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After the July 28 presidential elections, chavismo focused on criminalizing the protests that began after the National Electoral Council (CNE) disregarded the result issued by Nicolás Maduro as the winner, amidst allegations of fraud by the opposition. This narrative was not only distributed internally, but was also promoted on a regional scale using social media to project internationally the image of Maduro as the legitimate winner.
With a toll of 27 Venezuelans dead and thousands of people arbitrarily detained in the framework of the greatest government repression of the last months, the government built the narrative of “keeping the peace” in parallel with the criminalization of the demonstrators and supporters of the opposition, with greater emphasis on the “Comanditos”, citizen groups promoted by the opposition to watch over the vote on July 28 and protect electoral rights.
Thus, on July 30, Maduro announced the deployment of a special plan “within the framework of the second phase of Plan República”, for the National Armed Forces and the police forces to patrol streets, avenues and urbanizations to supposedly protect the population from the “violent groups”; assuring that these were groups of “criminals on the cheap” and that “all their members would be arrested”.
That same July 30, we registered #MaduroPresidente as a trend in Cuba, with around 40,100 messages in X. However, this did not manage to trend in Venezuela, which led us to conduct a social listening study to identify what other pro-Maduro narratives and criminalizing citizen protest were being replicated in the online conversation in the region and by whom.
How was the officialist narrative around the protests propagated in international accounts?
From ProBox a search was conducted with terms associated with the discourse promoted by Maduro and his followers criminalizing the protest as “acts coordinated by the extreme right”, identifying (translated): “#MaduroPresidente”, “extreme right in Venezuela”, “#HandsOffVenezuela”, “Venezuelan extreme right”, “#ManosFueraDeVenezuela”, “violent acts by María Corina Machado, violent guarimbera”, “terrorist group Vente Venezuela”, “acts of vandalism by the opposition Venezuela”, and “violent acts comanditos María Corina Edmundo”.
The results reveal how the narrative promoted by chavismo crossed borders and positioned itself in international scenarios.
Between July 20 and August 22, at least 4,548 mentions of the keywords and tags studied were found. Between July 28 (election day) and July 31, the highest activity was found with 1,446 mentions. However, July 30 stands out as the most active day with 425, coinciding with the emphasis of the official discourse against protesters and the announcement of the update of VenApp to denounce opponents, in addition to the trend positioned in Cuba.
This conversation took place mainly on Instagram with 56.57% of the mentions obtained (2,589), followed by Facebook with 23.20% (1,062 mentions), TikTok with 10.23% (468 mentions), and finally X with 10.01% (458 mentions).
Chavismo largely tried to promote Maduro as the winner and to emphasize his status as president-elect.
“Nicolás Maduro” stands out as one of the most repeated words in the context of this conversation about the criminalization of Venezuelan protest with more than 955 mentions, followed by “President Nicolás” with 300 mentions.
English content was also found due to Maduro’s accusations of “interference” and “destabilizing attempts” by the U.S. in the acts of protest. The hashtag “#HandsOffVenezuela” and the phrase “US imperialism” were thus promoted with 27 mentions. The publications related to these hashtags emphasized that the defense of Maduro’s supposed victory was a defense of democracy and Venezuela’s sovereignty against the extreme right.
International media positioning pro-Maduro narratives
Part of the dissemination of the pro-government narrative outside Venezuela is linked to publications that achieved a high volume of interactions and reach of users on the network. Three main publications on Instagram and TeleSUR’s activity on TikTok stand out.
In the case of Instagram, a CNN Chile video with an excerpt of an interview with Congresswoman Carmen Hertz of the Communist Party of Chile, stands out as one of the main ones, not only in terms of interactions but also due to the reach of this media account with more than 1.1 million followers on this social network.
In said video, the congresswoman uses terms linked to Maduro’s speech, emphasizing phrases such as “interfering bravado”, and that she would not be “more democratic than the extreme right” that questions the CNE’s results on the Venezuelan elections. This publication obtained 4,632 “likes”, 3,919 comments and was shared at least 1,194 times.
Also on Instagram, a collaborative publication between three U.S. accounts stands out: the account of the “Party for Socialism and Liberation of the United States”, the account of this same party in New York and the account of the “International Assembly of the Peoples”. This publication shows a video of a protest in front of the Fox News offices demanding “stop imperialism against Venezuela”. It managed to accumulate around 1,799 “likes”, 98 comments and was shared at least 140 times. These three accounts together have more than 156,000 followers on the platform.
In third place was a video of the Chilean media “El Ciudadano”, which has more than 713,000 followers, interviewing the representative of the international area of the Uruguayan political organization Frente Amplio, Carlos Alejandro, in which he affirms that the Venezuelan presidential elections took place with “tranquility”, and that what was raised at international level “is part of a circus of the extreme right in Venezuela and in the world to delegitimize the result”. The publication collected 413 “likes”, 151 comments and was shared at least 28 times.
