Carmen Teresa Navas, 83 years old, mother of political prisoner Víctor Hugo Quero, passed away this Sunday just days after being able to say goodbye to her son through the exhumation of his remains and a commemorative mass in Caracas.
Navas had been hospitalized recently, and the doctors did not disclose the clinical causes of her death, stated El País.
The case represents a double crime of the chavista regime: the Venezuelan state killed Víctor Hugo Quero while in custody and then concealed his death for more than nine months, depriving an elderly mother of the chance to say goodbye to her son.
Quero was arrested on January 1, 2025, in the vicinity of Plaza Venezuela in Caracas, accused of terrorism and treason against the homeland.
After his detention, he remained missing for months while his mother searched the country's prisons for information.
Navas repeatedly visited the maximum security prison El Rodeo I, where authorities constantly denied him any information about his son's whereabouts.
The Ministry of Penitentiary Affairs finally acknowledged that Quero had died on July 24, 2025, six months after his capture, due to "acute respiratory failure secondary to pulmonary embolism."
His body was buried in secret without anyone knowing, and in October 2025, the Office of the Ombudsman and the Venezuelan Prosecutor's Office still claimed that he was in custody, even though he had been dead for three months.
The case escalated to a national level in May 2026, in the context of the political opening resulting from the arrest of Nicolás Maduro by the United States and the installation of Delcy Rodríguez as interim president.
It was then that the government acknowledged the death, and Carmen Navas had to witness the exhumation of her son's body, buried for nine months without anyone knowing.
Last Thursday, a large commemorative mass was held in Caracas, attended by the mother herself along with family members.
Neither the government nor any authority from Rodríguez's cabinet has commented on the case.
The journalist Orlando Avendaño was one of the first to confirm the death: "Navas was barely able to say goodbye a few days ago when the regime acknowledged the crime. He managed to bury him and attend his mass."
Marshall S. Billingslea, a U.S. official, reacted to the case by calling it an "atrocity" and promising "accountability."
The case fits into a documented pattern of impunity for crimes under chavismo: at least 27 individuals detained for political reasons have died in the custody of the Venezuelan state since 2014, and at least eight political prisoners have died in Venezuelan prisons since July 2024.
The amnesty announced by Rodríguez in January 2026 turned out to be insufficient: the Penal Forum verified only 768 actual releases compared to the 8,616 that the government claimed to have granted, and on April 25, Rodríguez announced the end of the amnesty law with hundreds of political prisoners still incarcerated.
María Corina Machado, who called for the release of all political prisoners following the news of Quero's death and described the case as "the final act of cynicism and cruelty," is still unable to return to Venezuela despite her repeated promises to do so soon.
"I didn't want to speak to the press; they killed my son; they never let me see him. No one can understand the pain of a mother," were the last public words of Carmen Navas.
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