| Country: | Venezuela |
| Details of Formation: | President Hugo Chavez created a new national defense component, called "Bolivarian Militias" with a new organic law of the Bolivarian National Armed Forces. According to that law, this armed body is designed to protect the president or whomever he designates from any type of internal or external aggression. Its creation seems to reflect a lack of trust in the regular armed forces, despite repeated purges of its ranks. The Militia was created to raise the perceived costs of a traditional coup d'état on the part of the other service branches. |
| Details of Termination: | The President of Venezuela integrated the Bolivarian Militia into the regular armed forced to strengthen the national military. |
| Purpose: | The Bolivarian Militia serves a wide arrange of purposes, including territorial defense and ensuring public security and institutions (Wikipedia). Their main purpose seems to be to ensure political support for Hugo Chavez and act against political opposition. |
| Organisation: | The militia is commanded by Carlos Augusto Leal Tellería, a Major General of the army. It reports directly to the president, the Defense Minister and the Operational Strategic Command and serves as an autonomous, auxiliary force to the Armed Forces’ service branches. It is divided into the National Reserve Service, the Territorial Guard Component (volunteers) and the People’s Navy Branch (Wikipedia). The militia is attached to the armed forces. M/G Manuel Bernal Martínez was declared head of the Bolivarian Militia in 2020. It is complemented by the People's National Defense Corps, formed in 2018, which is the operational reserve of the National Armed Forces with the aim of protecting public order and security (Wikipedia). The militias wear beige uniforms over the red T-shirts of the Chavista movement, admirers of the Hugo Chavez brand of socialism |
| Weapons and Training: | The militia is armed with small arms and light weapons, as well as fire assault rifles. The group is trained at the Venezuelan army base. Most are equipped with Russian Mosin-Nagant bolt-action rifles of Second World War vintage. |
| Size: | At the end of 2008, the militia had 850,000 members in its two branches according to its commander. In 2010, the Public Works Minister estimated the size at 120,000, and in 2012 a number between 20,000 and 200,000 is mentioned. In 2013, there were 120,000, with one quarter of these being combat ready. After the 2017 crisis in Venezuela, Maduro announced that the militia should be expanded to 500,000 members (Wikipedia). While Maduro announced in 2017 that he would increase the number of militia members from 100,000 to 500,000, in 2019 the number was already 2 million. The number of members continued to increase and in 2019 it comprised 3,295,335 members. The number eventually increased further to 4.5million members in 2020. |
| Reason for Membership: | Many members say that they benefit from free state education programmes or work as public employees. In some cases members received payments for showing up. |
| Treatment of Civilians: | The Bolivarian militia has used violence against political opposition and critical journalists (Wikipedia). The government gave them a mandate and support so they could implement a policy of repression (Amnesty International 2017). |
| Other Information: | -- |
| References: |
‘Venezuela: Lethal Violence, a State Policy to Strangle Dissent’. 2017. Amnesty International. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2017/07/venezuela-violencia-letal-una-politica-de-estado-para-asfixiar-a-la-disidencia/ Wikipedia. “Bolivarian Militia of Venezuela“. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bolivarian_Militia_of_Venezuela&oldid=1106297646 (accessed Dec 17, 2022) Bouckaert, Peter. 2016. ‘Venezuela’s Humanitarian Crisis’. Human Rights Watch. https://www.hrw.org/report/2016/10/24/venezuelas-humanitarian-crisis/severe-medical-and-food-shortages-inadequate-and (accessed December 17, 2022). |