the boomerang effect of punishing anyone who hosts or feeds opponents in Venezuela

At the end of May, the Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado was walking along a dusty road in the La Macanillal sector of Apure state, hugging a girl, when she heard the cry of a local merchant: “Come into my business, like this.” “Shut it down for me!” The politician, smiling, hugged him and said: “fear is over in this country.”

The video of that scene, recorded after Machado’s tour of Amazonas, in the south of the country, gained relevance on social networks, amid a wave of closures of restaurants and hotels that sold food or hosted the leader of the Vente movement. and your team.

The Seniat, a tax inspection body, decreed closures and fines in 6 cities for those who supported the opposition’s logistics in Venezuela, while the military confiscated the canoe in which it traveled along a river in the Apure region.

The Venezuelan government has set the goal of doubling tax collection this year compared to 2023. Although tax inspections are routine, the opposition does not believe it is a coincidence that they occur immediately in locations where services were provided to its leaders. or political meetings were held.

The superintendent of Seniat is José David Cabello, brother of who is considered one of the highest leaders of Chavismo and first vice president of the government party, deputy Diosdado Cabello.

The most notorious case was that of the sale of Pancho Grill empanadas in the town of Corozopando, in Guárico, in central Venezuela: 30 minutes after a video of Machado eating fried foods there was broadcast, Seniat closed the establishment.

Its owners, Corina Hernández and her sisters Mileidis and Elys Cabrera, published a small poster under the Seniat sticker, with the phrase “until the end,” Machado’s campaign motto in favor of the opposition presidential candidate Edmundo González Urrutia.

Part of anti-Chavismo interpreted the gesture as a challenge to national political power. Machado, meanwhile, emphasized his call to the population to leave “fear” behind.

The viralization of the sanction against Pancho Grill catapulted their sales: they prepared 500 empanadas in 8 days, many for orders through social networks, a turnover rate that they had never had, their administrators commented to AFP.

The majority of Venezuelans agree with a political “change” in the country and no longer want to have “their heads bowed” in the face of government abuses, diagnosed Oswaldo Ramírez, analyst and president of the Venezuelan firm ORC Consultores.

He considered that reactions such as those of Pancho Grill or that of the Apure merchant who invited Machado to his business despite the risk of closure are not only part of a process of “outrage,” but also of an intention to vote out of “hope.” .

“They can try to close (businesses), but the reality is that it will not alter people’s desire for change. Any threat to businesses or economic actors ends up generating an effect of ‘I don’t care about the consequences’” in people, he told the VOA.

The lack of motivation of the electorate would benefit the president and re-election candidate Nicolás Maduro in the July 28 vote, whose electoral base is around 13% and who has the challenge of closing the “wide gap” that separates him from the opposition, Ramírez explained. .

Jorge Rodríguez, head of Maduro’s campaign command and president of the Venezuelan parliament, said this week that the president has risen 10 points in the polls in just 9 days. “A candidate who grows in such a short time is unstoppable,” he told the press on Tuesday.

Fears and hopes

According to political scientist Doriam González, Venezuelans witness a struggle between two political leaders, Maduro and Machado, who promote their campaigns based on catalysts other than voting intention: one promotes “fear”; the other, “hope.”

“Maduro seeks by all means to demobilize the opposition vote, realizing what they are capable of doing from power. Machado used fear and anger (towards Chavismo) for a long time, without results, and now he migrates to hope,” he said.

Since the 1998 campaign, when Hugo Chávez promised to “fry in oil” the traditional political class, Chavismo’s campaigns were emotionally related to fear as an “effective” catalyst for the Venezuelan vote, he assured.

Years later, both Chávez and Maduro continued to rely on fear as an “emotional trigger” so that people feared that they would lose their benefits from social programs or credits granted for housing if the opposition won, González stated.

He stressed that the country’s economic conditions “supported” that strategy in those years, which is no longer the case after a decade of crisis.

“Betting on fear without economic conditions that provide added value can be counterproductive, to the point of these types of expressions” by merchants and businessmen who challenge the government to close them or sanction them if they support Machado or the opposition.

Between comedies and anecdotes

The sanctions against merchants and businessmen for the mere fact of providing services to opposition activists are “picturesque episodes” of the official ways of doing politics, a “minor comedy” compared to the socioeconomic “tragedy” of the country, according to the sociologist, writer, teacher and researcher Miguel Ángel Campos.

In these circumstances, the Venezuelan appears “handsome” and “these harassments do not affect them,” he said in conversation with the Voice of America Campos, who added that Chavismo “did not measure the opposing effect that this could have” on the people.

“It shows that they have no idea of ​​the effects of advertising and do not know what world they live in. They only control the keys that open and close: pain or happiness, money and prosperity for some and suffering and scarcity for the majority,” he criticized, highlighting that there are also merchants who expose themselves in exchange for “maximum publicity.” ”.

Connect with the Voice of America! Subscribe to our channels Youtube, WhatsApp and to newsletter. Turn on notifications and follow us on Facebook, x and instagram.