Nicolás Maduro did not inherit the charisma of Hugo Chávez, but he did inherit his fear of suffering an attack. The ideologue of the Bolivarian revolution lived anguished with the possibility of being assassinated. With a hunch he was capable of canceling a trip to another country or a dinner with foreign leaders. That anxiety could hit him at any time, anywhere. That viper of distrust had also previously bitten his friend Fidel Castro. In the end he was not murdered, but a victim of cancer that left him bedridden for days of great agony. He went to the other world “clinging to Christ,” as Maduro said when announcing his death, on March 5, 2013.
Chávez denounced more than 30 conspiracies against him during his years in power. In some he gave names and surnames to those who were behind, but in many others only vague details were offered. In any case, none of them were resolved in a judicial investigation and they remained suspended in the air. Maduro was vice president when his boss died and he remained acting president. Chávez anointed him as the heir of the revolution. It didn’t take him long either to feel that the world was conspiring against him. Specifically less than a month, in the first week of April: “Because they can’t win the elections, they are looking to shoot me on some street in Venezuela.” That fear has accompanied him until today.
However, the presidential elections that will be held on July 28 have made him take to the streets more than usual. A good part of the 11 years that he has been in power has been spent in the Miraflores Palace, the seat of Government where he sometimes sleeps, a veritable bunker. This confinement has earned him the slander that spread throughout the country that he, a fierce trade unionist who once drove a metrobus, chosen by Chávez because he was a man of the people – is one of the options, but the exact motivations have never been have been revealed – had lost contact with the street. To silence the rumors, Maduro began making a series of videos in 2017 in which he appeared at the wheel of a vehicle that crossed Caracas. He served to send the message that he was not afraid of those who protested in the streets, who were repressed and in many cases killed by the authorities.
In these years, Maduro has denounced more than 20 assassination attempts. The last one this year, in which he implicates – without conclusive evidence – opponents and activists and academic experts whom he has imprisoned. The Venezuelan president has never gotten out of his mind the August 4, 2018, when two drones exploded during a military event that he presided over. He came out unharmed, but that black cloud accompanies him. He then blamed Donald Trump, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos and various opponents. Later, various confusing information emerged about who had orchestrated the attack. His enemies said that he caused it himself to have an excuse to radicalize himself. In any case, the matter ended up blurred in the mist. Maduro now only felt safe within four walls.
His confinement in these years has not been absolute, of course, but it has been the general trend. When he is not completely on his land, his appearances are very sporadic. At the beginning of 2023 he found himself at a border crossing with Colombia, right in the middle, with Gustavo Petro. Maduro got there first by plane and then by driving a car. He had his window down and waved to the people he passed behind on the road. However, the meeting with Petro only lasted 20 minutes. A signature, a handshake, a hug and ciao. Could he allow himself to live in an even bigger bubble than the one that surrounds the rest of the presidents? The truth is that yes, he had someone next to him who did that job: Diosdado Cabello.
The number two of the Chavista regime and first vice president of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV, the ruling party) is the one who has shouldered the tours throughout the national geography in recent years to address his militancy. A common and mistaken belief is that Maduro and Cabello maintain a cold war for power. In the beginning, before Chávez’s death it may have been like that, but since each one assumed his role everything has been coupled. In moments of threat to the revolution and high political conflict, they have remained united.
Cabello offers a press conference every Monday to the media close to his cause. On Wednesdays, the state-run Venezuelan Television broadcasts its feared program With the gavel givingCabello has dedicated himself to working fully in the party structures, on many occasions with military support, relentlessly lambasting his adversaries in every statement and personally supervising mechanisms of mobilization and militant commitment that have traditionally been effective in the past, such as the publicized 1x 10That is, each Chavista mobilizes 10 people from his environment.
Relying on the organizational structure of a party embedded in the State and present throughout the country, without ever stopping referring to Nicolás Maduro or implicitly recognizing his authority, Cabello has crossed the country. He has been seen in Monagas, his native state; but also in the Tuy Valleys, the plains towns, the Falcón coast. Cabello has been giving “maintenance” rallies for some time at concentrations of all caliber: on some occasions, frankly modest; in others, offering acceptable demonstrations of attendance. “Hope is in the street, it runs through Venezuela, there is no corner of the country where the voice and embrace of the people is not felt, and it is without a doubt, Chávez, the hope that is reborn in President Nicolás Maduro,” Cabello has written recently on his Twitter account (now X) at the dawn of a decisive, and most likely tense, electoral campaign. Information about his tours this year is archived on his personal Instagram account.
Particularly in recent weeks, Cabello has been following the trail of María Corina Machado, organizing rallies in places close to her path. “The opposition is bad when they oppose, but it is worse when they govern,” he said recently at a rally in the state of Trujillo, shortly before Machado finished a massive tour of this Andean entity. “The battered right that today comes out to ask for the vote has a pact with the bourgeoisie,” he recently declared. Cabello has included among the targets of his artillery the opposition candidate, Edmundo González Urrutia, whom he calls “the filthy one.” He accuses him of being “the candidate of imperialism, of surnames, of the bourgeoisie and of the oligarchy.”
But now Cabello is not alone, Maduro has also taken to the streets in search of votes. The election is in clear danger for Chavismo – the most reliable polls say so – which has overcome its fear of being assassinated. Maduro’s official Facebook page talks about nine states traveled in just over a week. Many of them have been televised as rallies in the midst of enormous technical deployment. Sometimes it is difficult to evaluate his concentration power. His communication team makes videos with very short shots with which it is impossible to evaluate the number of people present. Maduro has been seen on the western shores of Falcón; in the towns of Miranda and Carabobo state; in the Yaracuy state and in the eastern city of Cumaná. If before he lived isolated, now he seems one and triune. Power is at stake.
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