Natividad Martinez stands vigil at her son’s gravesite in a Caracas cemetery, her grief contradicting official accounts of a surgical military operation. Her 18-year-old son, Saul Pereira Martinez, was among the Venezuelan soldiers killed during a January 3rd assault by US forces targeting then-President Nicolás Maduro.
The night of the invasion, Pereira had just completed his guard duty shift at Fort Tiuna when he sent his mother a final message: ‘I love you. It has begun.’ Hours later, he would become one of at least 83 casualties officially acknowledged by Venezuela’s defense ministry—a death toll that directly contradicts Washington’s claims of a casualty-free operation.
‘You can’t come to my country and kill people like that,’ Martinez stated during her cemetery visit. ‘Because they say it was a clean operation. It wasn’t clean. Do you know how many people died?’
According to family accounts, Pereira was caught within Maduro’s security perimeter, making his unit a primary target. His stepfather, a government security official who requested anonymity, believes the young soldier’s death resulted from ‘collateral effect of that infiltration’—referring to US intelligence sources that located Maduro.
The operation, ordered by then-President Donald Trump, involved substantial military deployment throughout the Caribbean region. Despite bellicose rhetoric and previous strikes on alleged drug-smuggling vessels, the family maintained they never anticipated the situation would escalate to direct assault on Venezuelan soil.
Pereira had recently completed training with the Honor Guard in December and was studying at the military academy. His mother had welcomed his military service, noting how it transformed him from a directionless youth into a disciplined young man who studied diligently and helped with household chores during visits home.
At the graveside gathering, family and friends remembered Pereira as ‘a brave man’ through tears, salsa music, and toasts in his honor. The government posthumously promoted him, but his mother emphasizes that beyond political divisions—Venezuela remains polarized between Maduro supporters and opponents—each fallen soldier represented a human being mourned by loved ones.
‘Those who died are also human beings. They are all Venezuelans. On one side or the other, they are all human beings, they all have people who mourn them,’ Martinez reflected. Despite her anguish, she expressed pride in her son’s sacrifice: ‘He died for his country. Regardless of what they say, to me, my son was a patriot.’