminary hearing before a court with jurisdiction over terrorism in Caracas. However, they did not know what time these hearings would be. Or if they had already taken place.

Rumours, rumours, rumours. Rumours were winds that changed the direction of the mood from one moment to the next.

Sometimes they were hopeful. “I heard that they are going to be presented today and then they will be let go.” “Apparently they were detained so that people would not continue protesting, but since everything is calm now they will be released.” “At night, so that there is not too much fuss, they will be let out.”

Other times, they were destructive. “They are going to send them to the Tocorón prison” (almost 500 kilometers away). “Yesterday they took them away, at night, when there was no one there.” “I have a friend who told me that there were never any people arrested in there for protests, that the awnings are for something else.”

And in the midst of these contradictory winds, the hearts of the relatives were torn between believing and not believing.

And so the five days passed. Until the family received the crumpled paper, handwritten in Paul’s handwriting. And they breathed again. Yes, he was there, he was alive, he was fine, he had been able to receive the food that had been sent to him.

On Tuesday, August 6, they saw him again: from a distance, they were able to witness the moment in which he was taken to the Criminal Investigations Directorate (DPI) of the National Police, in Carvajal, 30 minutes from Valera. They did not know it at the time, but later they learned that a special court in Caracas had already charged him, in a telematic hearing, with crimes of terrorism.

He was not allowed private defense.

Paul is the first of four press workers to be arrested since the presidential elections on July 28, according to data from the Penal Forum. But this statistic is constantly growing: as of August 22, the National Union of Press Workers counted 10 detainees. Almost all of them, like Paul, are employees of regional media. The Press and Society Institute Venezuela record, Between July 29 and August 4, 2024, 79 violations of press freedom were reported. “This documentation reveals a worsening of the systematic pattern of repression and control over information of public interest in Venezuela.”

At the DIP, his girlfriend, his mother, other relatives and friends have been able to see Paul. Every day they bring him his wheat arepas, books and clothes. A week after the arrest, Daniela received a small note:

“I thank God that this happened to me, not you.”

That disarmed her. It was the noblest “I love you” she had ever been told.

The meetings are always brief: no more than 10 minutes. The rest of the days, they stand very close to a railing that faces the DIP and speak loudly to him, so that he can hear them. They have been able to see him looking through the bars of the window, from where he makes signs to them: with both hands he makes a heart to tell them that he loves them.

Paul, he told them, hopes to prove at his trial — as yet unscheduled — that he is not a terrorist. In the meantime, he has asked that everything written about him be brought to him. Perhaps as a way of reminding himself of who he is. Perhaps to make him feel less alone.