Caracas Chronicles

A bizarre video surfaced on July 5. It shows a contingent of uniformed men in a woodland, wielding weapons, voicing an inaudible chant. Three of them sit in front of a red makeshift table. Two machine guns lie on the ground, pointing in opposite directions.

The guy in the middle reads from a laptop, speaking on behalf of the Conquering Self-Defenders of the Sierra, also known as the Pachenca—an offshoot of the United Self-Defenders of Colombia, once Colombia’s most feared paramilitary force.

Our masked speaker tells the public that the group was approached by the Venezuelan “far right” to infiltrate the country, target the national power grid, and instill chaos if Nicolás Maduro was re-elected. However, the man asserts that the Pachenca declined the job, and informed Caracas.

The president called for a probe and Tarek William Saab, the Attorney General, quickly responded. Saab stated that his office was looking into the plot and urged Colombian authorities to cooperate. The investigation hasn’t yielded any names or evidence, not even arrest warrants linked to that particular “case”. But accusations over acts of terrorism and subversion against the opposition abound since the election campaign kicked off.

In this context, the government’s talk over “destabilizing acts”, post-election violence and bloodbaths adds a degree of tension and uncertainty that the country has not experienced in recent times. And sudden incidents that occur hundreds of miles away from the capital are being used to point at Chavismo’s opponents.

Take for instance the Angostura Bridge, which connects some of the foremost conurbations of Venezuela’s east and south. Exactly a month ago, Vice President Delcy Rodríguez accused the opposition of cutting the bridge’s cables and attempting to tear it down, claiming that they are boycotting an election where they would lose. Ciudad Bolívar’s population of nearly 400,000 is now struggling, because heavy vehicles are banned from crossing the bridge, causing severe shortages and soaring prices according to local journalist Pableysa Ostos.

Or just days before the Angostura incident, take Maduro’s claims that los apellidos (or ‘the surnames’, Chavismo’s new slur for ancien elites and their political hacks) were behind a failed plan to sever a power line that supplies electricity to Margarita. Or check reports on the explosion last week in the old road between Cantaura and Anaco (two cities in Anzoátegui). A failing gas pipe likely caused the blast, but the Ministry of Interior—a sanctioned admiral called Remigio Ceballos—said to be looking for perpetrators.

This is no ordinary election, not by any stretch of our imagination.

Police State

Edmundo González Urrutia leads voting intention with 59%, according to Delphos’ newest survey. Maduro is stuck at 24%, though the government’s internal polls show a smaller, yet significant gap. But things aren’t that simple here.

Chavismo sees a clear threat in the Machado-led opposition and its “electoral uprising.” Since the official campaign kicked off on July 4, the Venezuelan state has arbitrarily detained at least 76 people for political reasons according to local peace culture think tank Laboratorio de Paz. Throughout the year, the number of political detainees exceeds 140.

The life of Machado herself has been at risk. The morning after a rally in Portuguesa, María Corina denounced that men had drained the engine oil from one of her vehicles and removed the brakes  of another, with the Inter-American Court of Human Rights calling for an investigation. The attack was followed by the 36-hour detention of Machado’s head of security.

Victims of repression during the campaign are mostly political activists in rural Venezuela, or ordinary citizens who have provided services, help or even their homes to the Unity’s teams and leaders. The government has shut down restaurants and hotels that welcomed them, and seized motorbikes, trucks and canoes, in order to discourage such kind of assistance to the opposition campaign. And yet, Venezuelans have continued to do so throughout the country. In Puerto Páez, Apure, people responded to the closure of an empanadas shop in Corozopando, Guárico, by inviting Machado to enter their shops. 

This open defiance has been described by Paola Bautista de Alemán, a political scientist and Deputy Program Director at Primero Justicia, as the “breakdown of consent.” The general obedience that sustains the system has worn out. Venezuelans, as footage of people tearing their Carnet de la Patria apart or spurning CLAP boxes suggests, are rejecting Chavismo’s forced patronage and ignoring any possible punishment.

Although the opposition has been hermetic about its electoral organization, Machado recently announced that the opposition’s campaign has managed to assign witnesses to 98% of the polling stations. Sources from the Unitary Platform also assure that the grassroots 600K Plan has recruited almost 700,000 volunteers and electoral witnesses to support their operations on Sunday. Of course, within a big-tent coalition full of distrust, some factions doubt these figures.

