Venezuela held its mid-term elections yesterday (Sunday). This election cycle was for governors of the states, and mayors of municipal districts. Venezuela is divided into 23 States plus the Federal District of Caracas. Each (except Caracas) has a governor. There are also 335 municipal districts. These were all up for election. Politics is an interesting and colorful process here. Leading up the the election thousands of signs are posted all over the country advertising the various candidates. All of the signs are color coded with the party's color. PSUV (Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela) which is Chavez's party, is red. How surprising, right? Other parties are yellow, blue, purple, green...about the only color not used is white. So when you look at a sign and see the photo of the candidate in a yellow shirt you know his or her party. Venezuelans love political parades and send long processions of vehicles festooned with the party's colors all over the city. These parades usually feature at least two flat bed trucks with loud speaker systems. One is blaring salsa music, the other is blaring political slogans. These processions of as many as 50 cars at a time are all over the city tying up traffic. It is a bad idea to interrupt one of the parades. It is best to let it go and follow behind, but not close enough to appear to be in the parade. The other thing about politics here is that it is often a contact sport. The winners often have a big demonstration, where they are met by the losing party supporters and rioting ensues. I have not heard of any of this happening during this election cycle, but we were warned to be aware of the possibility. Venezuela closes down for elections. Sales of alcoholic beverages were cutoff at 2:00 pm on Friday. No alcohol could be sold anywhere in Venezuela preceding the election. Chavez wants sober voters, I guess. Schools closed down last Wednesday and will be closed until tomorrow. All businesses were closed on Sunday. They are very serious about elections here.Chavez's party won 17 of the state governor elections, but opposition parties won the other governor races, picking up about 4 new spots. Notably, opposition party candidates won in the most populous areas. Also, an opposition candidate won the race for mayor of Caracas. Chavez is still firmly in control and his party still has an overwhelming majority, but this election continues the downward slide. He cannot characterize this election as a mandate from the people when his party lost the most populous areas and the Federal District. On the other hand, The opposition did not ring up a resounding victory either. But, as with everything here, poco a poco (little by little.)
The other big recent event was the mudslides. We had about a week of rain, capped off by a real gully washer Thursday night that literally brought down the hillsides here in Caracas and the surrounding areas. Mary and I left the embassy about 5:30 pm and I am glad we did. I was supposed to have band practice Thursday night and would have been there after hours, which would have been very bad because some time around 6:00 pm there was a large mudslide above the embassy that completely blocked the road to our apartment, and another below the embassy that cut off the alternate route. Embassy personnel still at the embassy at 6:00 were stuck there until almost midnight, and some didn't get home until well after 2:00 am. As we drove home there was literally a river of muddy water racing down the steep streets. It was like driving a boat over a lake the way the water sprayed around the cars including ours. We found out later that hillsides all over Caracas had collapsed. A few buildings came down, a few lives were lost, but in terms of third world disasters it did not even register as a blip on the radar screen. Mostly it messed up traffic. The main autopista through our part of town was buried in mud, as were many streets. By the next day however, most of the streets had been cleared somewhat, enough to get to work.
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