Hasler Iglesias

“[During the COVID pandemics] we were all in our homes, so no way that we would be distributing weapons or anything of that style. They told me: 'They are blaming you for this, they are going to issue an arrest warrant, you have to leave where you are.' I remember that I hung up, I told my mother who was in the kitchen next door. I tell her: 'Mom, Jorge Rodríguez [President of the National Assembly] is accusing me of something, they are going to issue an arrest warrant, I have to go.' She turns on the television, I go to my room, I grab that couple of things I think I needed in, a bag: a pair of underwear, a cover, I remember having put a Bible, a rosary, my phone, from which after that moment I removed the chip, I used it for the strictly necessary communication to see where I was going to go, connected via a VPN to be tracked, a book, toothbrush, the basics. A matter of ten minutes - take what you can and leave your house, without knowing where you are going. When I pass through the kitchen again, I see my mom crying, because it's not the same as if I tell her and she was like WHAT? But now she sees on live television the president of the National Assembly show my photo, as if I were a criminal. Furthermore, the evidence they used was WhatsApp in which I supposedly spoke with Leopoldo López, the leader of my party, who at that time was exiled in Spain, coordinating the actions of sabotage or public disorder, as they call it. First, it is false and second, they said that they had taken it from a deputy's phone, which is impossible for you to find a screenshot of two other people's communication on a third party's phone. My mother got very nervous, she knocked on a neighbor's door and told her what was happening. I was still running around: don't forget anything, check who is going to pick you up. At my time of greatest political activity, I had considered a scenario like that, that there would be some arrest, and at some point, we set up an action protocol. What happened is that we had done that with my team at the university, many of whom had already graduated, and were no longer in the country. The protocol was not functional anymore. Well, this guy is going to pick you up in a car, I don't know who is going to call that lawyer, we are going to take you to that place. All that. I had the steps to do in mind, but the logistics team was not there to implement it. So, I wrote to a journalist friend to pick me up and where. I wasn't going to have the phone, well, see you at such time in such place. That was the last thing I spoke on the phone with VPN, then I take out the chip, the SIM card, and I left. I remember that the hardest moment of that day and of that entire process was when I said goodbye to my mother, giving her that hug that you don't know when you would give her the next one, she crying uncontrollably. Because we knew of a number of similar cases that had started the same and had ended with years in prison, with torture, even with murder, under the state custody. I hugged her and told her: 'Don't worry, everything is going to be okay.' But you say it like it comes out to you, while having no idea if everything is going to be okay."

“Most of the time in our demonstrations there was no one hooded. It is true that in recent years, the radicalization of the population was increasing, the desperation was increasing. And yes, it is true that I had to deal with hooded men on our side, who to some extent supported our cause, I am sure that many of them were infiltrators, who were sent to generate violence to accuse us of it afterwards, but there were also many, and it must be said, who were not infiltrators. Who truly believed in the same thing that we believed, but their method of fighting was to use violence or aggression against the security forces. More than once I had to, in the middle of the demonstration, put down the megaphone and approach them and ask them: 'Look, please, take off your hood, we don't use it because here we are not committing any crime.' Why do I have to cover my face if I'm not committing any crime? And they, totally honestly, they said: 'But if we appear on the news, they can identify us and they could prosecute us. And I said: 'Yes, it is part of the cost that we are assuming.' But those who are here the bad guys are them, and not us. If someone honest knows that he is not committing a crime, he has no reason to hide. /// But in the end, I believe and studied a lot and read a lot about nonviolent strategic action. When you confront one of these regimes, and use violence, you give them the legitimacy to attack you. You lose your own legitimacy in front of the international community, of the press, of those who could defend you. Because logically a violent disturbance in any country in the world is neutralized with the force of the state, that is not a secret to anyone. But when an eminently peaceful demonstration is attacked without justification by the state, that does truly generate the rejection of the entire population and support for the protesters.”

"In the case of Venezuela it is selling the only 40 years of democracy that Venezuela had as a period of oppression, as a period of corruption and as a period of delay. Which is denying reality. Or it is selling reality as something completely different. In other words, the period in which there were more social freedoms, in which the economy grew more, in which the country became more internationalized, the large highways, hospitals, schools and public buildings were built... But the Chavismo's narrative was that that era of 40 years of democracy, which occurred thanks to a pact between parties, between social democracy and Christian democracy, excluding the communist party, they say that this exclusion of the communist party generated an oligarchy, and that they came as the saviors of the people to free them from that oligarchy, making many similarities with the independence of Venezuela, which throughout our history has been used by all those who have power and want to justify themselves to some extent, so they rely on the figure of Simón Bolívar or other liberators. Then Chávez begins to sell himself as a second Simón Bolívar, as the liberator of the poor, as the one who is going to free us from those who have done so much damage, etc. Today it is even written in the history books of Venezuelan public education. The contemporary history of Hugo Chávez is called as the Fifth Venezuelan Republic. As if it were dismantling history and selling it in another way.”

“I remember that night when Chávez left power [April 2002 for 47 hours], a great joy in the building, the neighbors shouting, it was cheerful. And I also remember two or three days later when the military returned Chávez to the presidential palace, hearing, no longer in our building, but in the surrounding neighborhoods, the chants of 'he returned, he returned, he returned', celebrating the return of Chávez. Then you began to realize that there was something beyond your own bubble, in which you did not live, that there were people who really supported that man. To the point that, if they came out of their window screaming, you heard it in your house in a forceful way. I think that, from then on, since I was 10 years old, politics did not disappear from my life.”