The Venezuelan government led by interim president Delcy Rodríguez removed the large portraits of Hugo Chávez and Simón Bolívar that had dominated the facade of the Palacio de Justicia de Caracas for years, located across from Avenida Bolívar, one of the busiest areas in the center of the Venezuelan capital.
According to what has been confirmed by Monitoreamos, an independent news portal, instead of the images of Chávez and Bolívar, two large blue banners with the slogan "Plan Venezuela Renace" were installed, the reconstruction program launched by the Chavista regime following the double earthquake on June 24, 2026, which resulted in more than 6,500 fatalities according to official figures.
The change was also documented on Tuesday by journalist Robert Lobo, who approached the building and recorded a video that circulated on social media.
"I was struck by the fact that the images of Hugo Chávez and Simón Bolívar that were there were taken down," Lobo reported, adding that the removal would have occurred during the previous weekend, according to testimonies from nearby residents.
Journalist Lobo also pointed to an electoral dimension in the new institutional image: the "Plan Venezuela Renace," he said, "also seems to be a kind of slogan that is, in one way or another, campaigning ahead of the presidential elections expected to be held in about a year."
The image of Bolívar that was dismantled was not a conventional representation of the Liberator, but rather the result of a supposed scientific and forensic study commissioned by the Venezuelan government in 2010. Through a computed tomography of Bolívar's skull, a team of experts digitally reconstructed his 3D visage.
The image was revealed on July 24, 2012, by the then-ruler Hugo Chávez, and it was declared from that moment as the "institutional and real face" of the Liberator.
For Lobo, the gesture has a clear political interpretation: "It's another way in which the interim government led by the Rodríguez brothers continues to distance itself from the imagery of Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro."
The movement is not limited to the Palace of Justice. According to reports from the media outlet Monitoreamos, the iconography of the Néstor Kirchner Room in the Palace of Miraflores—which was inaugurated by Chávez in honor of the former Argentine president—has also been removed, and at the government fair "Venezuela Eats Fish," the portraits of Chávez, Maduro, and Cilia Flores have been replaced with the current administration's graphic identity.
This pattern of symbolic substitution is part of a broader distancing by Rodríguez's government from the traditional iconography of chavismo, which includes the replacement of the color red with shades of blue in institutional materials, the elimination of chavista missions and foundations, and the dismissal of military figures associated with Chávez.
Venezuela has been without Maduro for more than seven months, having been captured by U.S. forces on January 3, 2026, while the opposition and labor organizations are demanding elections before the end of the year.
The changes have generated tensions within chavismo itself. The governor of Táchira, Freddy Bernal, had already protested last June against the removal of portraits of Chávez and Maduro in public organizations of his state and ordered that they be kept mandatory in the official offices under his jurisdiction.
Filed under: