Estado Guarico: Three food vendors, sisters, temporarily closed after Venezuelan authorities sold breakfast to opposition leader Maria Corina Machado.
A fisherman who helped Machado cross the river to a neighboring village later fled for fear of his life, and the hotel was closed while he was there.
The death toll rose as the death toll continued to mount, pinning anyone seen as supporting Machado, who won an opposition party victory last year but was ousted by a court loyal to Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela’s July 28 presidential contest.
“We didn’t know it was coming.”
Today, the official “closed” sign hangs in the sister store in Corozopando, about 600 people, the capital of the state of Guarico. This event lasts for 15 days.
Beneath that, the brothers placed another handwritten sign in Machado’s campaign blue: “With Maria Corina” and “Freedom!”
Machado, who polls suggest will easily beat Maduro for a third six-year term, still faces opposition.
Banning air travel, he has traveled the country by car, urging Venezuelans to vote for Edmundo Urrutia, a prominent diplomat who replaced him as the opposition candidate.
On the way to neighboring Guarico Apur, Machado stopped at Hernandez’s store in a town with only electricity and cows roaming the main street.
Shortly after the politician left, officials from the Tax Administration Office, known as Seniat, came and asked the brothers to pay a fine of $300.
“After 20 years, Seniat never came here,” said Hernandez, who sells his empanadas for $1.
“It just shuts down our business.”
The opposition says the Senate has also closed at least four hotels in different countries where Machado spent the night.
In the nearby town of San Fernando de Apure, fisherman Rafael Silva, 49, was in trouble after helping Machado cross a river when supporters of Maduro’s ruling PSUV party tried to block his entry.
“My husband borrowed Maria Corina’s canoe for this trip,” domestic worker Ussusmarie Moreno, 43, told AFP.
He said the Coast Guard found his boat, which he left across the river, seized it and “started asking my men.”
He fled, and he was afraid to return the ship, fearing his wife or having arrested.
In April, the rights group Foro Penal warned of a “significant increase in persecution” ahead of Venezuela’s elections in July.
Meanwhile, in Corozopando, Hernández and his brothers became targets of any resistance to the state machine.
They continue to sell empanadas from under a tree near their shuttered shop with an old oven and refrigerator covered with cardboard and plastic tape.
In a strange twist, things never got better: tourists refused to take pictures of the pro-Machado posters on the walls and offered support or donations.
“It’s an abuse of power,” said Raul Pacheco, a 42-year-old engineer from Maracay, Aragua.
In two weeks, the brothers have sold more than 500 empanadas-before sales never exceeded 10 days.
