Nicolas Maduro!

 

Last night Nicolas Maduro was in Mérida, so we hopped on a bus and headed into el Centro around 6PM. I quickly split off from the group in an attempt to draw as little attention to myself as possible. I found myself an elevated spot on the fringe of the rally, which at this point was somewhat of a concert atmosphere, complete with songs about Maduro, dancing, and lots of pushing and shoving. About fifteen minutes later, I decided to start moving closer when all of a sudden Maduro showed up in the front of a truck driving through the crowd. I was probably about fifteen or twenty feet from the guy, closer than I have ever been to a US presidential candidate. He was wearing a jumpsuit with the colors of the Venezuelan flag, waving and blowing kisses to the crowd, and displaying his thick mustache. After the truck came through, a bunch of space opened up in the center and the crowd started pushing closer and closer so I went with the flow and ended up pretty close. Alexis Ramirez, the governor of the state of Mérida, introduced Maduro with about five minutes of energized yelling. I maintained a minimal amount of enthusiasm throughout the whole affair in order to blend in as much as possible. Nearby was a guy dressed up with wings and face paint, dancing and yelling “viva el indigena!” Maduro’s speech was filled with even more yelling than that of Alexis and tended to focus on humor and good feeling. Venezuelans call ripe bananas maduros, so he made a joke about a guy asking him what he was eating and him responding, “oh just one of my cousins.” He spent about five minutes in the following format: “I love taxi drivers! I love students! I love workers!” and continued until he had named just about every occupation and demographic. The entire speech was focused on the legacy of Chávez and keeping the revolución bolivariana alive, without much focus on policy initiatives. My favorite play on words is the slogan, “Ahora somos Chavistas maduros!” (We are mature Chavistas) get it? While United States presidential visits and debates tend to involve plenty of emotional appeals, Venezuelan politics are almost completely emotionally-motivated. At one point, they played a video of Chávez instructing the people to elect Maduro if he were ever to pass away. Maduro really found himself in a great position: the most loved man in Venezuela dies and he gets to inherit all his supporters without much effort. According to the polls, Maduro is going to win by a landslide. Some things that really struck me were the extreme nationalism, the patriarchal role played by the president, and Maduro yelling until his voice was hoarse. I am really interested to hear Caprilles speak so I can compare the two. On my way home, I saw a bus that said Mérida-Ejido, the usual bus I take back home. As this bus was accelerating at an intersection, I jumped on and discovered that it was filled with people in red. The Maduro campaign had organized special buses to bring in supporters from villages surrounding Mérida, and I had unknowingly gotten on one of those buses. As I was getting some pretty weird looks, I asked a lady nearby if the bus was going to Ejido. She said yes and seemed pretty okay with me being on the bus, so I sat back and waited for my stop. I tried to give my 2.50 Bsf. to the driver as I was getting off, but he just waved his hand and muttered, “baja chamo”. Definitely got my fill of Chavistas for the day.