In 1936, Venezuelans learned for the first time what it meant to transition towards democracy. While this was not the only period of transition the country would experience (since the process that began in 1958 consolidated a more open and enduring political regime), the transition of 1936 was longer and more complex, resembling the one Venezuelans are now experiencing after the capture of Nicolás Maduro on 3 January 2026.

Coromoto Escalona, a 35-year-old woman, was preparing her baby’s feeding bottle when she heard some strange noises in the house. It was two o’clock in the morning. She wondered whether the fridge had broken down, since it sometimes made strange noises when it was damaged. Her eldest daughter, who was scrolling on WhatsApp, shouted from her room: “Mum, they’re bombing us.” The two of them stopped what they were doing, grabbed the essentials – the feeding bottle, water and some food – and ran to an underground room in their house, an old colonial mansion in La Pastora, a working-class neighbourhood in central Caracas.

Coromoto’s testimony is one of many you hear in Caracas these days, a week after the US military attack on the Venezuelan capital which concluded with the capture of Maduro. The event, other Caracas residents recount, felt like a repeat of what they experienced on 4 February 1992, when the city was also bombed – not by the US, but by Hugo Chávez’s military officers, who had risen up against the existing democratic system. The structure in place at the time of Chávez’s strikes had taken many years to achieve and consolidate – just over three decades in the past century.

To understand the depth of this moment, it is necessary to step back to 1936, when Venezuelans first experienced what a political transition meant: a shift........

© The Guardian