The capital was kept quiet until the election campaign began. This Thursday, before a holiday in Venezuela and just 24 days before the presidential elections on July 28, the day seemed like a Sunday with little movement and businesses operating at half speed. Announcements of a “takeover of the city” with 20,000 motorcyclists by the United Socialist Party of Venezuela activated precautions about possible chaos that in reality was not very different from usual.
The Chavistas concentrated in two points in the city center and congested the center with buses from public institutions and motorcycles parked on the main avenues. The opposition moved through the east of Caracas with a thick caravan of motorcycles, trucks and people on foot who awaited the arrival of the candidate Edmundo González, accompanied by his wife, and the leader María Corina Machado, delayed by a police patrol that stopped them, asked for documents of the vehicle in which they were traveling and let them continue after a short struggle.
Thus begins an unprecedented electoral campaign for Venezuela, in which strength tests like today’s are unnecessary. The scenario has been clear since the previous mobilizations – an overflow of people around the opposition and little support for the candidate-president – and the polls have been saying it for months: Chavismo is at its worst and Machado has capitalized on the citizen discontent against the government and other opposition leaders and has transferred it almost entirely to Edmundo González, his last-minute substitute. But what happens in the presidential elections, a crucial milestone in the long Venezuelan political crisis that still has miles to go, does not depend so much on the campaign events as on the negotiations that have just been resumed with the United States. The scenario continues to be one of uncertainty.
José Gregorio Da Silva went to his first demonstration on Thursday. He is 19 years old, studies medicine and on the 28th he will cast his first vote, after several attempts to register as an electoral register. He wore a bandana on his head that said “Mano, tengo fe” (Hand, I have faith), the slogan of support for the Venezuelan soccer team that has been borrowed from politics in these days of the Copa América. “I am here because I want the country to change,” he says, acknowledging that it is the only country he has known when he was younger than the Bolivarian revolution. “I don’t want to live in this slavery any longer, so to speak. I wouldn’t like the current president to win again, although there is a small possibility of that happening,” he says. The possibility of Maduro’s victory is, in his opinion, contingent on him committing fraud to win. And that would trigger another possibility in his case and in Nicole García, 16, who has not yet voted, but who accompanied him in the caravan called by the opposition sectors. “If there is no change, I will find a way to leave Venezuela,” said the young woman, who has not yet finished school. “I want to have a future,” she added before seeing the opposition candidate and his wife pass by on a truck dressed in Vinotinto shirts.
Maduro has made a display of slogans. There is no phrase that identifies the campaign. Not even a color. The city has been filled with graffiti with the leader’s face in colors, with hearts that say “Future,” “Maduro is the people,” “Come on, Nico.” The PSUV has rescued the image of the military Chavez in an attempt to “refresh” the ballot. All the colors and phrases were seen at the two points where Maduro’s followers gathered in Catia, in the west of Caracas, and in front of the PDVSA headquarters. All of them in T-shirts, in campaign uniforms.
A group of young people got off a bus from Charallave, on the outskirts of the capital. They delegated the statements to the group leader, who coordinates them in the work they do in the Venezuela Bella Mission, a city cleaning and beautification program that Maduro created a few years ago to encourage work. María Velero, the leader, 46 years old, said that she brought 250 young people, all “full of joy and hope.” “We are going to continue supporting the revolution. Now it is our turn to eat the ripe ones, we have already eaten many green ones.”
Although the Government launched a singing reality show to choose the song for this battle, Maduro presented the anthem when he reached the final stage of his event. Chavez, heart of the people that sounded in the last campaign of the commander and took advantage of the light drizzle that fell in Caracas to remember the last campaign of the deceased ex-president in which he spoke under a heavy downpour. “If Chavez got wet, I will get wet too,” he said from the platform located a few meters from Miraflores. Then he dedicated himself to exalting himself as a “gallo pinto” who will defeat the “gallo pataruco”, as Chavismo mocks González Urrutia by pointing out his age. “Do you think that those patarucos are prepared to lead Venezuela? Or do you want a president who is a vergatario, a gallo pinto,” he said before the crowd, to whom he assured that he is prepared to win on July 28. “The prophecy is being fulfilled. Times of miracles, of growth, of peace and of union are coming. I have the reins of the country in my hand, I know what I say, I know what to do and no one will be able to do more harm to Venezuela,” said the president.
Chavismo organized 70 demonstrations throughout the country, in honor of the age that former President Chávez would turn on July 28, the date they chose for the presidential elections. In Caracas, people gathered much earlier than the opposition. The Plaza Sucre Catia spot was not filled to capacity. Guillermo González, an informal eyeglasses vendor, dared to contribute to the analysis of the loss of followers that Chavismo has experienced that two other neighbors from Catia had, leaning on a post watching the crowd. “It’s that people want change. I know it because I want it and I’ve seen it,” he commented and took out his phone with the proof: the videos he reco
rded in Táchira, on the last stop of Machado’s tour, where he went to sell his cheap glasses. Next to his merchandise, José sold postcards of old photos of Chávez at political events and with his family. Someone gave them to him and he decided to offer them in the square for 1 dollar or 40 bolivars each. He also sells opposition souvenirs at his marches, but he will not vote for any of them but for the evangelical pastor Javier Bertucci. “We want a country where we can work,” he said and shortly after he picked up the postcards. He remained a spectator listening to the other neighbor who accompanied him, whom he introduced as a lifelong opponent. “All governments are temporary,” said neighbor Edgar. “You see it here, it is a lot of disappointment and tiredness. And Maduro is already tired too.”
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