gather enough evidence to indict officers Juan Leonides Gómez, 29, and Douglas Rafael Camacaro, 33, for the crimes of murder and unlawful use of firearm against Esteban Javier Vargas Hernandez and Pedro Daniel Guevara, and for the 6th Court of the state of Lara to issue an arrest warrant against them. ** A journalist familiar with the case of Esteban Javier recommended Wilmar Hernández to visit the Committee of Victims Against Impunity of the state of Lara, to request support with the accusation. Wilmar did so and she discovered that her tragedy was the same as many other grandmothers, mothers and wives of the region. Wilmar now knows each of their cases, goes with them to court on trial days, comforts them as they have comforted her. Demanding justice in Venezuela is a full-time work: long hours waiting at the public prosecutor office, courts; meetings every week, days of protest. And she has spent the last 25 years of his life teaching preschool children and raising her own, but now wants to devote herself to this: “I have been teaching preschool for 25 years. But I will retire this year because I‘m going to devote myself fully to the Victims Committee. We traditional teachers are not used to missing work, taking leaves, and I want to spend more time working on the Committee to help my friends. Because we are not working just for ourselves. We are working for the entire group”. Despite the grief, Wilmar has embarked on projects she would have never imagined before. Two Wednesdays each month, Wilmar is the hostess of the radio program No hay derecho (No Rights), broadcast by Radio Fe y Alegria 95.7 FM once a week and produced by the Lara Committee of Victims. “The first time I went to the program as a victim and it was very hard. And then I had to host, because they all have other responsibilities. And I‘m just starting, but I think I‘m doing well because many people tell me: ‘Hey, I heard you on the radio’”. –Has Esteban Javier‘s death changed your life? –To say the least. “Everything has changed”, she says.
Esteban Javier‘s parents made tremendous efforts to put him through college: he worked as a carpenter and she sold clothes she bought at the Obelisco market. Neither the Vargas Hernandez family, nor the Lara Committee of Victims which supports them, had enough money to pay for the services of a private attorney in the trial for the boy‘s death. Thus, the prosecution in this case, like so many other cases of killings committed by security forces in Lara, is in the hands of the Public Ministry. The two officers involved, however, did have private defense attorneys, paid by the regional police. And during the trial, they received the benefit of being detained in a police command. But the time the officers spent in jail was short. Three months after the preliminary hearing for the death of Esteban Javier Vargas Hernández and Pedro Daniel Guevara, the judge who heard the case ruled that there was no sufficient evidence to indict the officers. This is usually the case in the state of Lara, where over 600 cases of human rights violations are shelved pending investigation, trial and sentencing. Wilmar Hernández and his family appealed, and the entire process of investigation and proceedings and going twice a week to the Prosecutor Office have begun once again. “We still trust in Venezuelan justice, that‘s why we are doing this, and that‘s why we have waited so long. Some might say that late justice is not justice at all, but we await it anyway”, said Wilmar, without losing confidence. *****
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