MIAMI – The Padrino family appears to embody the divisions of many Venezuelans and Venezuelan Americans during the ongoing political crisis.
Ludmila Padrino, a Venezuelan corporate attorney turned Texas notary, started Tramites Consulares in Katy, Texas, in the same year Hugo Chávez was elected.
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With an office in Broward County, she trusted Ernesto Padrino, of Weston-based Renew Home Services, to cater to entrepreneurial immigrants with means. She recently sent a public message to her first cousin.
“You know that the only coup d’état that was carried out on the night of July 28, was by you from the official sector who perpetrated this coup,” she wrote to Venezuela’s Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino on Instagram in Spanish.
Ludmila Padrino released her message, which went viral on TikTok, after her cousin delivered a televised speech in uniform. Vladimir Padrino was responding to the opposition’s declaration that there was evidence of election fraud by the ruling socialist party and after the large demonstration that followed in Caracas.
“We are in the presence of a coup d’état engineered once again by these fascist factors of the extremist right, supported by imperial factors, North American imperialism,” the four-star general said during his public speech on Tuesday.
Ludmila Padrino said she felt heartache, indignation, rage, sadness, shame, a lot of pain — but also hope. She listed the requests for her cousin: “Allow all the young people, all the mothers, and all the families that are separated and suffering today to grow up like you did — in a free Venezuela.”
The United Nations estimates the Venezuelan diaspora is at over 7.7 million since 2014. Before the turbulent economy fueled the refugee crisis, when Vladimir Padrino was a boy, Venezuela was the richest country in the region and one of the 20 richest in the world.
Vladimir Padrino graduated from a Venezuelan military academy when he was 21 — after the nationalization of the oil industry caused a balance of payment crisis in Caracas. Ludmila Padrino said she remembered their political disagreements and him saying he was an “institutionalist and constitutionalist.”
She also remembered him as someone who genuinely believed in Chávez’s revolution for the poor. Vladimir Padrino became the country’s minister of defense when Nicolás Maduro took power and credited him with “an outstanding performance” during the 2002 coup attempt headed by Chávez.
Activists in Venezuela have reported increasing crime, political violence, and repression under the ruling party’s control over every branch of government. Vladimir Padrino had not even served three years on the military’s top job when he publicly acknowledged the abuses.
“I don’t want to see another member of the National Guard committing an atrocity on the street,” Vladimir Padrino said during a public address in 2017. He also said violators “must assume their responsibility.”
Maduro gave Vladimir Padrino control of the distribution of food and medications. In 2018, the U.S. Treasury announced Padrino’s real mission was to “ensure the military’s loyalty to the Maduro regime” and banned “engaging in transactions” with him.
In 2019, a U.S. federal grand jury charged Vladimir Padrino with narcotrafficking involving cocaine on an aircraft registered in the U.S. that traveled to Venezuela, Belize, Guatemala, Mexico, and Honduras. The investigation was by DEA agents in Florida.
In 2020, U.S. federal prosecutors accused him of accepting bribes as part of a group the DEA referred to as “Cártel de Los Soles” because of “the sun insignias affixed to the uniforms of high-ranking Venezuelan military officials” like Padrino.
In 2021, U.S. diplomats condemned Vladimir Padrino for criticizing the journalists and advocates who were reporting on the state’s human rights violations as “falsehoods and terror.”
On Wednesday, Ludmila Padrino condemned her cousin for allowing the “theft done to the people, by ignoring their sovereign will” to elect Edmundo González, the opposition’s candidate on Sunday.
Maduro’s opposition declared that about 80% of the tally sheets from electronic voting machines showed González, a retired diplomat and academic, was the new president-elect of Venezuela.
“The people expressed themselves peacefully and civically at the polls and said no to the revolutionary project that you represent and that thanks to you has been maintained for so many years,” Ludmila Padrino wrote to her cousin. “The people of Venezuela have fought like David against Goliath.”
The United Socialist Party of Venezuela controls The National Electoral Council.
The loyalists reported Maduro won with 5.1 million votes, and González lost with over 4.4 million votes. They did not release a breakdown of the votes, which prompted calls for transparency.
The opposition’s effort to keep track of the votes cited about 80% of the tally sheet results to report González won with 6.2 million votes and Maduro lost with 2.7 million.
Ludmila Padrino asked her cousin to get on the right side of history. She also called on him to respect his oath as a Venezuelan soldier, “do the right thing,” and avoid bloodshed.
“No more lies and masterminding, no more death of innocents, no more detainees,” she wrote.
Related post in Spanish