82-year-old Venezuelan mother Carmen Navas passed away on Sunday, ten days after the Venezuelan socialist regime admitted that her missing son, political prisoner Víctor Hugo Quero Navas, has been dead since July 2025.
Venezuelan journalists reported that Carmen Navas passed away on Sunday. On Friday, two days before she died, the elderly mother participated in a Mass in honor of her dead son at a church in the La Candelaria Parish of Caracas. Mothers and other relatives of political prisoners, as well as human rights activists, reportedly accompanied the grieving mother. The outlet Runrunes reported that the elderly mother was out of breath, exhausted, and choked with tears, only able to thank or offer a grateful look to everyone who came up to hug her or shake her hand.
“God gave me the strength to keep searching for my son until the very end,” Carmen Navas reportedly said during Mass.
The case of the Quero Navas family has deeply shocked Venezuelan society and divulged another key piece of evidence of the decades-old repression under the Venezuelan socialist regime. For 16 months, Carmen Navas held a desperate search for her missing 50-year-old son across Venezuelan prisons and government institutions — none of which provided the mother with any information about her son’s whereabouts.
Víctor Hugo Quero Navas was unjustly arrested in January 2025 by officials of the Venezuelan regime’s General Directorate of Military Counterintelligence (DGCIM). Quero Navas was accused of “treason to the homeland, conspiracy, and terrorism,” yet never faced trial or received due process at any point of his unjust imprisonment. On May 7, the Venezuelan regime admitted that Víctor Hugo Quero Navas has been dead since July 2025.
According to the Venezuelan Penitentiary Services Ministry, Quero Navas allegedly died of “acute respiratory failure secondary to pulmonary thromboembolism” ten days after being hospitalized in a military hospital in Caracas. The Ministry affirmed that his body was buried on July 30, 2025. Per the Venezuelan regime, Quero Navas was detained at the Rodeo I prison in the town of Guatire. Carmen Navas had reportedly visited Rodeo I and asked prison authorities about her son on 12 occasions in the past 16 months. The prison refused to disclose to the mother that her son was actually detained there. Inmates who shared prison cells with Quero Navas reportedly relayed to the mother that they had seen her son and detailed that he fell ill at some point between July and August 2025. The inmates also detailed that Quero Navas was only fed grains by the prison’s staff.
At press time, the exact circumstances surrounding Quero Navas’s death remain publicly unclear, pending an “investigation” from the Venezuelan socialist regime. His exact date of death also remains unclear, particularly as the Penitentiary Services Ministry’s claimed the July 24, 2025, date is different from the July 27, 2025, one that Venezuelan authorities wrote on Quero Navas’ improvised tomb. Víctor Hugo Quero Navas is reportedly the 27th political prisoner confirmed to have died in state custody in Venezuela since 2014.
On Monday, Archbishop Emeritus of Caracas Cardinal Baltazar Porras mourned the death of Carmen Navas and called for reflection upon the shocking story of the Quero Navas family. In an Instagram post, Cardinal Porras detailed that Father Honegger Molina, who held the Friday Mass in honor of her son, conveyed his prayers to the mother.
“Today’s news leaves one speechless. Today’s news calls for reflection,” Archbishop Porras wrote. “The reality that Carmen Teresa Navas experienced is the same one that thousands of families are still living through — families who want to know about their imprisoned relatives who were taken by force, and who receive no response from those responsible.”
“May God welcome you, Mrs. Carmen and Victor Hugo, into eternal life,” he concluded.
Anti-socialist Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado mourned the death of Carmen Navas, describing the elderly woman’s life as a lesson of perseverance and dignity, and praising her for facing the Venezuelan regime without fear.
“For months, she searched for her son, Víctor Hugo; she went from prison to prison, court to court, and government office to government office, only to be met with silence, humiliation, and lies,” Machado wrote on social media. “She never stopped demanding the truth. She never gave up. She never stopped fighting.”
“Carmen leaves us with an immense lesson in perseverance and dignity. A woman over 80 years old faced, alone and without fear, an entire apparatus of terror that sought to erase her son and break her family. They could not,” she continued. “Her voice became the voice of thousands of Venezuelan mothers who today are searching for their children—missing, imprisoned, persecuted, or murdered by the criminal regime.”
Following the arrest of socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro by United States forces in Caracas on January 3, the Venezuelan regime, now led by “acting President” Delcy Rodríguez, began releasing some political prisoners. According to information documented by the Venezuelan non-governmental organization Foro Penal, there are 457 confirmed political prisoners remaining in Venezuela as of early May. President Donald Trump, speaking to reporters last week before departing to China, said that he would secure the release of all political prisoners in the country.
“We’re going to get them all out,” Trump told reporters. “As you know, we’ve already freed many political prisoners, and the rest will be released too.”
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.