María Corina Crosses The Andes

Last night, María Corina Machado addressed a crowd, with their phones’ lanterns on as has become customary, in the capital of the state of Mérida in the Venezuelan Andes. Machado arrived accompanied by a longitudinal crowd of motorizados, the so-called “motorized force” or “Caravan of Freedom”, after visiting several towns in the highlands such as Pueblo Llano or San Rafael de Mucuchíes: where she was received by a crowd of schoolchildren who came out of the classrooms. There, the locals gave Machado a ruana made in 1967 by the well-known Merideño artist and architect Juan Félix Sánchez.

In the Andes, adding to the emotionality that has characterized her tours, several Merideños –a child with his father in Chile or a teenager with her entire family abroad, for example– tearfully begged Machado for the return of their relatives. Later, Machado headed to Guaraque –finding a sign that said “Hasta el final” put up by inhabitants of the páramo on a mountain– to visit the towns in the south of the state: the most difficult area to access in the Venezuelan Andes, not visited by a presidential candidate since Rafael Caldera in the late sixties.