In my May 8 “The New Monroe Doctrine” column, I introduced you to Víctor Hugo Quero Navas, a 51-year-old Venezuelan man who worked as a karate instructor and street merchant, selling clothing and nutritional supplements to support himself and his elderly mother.
Victor didn’t look like your average Venezuelan. He was tall with blonde hair and lighter-colored eyes. Most people considered him a good-looking guy. He also served briefly in the military. These are the things that cost him his life.
On January 1, 2025, he was walking home, carrying a box of chocolates — a New Year’s gift for his mother — when the Nicolás Maduro regime kidnapped him and made him disappear. He had no record of political activism. By all accounts, he lived a pretty quiet life.
He was charged with terrorism — that’s the regime’s go-to charge for political prisoners — financing of terrorism, criminal association, treason to the homeland, and, most notably, conspiracy with foreign agencies. He’d committed none of these crimes. At the time, the Maduro regime was pushing this theory about “foreign mercenaries,” as a way to try to scare and intimidate the people, and Victor looked the part. His brief time spent in the military added to the suggestion that he was some kind of traitor or spy. In prison, he was called “The Russian.”
There was no warrant for his arrest. His family was never notified. He received a “state-appointed lawyer” and was thrown before a kangaroo court. He ended up locked up in El Rodeo 1, an infamous violent prison, where political prisoners are tortured and neglected.
For 16 months, his mother, Carmen Teresa Navas, who is 82, searched for him. She filed petitions. Made public outcries. Carried his picture everywhere. Went all over the country searching the prisons, courts, hospitals, and morgues. She was harassed by the regime and the Colectivos paramilitary group. Officials told her they didn’t know where her son was. They’d question her for hours. They wanted her to give up.
The United States must immediately reimpose sanctions on Delcy Rodríguez.
VÍCTOR HUGO QUERO NAVAS was kidnapped, tortured, isolated, and killed by Maduro’s evil thugs.
For 16 months, his mother Carmen searched from prison to prison looking for answers while the regime hid the… pic.twitter.com/v4WvZPI4m7
— Rick Scott (@SenRickScott) May 8, 2026
Why did they want her to give up? To put it simply, they murdered Victor. He’d been tortured and neglected to the point that he got sick and was suffering from internal bleeding. In July, they took him to a military hospital, where he eventually died. The regime buried him, wrote off his cause of death as “acute respiratory failure secondary to pulmonary thromboembolism,” and never notified his family.
But Carmen did not give up. She was strong and persistent and became a symbolic mother-like figure for the Venezuelan people who’d watched this regime disappear, detain, and even murder their own friends and family members over the years. This woman barely had a penny to her name, but she stopped at nothing to try to find her son.
Earlier this month, not even two weeks ago, she was still searching when the Venezuelan Prisons Ministry finally confirmed Victor’s death and broke the news to his mother. His body was exhumed for DNA testing to determine if he was tortured, and Carmen held a mass at his gravesite.
Dña. Carmen, descanse en paz junto a Víctor Hugo. Que ese amor que aquí fue dolor, allá sea reencuentro 💔 pic.twitter.com/XAxsKIUJev
— Elizabeth Sanchez Vegas (@elhabito) May 17, 2026
Ten days later, Carmen died, too, surrounded by what remained of her family. You can argue that she was 82, but I do not for a moment believe this woman died from natural causes or old age. She died from a broken heart and the pointless psychological torture that Maduro and all of his little thugs, including Delcy Rodríguez, put her through.
When Maduro was captured and arrested in January, it woke something up in Venezuela. Slowly but surely, people began to find hope and lose their fear of the regime that had spent years intimidating and torturing them. It started with students and families of political prisoners, but it has spread to people who want jobs and real wages and to be able to afford food, as well as those who want to see real elections so their candidates can replace the regime. If there was anyone still lingering in the shadows, I do believe Carmen’s murder awakened them too.
There has been a very public outcry in person in Venezuela since the news broke, as well as on social media. I’ve connected with a lot of Venezuelan exiles who live in the United States over the past year, and they are beyond furious. Even members of our own Congress have spoken out, like Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who had this to say:
The Venezuelan regime KILLED Carmen Navas through the torture, cruelty and evil they inflicted on her and her son, Víctor Hugo Quero.
Carmen is the face of the brutality of the Venezuelan dictatorship. They kidnapped her son, hid his death for months and forced a mother to search prison after prison while they already knew he was dead.
Delcy Rodríguez and every thug involved in this crime against humanity WILL be held accountable. We won’t rest until they face the justice they deserve and ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS ARE RELEASED.
Opposition leader María Corina Machado said of Carmen: “Not just a mother died; a woman who turned pain into courage and despair into denunciation has been extinguished.” She added:
Her voice became the voice of thousands of Venezuelan mothers who today search for their disappeared, imprisoned, persecuted, or murdered sons at the hands of the criminal regime.
Carmen Teresa’s death cannot be separated from the suffering, cruelty, and impunity that marked the last months of her life. Venezuela has a moral duty to remember her name and that of Víctor Hugo. Because a country that forgets its victims runs the risk of growing accustomed to horror.
To her family, my infinite embrace, and the prayers of a nation that accompanies you.
And to us, an obligation: that there be justice, memory, and reparation. And that this horror never, ever, be repeated.
College students marched in the streets today, carrying pictures of Victor and Carmen, and shouting, “They didn’t die. They were murdered.”
🚨 | Estudiantes protestan en la autopista Francisco Fajardo por la muerte de Carmen Navas:
“¡No se murieron, a ellos los mataron!”. pic.twitter.com/axT7wffxAL
— Orlando Avendaño (@OrlvndoA) May 18, 2026
Here’s Rosa Cucunuba, one of the brave young leaders of this freedom movement in Venezuela, calling out Delcy, who is just as much to blame for this as Maduro. She says: “Rodríguez said she was going to release the political prisoners. We still have political prisoners. Put on your pants, bro. It’s that simple. You wanna act all tough and macho? You wanna play the big shot? There you are making promises on a screen because you’re scared. So put on your pants.”
Le tienen miedo a una Venezuela LIBRE.
La vicepresidenta de la FCU-UCV, Rosa Cucunuba, envía un mensaje clarísimo al régimen de Delcy Rodríguez: Pónganse los pantalones, cumplan sus promesas y denle la cara a un pueblo que clama por libertad.#NiOlvidoNiPerdón pic.twitter.com/kRhPQvxwWM
— JóvenesConVzla (@JovenesConVzla_) May 18, 2026
I’m not Venezuelan. I will never fully understand at the personal level what the people of that country have suffered through, thank God. But I have spent I don’t even know how many hours learning from, talking to, and writing about the people of that country over the past year, and I am mad as hell about this on their behalf. The sooner Delcy and the rest of the regime are out of there, the better.
But when I heard this news, do you know what really made me mad? All of the idiots in these United States who try to tell us how wonderful socialism/democratic socialism/communism/whatever they choose to call it, even though it’s all the same lipstick on a pig, would be for our country. I’d love to hear them tell that to Victor and Carmen.
I don’t want to live in a world where the state has so much control over my life that it essentially owns my death and my family’s grief. I don’t want to live in a world where people are locked up arbitrarily and their families torture themselves trying to find them, only to learn they were buried in secret graves months prior. I don’t want leaders who look at Venezuela or Cuba and praise the way people live under constant surveillance and threats. Never mind all of the other godawful things that go on in these countries.
You can take your tyranny and shove it up your a**.