TikTok highlights how the account of the state channel TeleSUR has been in charge of disseminating this narrative in a significant way. The day after the elections, a video was published from this account in which Nicolás Maduro condemned the “acts of violence of the extreme right to seize power in Venezuela”. As of September 12, the video accumulated around 1.3 million reproductions, 25,700 “likes”, 4,363 comments, has been saved 1,850 times and shared 1,671 times.
Among the main videos is also one in which Maduro is seen mentioning to Minister Freddy Ñañez the need for people in Venezuela to start using WeChat, the Chinese messaging platform, as a substitute for WhatsApp. In the message accompanying the publication, he makes reference to “the extreme right-wing’s acts of interference against the Venezuelan nation”. This publication accumulates more than 1.4 million reproductions, 41,900 “likes”, 3,471 comments, has been saved at least 3,456 times and has been shared 4,630 times as of September 12.
In addition to these two TeleSUR publications, there is a third one that talks about how Maduro “rendered accounts before the Supreme Court of Justice” and defended peace in Venezuela, while the “extreme right-wing candidate”, Edmundo González, did not go to the TSJ’s call. This video accumulated as of September 12 824,000 reproductions, 14,900 likes, 668 comments, was saved 986 times and shared 466 times.
Venezuela and Cuba, allies for disinformation
The hashtag #MaduroPresidente trended several times in Cuba on X, on days when it failed to trend in Venezuela. According to ProBox records, July 30 was the first time this hashtag climbed in the Cuban digital conversation, totaling around 40,100 messages.
On August 18, #MaduroPresidente appeared again in Cuban trends, this time totaling 4,401 tweets; on August 24 again the same hashtag was registered as a trend in Cuba with 1,721 messages.
On all three occasions it was trending on the island but not in Venezuela.
#MaduroPresidente was trending in Venezuela on July 4 and 14, with campaign messages from the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) prior to the country’s elections. Between both days it managed to accumulate approximately 16,188 tweets. The messages found in this hashtag on the days it was trending in Cuba, follow the same guidelines as the official campaign: support for Maduro, the CNE results and the TSJ’s reviews of the process, as well as some messages attacking the Venezuelan opposition.
This is not the first time that ProBox has identified messages from Venezuelan officialdom in Cuba, in fact it is one of the main features of the Cuban socio-political conversation on X since we started its study in 2020.
In the analysis of the international conversation around the protests, Cuba is undoubtedly an actor that stands out. When eliminating conflicting mentions that could come from Venezuela, Cuba occupies the first place as the country with the most publications talking about “the interference of the extreme right” and the “destabilization of Venezuela” with 169 mentions.
It is followed by Chile with 98, Mexico with 91, Colombia with 74 and the United States in fifth place with 73 mentions associated with the keywords studied by ProBox.
Narratives that do not work: international community does not recognize Maduro
Despite the momentum of pro-Chavism narratives on a regional scale, the truth is that most countries in the region, with the exception of Cuba, Bolivia and Nicaragua, do not recognize the legitimacy of the results of the elections held on July 28.
The demand for the publication of the minutes by the opposition is practically unanimous, as is the international rejection of the criminalization of protest that has led to the imprisonment of thousands of Venezuelans accused of terrorism. Women, minors, journalists, human rights defenders, political leaders and citizens who participated in the protests or who published their political position on social networks were transferred to maximum security prisons without the right to visits or private defense, in violation of their fundamental human rights.
Historic allies of Chavism such as Lula Dal Silva, President of Brazil, and Gustavo Petro, Colombian President, have raised their voices to condemn the repression and demand accountability, while Spanish President Pedro Sanchez, also aligned with the left, granted asylum to opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez and called him a “hero”.
However, there is still a certain reluctance in the thinking of the international left to directly condemn the human rights violations that the country is experiencing and only distance themselves or disassociate themselves from the process without ratifying the validity of the results shown by a persecuted opposition. A recent article by researcher Laura Vidal, published by Global Voices, relates: “the interpretation of the situation in Venezuela is usually superficial and erroneous. The “venezuelasplaining” is a phenomenon that occurs when people, from their privileged and distant position, try to explain to us the ins and outs of our crisis, generally ignoring or oversimplifying the harsh realities we are living”, the article points out.
Historian Armando Chaguaceda points out that the Venezuelan crisis seems to be showing a greater diversity of positions within the regional left regarding the legitimacy of the Maduro regime. However, he emphasizes that with the exception of the Chilean president, Gabriel Boric, the positions of Brazil and Colombia are contradictory.
“There is no clear position condemning the dictatorial drift, the mediations have failed and there is much care in pointing out for its authoritarian condition and the repression and fraud to the Maduro government.”
Given the position of the Latin American left, Laura Vidal points out that while the intention to defend the Latin American movement is understandable, the subsequent silence in the face of the atrocious human rights violations in Venezuela is painful. “Celebrating the revolution without recognizing the suffering it has caused reveals a selective blindness that undermines the very principles they claim to defend,” she sentences.