Nevertheless, the opposition managed to organize a primary election in October 2023 through a national network of party activists and Súmate volunteers—the electoral organization where Machado began her political career in the early 2000s. 

With traditional coercitive methods failing and the opposition’s organization surpassing expectations, Chavismo still has other cards at disposal. 

Anarchy & Administrative Bias

Just like the old Chavista majorities and campaign petrodollars vanished, the country’s demographics vastly changed since the last census in 2011. About 4 million registered voters are based abroad and cannot cast their ballots. In a country whose exact population is unclear, polls tend to be skewed to urban areas and may exclude isolated chunks of the population if conducted via telephone calls. To put it in perspective: Venezuelans get their economic estimations from private firms like Ecoanalítica or the Venezuelan Financial Observatory, since the central bank doesn’t publish basic data on issues like inflation and GDP. 

Eleven years after Venezuela’s last competitive presidential vote, the state’s monopoly on violence has also faded. Essential infrastructure is incredibly malnourished. Hundreds of local news services have been shut down, from the Andes to Oriente and the Venezuelan Amazon. In remote places that the public rarely comes across on X and media outlets, voters have to live next to new bosses and strange neighbors—some perceived as “friendly”, others as more predatory—who will oversee hundreds of polling stations on Sunday. The power of these groups was felt in the primaries and presidential campaigns, when Machado received death threats by the Colombian guerrilla group Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN) in Táchira and the mega-gang Tren del Llano in Guárico. 

According to the 2023 Living Conditions Survey (ENCOVI), around 1.2 million Venezuelans were internally displaced in recent years. Many of these voters (especially those from rural areas) have to travel long distances, even across states, to reach the place where they vote.

When they do—going from the likes of Caracas and Valencia to their rural hometowns in Táchira, Zulia or Apure—they will find (or at least hear about) the new guys in charge. Not the typical corrupt National Guard unit, municipal cop or communal council. What is it like to vote in a borough of Táriba, just a few miles from Colombia, where local armed groups have imposed a pax mafiosa with the state’s connivance? Are these groups interested in a change to the status quo through a peaceful vote?

Take Zulia, for example, where some municipalities have become a hub for drug trafficking. Zulia has the highest rates of both contract killings and police lethality. In 2023, half of the homicides there were produced by state forces, according to the Monitor de Víctimas annual report. Are people going to feel safe voting there? What are the electoral dynamics in a hamlet in Apure or south of the Orinoco River, where the ELN and FARC’s remnants call the shots? Just two days ago, as González and Machado visited Zulia, armed hooded men attacked buses carrying supporters to the opposition’s rally in Maracaibo.

Regional state actors with a knack for violence are also a lingering challenge to the Sunday vote. Days after hinting that Chavismo was ready to become opposition, Táchira governor Freddy Bernal told Russian news agency Sputnik that armed partisans are ready for deployment across the state on July 28.

It may also be that a community in el interior is not infested by crime and irregular groups, but people are supposed to vote in a tiny secluded polling site that they’ve never heard of. In the parking lot of a Misión Vivienda (a welfare housing facility) or a public school run by PSUV’s local arms—who historically tend to condition state aid on a vote for Chávez or Maduro.

In Bolívar, Correo del Caroní reported that 65 newly-created polling stations are named after the headquarters communal houses and state misiones. In Lara, the CNE created 136 single-table polling stations that normally fall into that category. In rural municipalities like Morán, 80% of the voters are registered in those sites according to El Impulso. Or take polling stations based in REDI and ZODI military bases. Will electoral witnesses be admitted, or allowed to do their job?

Still, with a tilted playing field where Chavismo runs the entire state apparatus, the government is doing its best to produce a climate of fear and administrative bias to make everyone believe that the vote is worthless. In fact, it’s already happening: on Friday morning, as polling stations were being set up across the country, dozens of electoral irregularities were denounced on social media. In at least 13 states, voting site staff and witnesses—civilians tasked with ensuring that the vote occurs according to law—reported that CNE officials and Plan República soldiers were denying their entry during the installation of voting equipment and infrastructure: a blatant violation of Venezuela’s electoral regulations.The vote is around the corner, and people are set for a long weekend dealing with official arbitrariness and hostile actors of different kinds. But this year, Venezuela’s civil society has proven its ability to circumvent whatever obstacle that lies ahead. There’s no reason to believe that Sunday will be an exception.