From Calabozo to El Vigia: is the real Venezuela speaking up?

This blogger specialty, to give it a name, is to try to take the pulse of what goes on outside of Caracas. Not that living in San Felipe gives me particular clout on this, but since I am the only English language blogger that lives in the provinces if anything I get the title by default (1). I was particularly impressed by the latest set of campaign pictures published by Alek, in particular the pictures from two rallies: one in Calabozo and the other one in El Vigia. From what I see, what I hear, what I sense, it seems that the Rosales campaign is hitting chavismo really hard in the country side.

The Calabozo rally and its implications

Before I put the picture of the rally from Calabozo, I went to my Google Earth and took a picture of the Venezuelan Llanos (roughly the are circled in phosphorescent green). It is important to point out that Calabozo is smack down in the Llanos, one of the main points of agriculture, where most of the Venezuelan rice comes from (click to enlarge). It is also in the middle of all the land redistribution schemes. Within a 100-150 miles radius you have major invasion and take over schemes such as Hato Piñero, or all the controversies of Guarico governor, Manuitt, a particularly despicable thug.

Thus we could have expected Guarico and Calabozo as being one of the areas where Chavez should be able to run easy, no significant opposition since all his burnt earth policies were made in the name of the people, to give them land, to give them a way of life, to retain them on the ground. But the picture of the rally in Calabozo surprised me: I would have never expected Rosales to be able to fill up more than 3 blocks, tightly filled up at that (look in the distance, you cannot tell where it really ends). Calabozo is after all a small town, and far from any source of people that could be brought in by bus to pack the streets. These are really the people from the area who came on their own as Rosales meetings do not give enough advance notice to ferry all the folks in, not to mention he does nto have the means of Chavez who can commandeer all the public transportation he wants, whenever he wants.

Apparently we must conclude that the agrarian policies of Chavez have not been, by far, the rousing success that he pretends them to be. The only thing that Chavez has managed to do is to ruin commerce and investments in the area, while bringing the sulfurous smell of corruption such as the Barinas sugar mill. I will have to review my predictions as to the Llanos where I was giving a huge lead to Chavez: after the success of Rosales in Apure and Calabozo things are not a given anymore for Chavez.


El Vigia confirms Merida for Rosales

El Vigia I chose among Alek pictures because it is a predictable results. That is, even though El Vigia is in the state of Merida, its hinterland is Sur del Lago, the political birthplace of Rosales. If you compare the El Vigia rally with the one of Calabozo you can measure even further the importance of that Calabozo turn out. If I were just to base myself on these two pictures I should call both Guarico and Merida for Rosales (right now I am giving Merida to Rosales but still Guarico to Chavez as after all Chavez seems still strong in San Juan de los Morros. But he is definitely weakening in Guarico and upset should brought back in the Venezuelan dictionary.

Anyway, I hope these pictures are food for thought for the pollsters of the world that are swarming around trying to get Bolivarian cash to publish half assed polls. I am not too sure how you can be a successful pollster in Guarico where you probably cannot even run cel phone polls. But what Alek is seeing is real: something is going on, and as far as I know Chavez is not planning any rousing rally in Calabozo…

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1) Alek already asked me to do an evaluation of Lara a few days ago.