this project could not have turned out the way it did without the collaboration of these photographers:
leo álvarez
alejandro cegarra
claudia paparelli
carlos ramos
iñaki zugasti
félix espinoza
leo álvarez
alejandro cegarra
claudia paparelli
carlos ramos
iñaki zugasti
félix espinoza
a character page of the former director of the intelligence service - a key figure in the investigation.
a timeline of the key events that took place in 2016 that led to 2017 protests.
background image:
a protestor throws a molotov cocktail to a national guard’s truck.
by iñaki zugasti (2017)
Page:
a roster of all the people that died in both protests waves, according to the mission.
a protestor throws a molotov cocktail to a national guard’s truck.
by iñaki zugasti (2017)
Page:
a roster of all the people that died in both protests waves, according to the mission.
this is the 3d reconstruction of robert redman’s murder on the night of feb. 12, 2014.
background:
a satellite image of the track of march held on caracas on feb. 12, 2014. it also works as an ar target.
foreground:
an illustration of how a victim (21) was held in a detention camp while sexually abused by the officers with a rifle.
a satellite image of the track of march held on caracas on feb. 12, 2014. it also works as an ar target.
foreground:
an illustration of how a victim (21) was held in a detention camp while sexually abused by the officers with a rifle.
robert redman holding the body of bassil da costa on feb. 12th, 2014. he’d be killed later that night.
by alejandro cegarra (2017)
by alejandro cegarra (2017)
the handwritten text reads: “Today I was hit with a stone in the back, i was hit on the nose with a helmet, I swallowed tear gas bombs, I carried the guy who died. what did you do?”
that’s robert redman last tweet.
that’s robert redman last tweet.
a visual representation on how the 3d models are played on the ar.
sin nadie que te consuele
an editorial / mixed reality project that, through the narration of 11 real cases, seeks to expose several crimes committed by the Venezuelan government in the protests that occurred in 2014 and 2017.
* this project is about violence, so viewer discretion is adviced.
* this project is about violence, so viewer discretion is adviced.
In September 2020, a report presented at United Nations Human Rights Council concluded that:
“since at least 2014, the Venezuelan Government and its security forces have planned and executed serious human rights violations, constituting, in some cases, crimes against humanity.”
this project is a visual and interactive re-edition of that report, so it can easier to read and understand.
Back in August 2018, when I was 19, I left Venezuela. It's a move many of us in my generation made, feeling that Venezuela had little to offer in terms of a future.
nonetheless, I had some luck and privileges others didn't – I wasn't shot, persecuted, or tortured.
Living abroad, I had to keep explaining my country's chaos to people who couldn't quite grasp it.
Despite the headlines, the outside world couldn't fully get what was happening in Venezuela, or they just didn't care. so i decided to make this as my final project to get my design degree.
it's my way of answering the question "What's up with Venezuela?". It's me solidifying my identity as an immigrant and giving a human face to all those statistics of people who didn't make it.
it's my tribute to the ones we lost, a generational scar and loud reminder of all the things we went through.
The project had three clear goals:
the visuals were aimed to:
The UN's Fact Finding Mission text forms the backbone of this whole project.
However, their report delves into a spectrum of various crimes spanning different timelines within Venezuela, from 2014 to 2019.
for clarity, i narrowed it down to only the crimes commited during the 2014 and 2017 protests.
after reading that like eight times, i was able to summarize and reorder the text into five chapters so it would be easier to understand the context, the timelines and the people involved:
this is all about the mission and their work: who are they, why were they summoned, what are they trying to find out and how.
It explains the political and legal significance of this report inside and outside venezuela, including the realm of the international criminal court.
it’s really hard to answer that witout having to go into a 45 minute speech, but here’s a chronological breakdown of key social and political events that led to the protests
It also dissects the roles of state agencies and security forces, which inevitably played a part in the crimes investigated, to establish a clear chain of command and attribute individual accountability.
a maximized view of the 2014 and 2017 protests to graps their scale and to establish the violent patterns held by government and security forces across both movements.
so this is the core of both the original mission’s report and this project.
The Mission pieced together each case through victim and family interviews, examination of legal documents, and the reconstruction of events using social media and media footage.
To make it more accessible, I've reordered the text so it reads chronologically and added animations, maps, diagrams, illustrations, and images where needed.
i included different forms of media to this narrations so it could be easier to follow. This includes:
presented as the mission’s findings, here’s where personal and institutional responsability is laid down.
The mission concludes on the physical and intellectual culprits of torture, unlawful detentions, disappearances, and executions as well as asserting violent patterns executed as state policies.
the full translated title of the project is “Without Anyone to Comfort You: A Visual Reconstruction of 11 Cases of Crimes against Humanity During the 2014-2017 Protests in Venezuela”.
the “without anyone to comfort you” phrase comes from and old venezuelan salsa song. it’s chorus says:
“For your bad behavior / You will regret it / And you will have to pay for all my suffering / You will cry and cry / With no one to comfort you/ So that you’ll realize that if you’re cheated, it hurts”
that’s the song a national guard sang to a woman that came to a detention site looking for her 13-year-old daughter. the mission’s reports that during that time, the girl was being illegaly detained and sexually abused by security forces just for being near a protest.
The phrase also speaks to the solitude, despair, abandonment and helplessness felt by many venezuelans during those years.
it really felt like the world had turned their back on us and we were all alone.
the cover photo was taken by photographer carlos ramos in the midst of the 2017 protests.
the child’s eyes are asking for help. he’s deep into the combat zone, fighting for something that started long before he was born, yet he feels the need to fight for it.
All of us that lived through that time can find ourselves in that kid. That’s why i decided for it to the be the main imagery of this project.
there’s also the striking similitude to the “eyes of chávez”: a pseudo pop-art icon made after his death to be put on high billboards and on top of buildings to “watch over his legacy”.
essentially the same frame, yet two very different messages connected to each other. were not be for chavez, his policies and the subsequent maduro’s government, that kid would have been playing somewhere instead of having to cover himself in antiacid to reduce the gas’ effects on him.
The back cover features the names, dates and locations of the 11 cases investigated, as well as the names of the photographers and journalists that lent me their material for this project.
there’s also the handrawn seven star arc on the middle.
It’s a representation of the venezuelan flag, althought the official one has eight stars instead of seven.
the seven star flag has been an icon for the opposition ever since chavez decided to at the eighth.
in the protests, it was painted into the DIY shields the protestors were using to protect themselves from the security forces and their violence.
in the mission’s report there’s a lot of third-party information that they gathered to help explain their findings, but it was mostly relegated to confusing footnotes or it was decontextualized.
i brought back that info as graphics, timelines and charts and added the contextual information so it would be easier to grasp every bit of info.
basically, you could say venezuela has a high inflation, but seeing how much that inflation is compared to other “similar” countries helps to show how really really big it is.
everything comes down to this. The real cases investigated by the mission and their reconstruction for this project.
In all of them, the mission reckons that at least one of this crimes were commited and executed by state or security forces:
a major keypoint was to reconstruct the narrrative so it would make sense for people that may not be aware of all the context. So each case has the same storytelling structure:
being able to collect information and remake the events in an interactive way might be the best accomplishment of this whole project.
There are seven tartegt images spread across some of the cases, that when scanned with an app, a 3d animation is kickstarted on top of the page.
starting with the 2013 presidential elections
growing number ofprotests during 2017
a graffiti in memory of bassil dacosta. the first student killed on the protests.
