Thousands of Venezuelans staged rallies across Argentina on Saturday as they called on the international community to challenge the claim that Nicolás Maduro won last month’s election.
The demonstrations took place in Buenos Aires and 12 other cities as Venezuelans who have fled their homeland came out in large numbers to denounce “fraud” in the nation’s most recent election.
Opposition leader María Corina Machado had called for mass gatherings in more than 300 cities across Venezuela and abroad to intensify pressure on Maduro to concede what she claims was an overwhelming opposition win in the July 28 presidential vote.
Venezuela's National Electoral Council (CNE) proclaimed Maduro to be re-elected after the vote for a third term running until 2031. But the opposition maintains that it has evidence to show it won the election and that its candidate, Edmundo González Urrutia, was the real winner.
In Buenos Aires on Saturday, at the Plaza de las Naciones Unidas in the Recoleta neighbourhood of the capital, the colours of the Venezuelan flag were proudly waved as demonstrators joined forces to call for change.
Many carried banners and slogans reading: “No to fraud,” “Until the end,” “Freedom for political prisoners,” and “Edmundo President.”
“We have faith that we will emerge out of the dictatorship,” said Andreina Escalante, 34, as she held her two-year-old daughter in her arms.
Her dream is to one day return to Venezuela, where her entire family still lives.
Escalante, who left her homeland more than five years ago, welcomed the rally.
“This makes you feel that you are not the only one, that there are many of us and that there is hope,” she said.
Some 164,000 Venezuelans have arrived in Argentina after escaping the crisis in their country, according to government data.
“I have no doubt that this is the moment – we don't know if it will be tomorrow, in two days or in a month, this is not a 100-metre race, it is a race of resistance – and I think that what we Venezuelans are demonstrating is that resistance,’ said diplomat-activist Elisa Trotta, the secretary general of the Foro Argentino para la Defensa de la Democracia (“Argentine Forum for the Defence of Democracy”).
“I think that, without a doubt, the greatest fear is [for Venezuela] to remain in a dictatorship, and that is what drives us to continue, to insist, as well as the emotion of thinking about the moment of reunion, the moment when we can all embrace each other again in Venezuela,” she added.
The call for protests spread outside the capital to other major cities, including Rosario, Córdoba and Mendoza.
Demonstrations also took place in more than 300 cities around the world, a reflection of the huge eight-million-strong Venezuelan diaspora, which stretches from Colombia to Australia, via the United States and Europe.
– TIMES/AFP
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