Members of the Bolivarian Militia attend rally during the commemoration of the 1989 'Caracazo'. Photo / Getty Images
At 62, Rafael Astudillo is two years past retirement age in Venezuela.
The former soldier is not preparing to ease up as his homeland faces increasing threats of invasion by the world’s most powerful fighting force.
Astudillo is a captain in the Venezuelan Bolivarian militia, a civilian group made up mostly of senior citizens that forms part of the Venezuelan military.
He would strongly reject any comparisons to the bumbling Dad’s Army and is prepared to have his “knee on the ground” with his rifle firmly pointed at an American soldier to defend Venezuela, he told the Telegraph at his home in Caracas.
To Donald Trump, the United States President who has been ramping up threats against the South American nation since returning to the White House, Astudillo warned, “he better think about it twice”.
Members in the militia normally focus on public service activities, but they also receive military training and are considered a reserve military force.
Nicolas Maduro, the Venezuelan President, has encouraged citizens to sign up as the US continues to signal that it may be on the verge of conducting military strikes within Venezuelan territory.
In a sign of further escalation of tensions, Vladimir Padrino Lopez, the Defence Minister, said last week that five US F-35 fighter jets had been detected by aerial defence systems “within Venezuela’s area of influence”.
On the same day, Trump said his Administration was considering “attacks by land” against Venezuelan drug cartels.
And later Pete Hegseth, the US Defence Secretary, announced his forces had killed four people on a boat off Venezuela, the fourth such strike since September, leaving 21 dead in total.
The US has framed the military deployment, which includes at least eight warships in the Caribbean and fighter jets stationed in Puerto Rico, as an anti-narcotics operation.
But the US designation of Maduro as the leader of a drug cartel has led many, including the Venezuelan President himself, to conclude that regime change may be the ultimate goal.
The objective of the military presence and strikes is to “put pressure” and “break the cohesion within the Venezuelan military and government”, according to Victor Mijares, an expert on the Venezuelan armed forces at Colombia’s University of the Andes.
Trump has also sent a memo to Congress declaring that the US was in an “armed conflict” with “non-state armed groups” whose activities “constitute an armed attack” against America.
That memo appears to offer further legal justification for the lethal strikes carried out on alleged drug boats by the US in international waters.
Mijares, who said the Venezuelan military was in its “worst shape ever” after years of economic turmoil, anticipated that the Government would avoid direct military engagement even in the event of strikes within the country.
Instead, it would focus on messaging, portraying a weak country under attack by an imperial superpower, the analyst said.
For that, the country’s Bolivarian militia has become a key propaganda arm, allowing the Government to frame the conflict as a popular struggle against a foreign aggressor.
The photos of senior citizens donning camouflage uniforms and others who appear far from battle-ready often become the subject of ridicule among the political opposition. Some jokingly use the term “milancianos”, combining the Spanish words for “militiaman” and “elderly person”.
Last week Trump joined the teasing, posting a video on Truth Social of an obese woman with a rifle, running towards a target during an apparent training event for militia members.
“Top Secret: We caught the Venezuelan militia in training. A very serious threat!” Trump wrote sarcastically.
Maduro’s Government responded by honouring the woman, holding an event with her side-by-side with the defence minister. She was granted the title “soldier of the homeland”.
“In whatever hole, in whatever corner, they’re going to run right into those armed old folks with guns,” another member of the militia, Daniel Ortega, 61, told the Telegraph, referring to a hypothetical US invasion. “Those ones some people make fun of? They’re going to be right here!”
As a captain in the militia, Astudillo has taken on the role of training those without military experience, which he said included “[lawyers], doctors, construction workers, and every type of professional”.
For the past four weekends, militia members have held “militia Saturdays”, signing up new recruits and undergoing military training.
Astudillo said that the unit in his community had grown from 85 members to nearly 450.
The images of civilians in arms also give the impression that any US intervention could lead to a protracted conflict, according to Mijares, something which Trump has long said he aimed to avoid. Maduro has pushed that idea.
“If Venezuela is attacked in any way, we would transition into a phase of armed conflict,” he recently said in a state TV address.
The Government knows it cannot win a war against the US, but it “wants the world to think that it can turn the country and the rest of the region into a nightmare in terms of security”, Mijares said.
The Bolivarian Militia was formed in 2009 under Hugo Chavez, the former President. In 2020 it became an official part of the armed forces as part of an effort Maduro called “civic-military unity”.
Maduro’s Government has claimed that 4.5 million militia members are trained and ready for any potential attack. Experts have questioned that figure.
As for the actual military forces, “a huge gap in experience, engagement, and technology” would allow US forces to quickly overpower the Venezuelans during conventional warfare.
Colectivos, or armed gangs that the regime uses to intimidate opponents, could also form part of an armed resistance, but whether militia or colectivo members would actually engage US forces in the face of imminent regime change remains unclear.
For now, the older militia members said they remained defiant and unafraid.
“Venezuela is small, but it’s not about whether it’s small, it’s about whether there is will among the people,” Astudillo said.
“That’s what they found over there in Vietnam and they may find it here too.”
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