Presidential Honor Guard (Venezuela)

The Presidential Honor Guard is a brigade-sized unit of the Bolivarian National Armed Forces of Venezuela, charged with the immediate security of the president of Venezuela and with ceremonial duties around the head of state. Its tradition is traced to the early independence period, when Simon Bolivar formally created a guard unit on 12 February 1812 to serve as his personal escort in the field, though the present brigade dates its lineage to 1958, when a Presidential Honor Guard Regiment was raised inside the National Armed Forces under the presidency of Romulo Betancourt, answering directly to the president as commander in chief. It was restructured in 2015 alongside two other protective bodies as crime and violence rose. The brigade numbers about 2,000 people drawn from all five armed branches together with specialists from intelligence, criminal investigation and police services, and it is led by a general or flag officer whom the president appoints and removes. Its work combines internal security with ceremony: it mounts the guard daily at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier on the Carabobo battlefield, at Bolivar's mausoleum in the National Pantheon in Caracas, and, since 2013, at the tomb of Hugo Chavez at Fort Montana.