Members of the opposition and several Venezuelan journalists reported this Sunday the death of Carmen Teresa Navas, mother of political prisoner Víctor Hugo Quero. Quero's death in the custody of the Venezuelan state was confirmed by the country's authorities last week, after months of campaigns demanding explanations about his whereabouts and situation.
"Today Venezuela bids farewell to Mrs. Carmen Teresa Navas," stated opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate María Corina Machado, in a message disseminated on social media. In that text, she emphasized that "not only a mother has died" but rather "a woman has been extinguished who turned pain into courage and desperation into denunciation" after dedicating "months" to tracking her son's whereabouts in "prisons, courts, and offices of a State that responded to her with silence, humiliation, and lies."
Machado presented Navas as "the voice of thousands of Venezuelan mothers searching for their disappeared, imprisoned, persecuted, or murdered children by the criminal regime" and appealed to the nation's "moral duty" to "remember her name and Víctor's," warning that "a country that forgets its victims runs the risk of becoming accustomed to horror." Therefore, she defended as an "obligation" that "justice, memory, and reparation exist" and that "this horror never happen again."
The opposition leader's statements are supported by a previous message from Venezuelan journalist Maryorin Méndez, who via X reported the death of Navas, around 80 years old, at approximately 7:00 PM (1:00 PM in Spain and the Balearic Islands).
The director of the NGO Foro Penal, Gonzalo Himiob, also paid tribute to Quero's mother, whom he described as a woman who "had the immense strength to wait and fight until the end for her son," also highlighting that "she leaves, but with her head held high."
Opposition member Leopoldo López expressed similar sentiments, who with "deep sorrow" recalled how "for almost a year" Navas visited "prisons, offices, and courts seeking answers" until she found Quero's whereabouts, whom he described as a "decent, hardworking man and a son who took care of his mother and ended up trapped in one of the many arbitrary proceedings that have torn entire Venezuelan families apart."
"Today we do not speak from politicking nor from taking advantage of others' pain. We speak with genuine sadness, with contained tears, and with the conviction that Venezuela cannot get used to these tragedies," López added.
The former deputy Juan Pablo Guanipa, from the Primero Justicia party, one of the beneficiaries of the amnesty law promoted by the interim president of Venezuela, Delcy Rodríguez, also reacted. In his message, after demanding the "cessation" of the "repression against Venezuelans," he denounced that, in his opinion, for "a year" they have "cynically mocked the pain of a mother who was looking for her son in the prisons of the dictatorship."
According to the Venezuelan prison service, Quero remained imprisoned in El Rodeo I jail since his arrest in January 2025. Later, on July 15, he was transferred to a military hospital for "presenting an upper digestive hemorrhage and acute febrile syndrome," dying later from "acute respiratory failure secondary to pulmonary thromboembolism, as stated in the death certificate."
The same prison authority indicated that his formal burial took place on July 30 "in compliance with legal protocols" and "in the absence of his relatives." In parallel, the Venezuelan Public Ministry has announced the opening of a criminal investigation into Quero Navas's death with the aim of clarifying the facts "in a timely and impartial manner."