Three food vendors, sisters, had their shop temporarily shuttered by Venezuelan authorities after selling breakfast to opposition leader Maria Corina Machado. A fisherman who had helped Machado cross a river to a neighboring village has since fled in fear of his life, and hotels have been closed after she stays at them.
The casualties are piling up as authorities clamp down on anyone seen to favor Machado, who overwhelmingly won an opposition primary last year, but has been ruled out of Venezuela’s July 28 presidential race by courts loyal to Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
“It’s unfair because we welcome everyone who comes in,” empanada vendor Corina Hernandez said, recounting how prosecutors arrived at her shop on May 22 — just 30 minutes after she and her sisters had sold the politician and her entourage 13 breakfasts.
Photo: AFP
“We didn’t know she was coming,” she said.
Today, an official “closed” sign hangs over the sisters’ shop in Corozopando, a remote village of about 600 people in the central state of Guarico. The measure is in force for 15 days.
Underneath, in a show of defiance, the sisters have put up other signs, handwritten in the blue color of Machado’s campaign they proclaim: “With Maria Corina,” and “Liberty.”
Machado, who polls show would easily defeat Maduro in his quest for a third six-year term, remains the face of the opposition.
Banned from traveling by plane, she crisscrosses the nation in a car to urge Venezuelans to vote for little-known diplomat Edmundo Urrutia, who replaced her as the consensus opposition candidate.
It was on her way to Apure, the state neighboring Guarico, that Machado stopped at Hernandez’s shop in a town with only intermittent access to electricity and cows roaming the main road.
Soon after the politician left, officials of the tax administration body known as the Seniat arrived and sought payment of a US$300 fine from the sisters.
“In 20 years, the Seniat never came here,” said Hernandez, who sells her empanadas for US$1 apiece. “They closed only our business.”
The opposition says the Seniat has also closed at least four hotels in different states where Machado had stayed.
The agency did not respond to requests for comment.
In the nearby town of San Fernando de Apure, fisherman Rafael Silva, 49, found himself in trouble after helping Machado cross a river as supporters of Maduro’s ruling party sought to block her access.
“My husband borrowed a canoe to do that trip for Maria Corina,” his wife, 43-year-old domestic worker Yusmari Moreno said.
The coast guard found the canoe where he had left it on the opposite bank of the river, confiscated it, and “started asking for my husband,” she said.
He fled, and his wife is too scared to try and recover the canoe for fear that she, or its owner, could be arrested.
In April, the rights group Foro Penal warned of a “significant intensification of ... persecution” in Venezuela ahead of the elections.
In Corozopando, meanwhile, Hernandez and her sisters have become emblematic of whatever resistance to the state machinery remains.
They continue to sell empanadas from under a tree near their shuttered shop with its old stoves and a fridge patched with cardboard and plastic tape.
In an ironic twist, business has never been better — travelers stop to take pictures of the pro-Machado posters on the wall and express their support or make donations.
“It is an abuse of power,” said Raul Pacheco, a 42-year-old engineer visiting from Maracay in Aragua state.
In under two weeks, the sisters have sold more than 500 empanadas — before, sales did not exceed 10 per day.
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