Recently, a car parked outside a modest restaurant in Guarico state, Venezuela’s vast savanna state. The driver yelled from behind the wheel: “Are you the ones seized by the government? I want to take a photo with you!”
The man jumped out of the car and approached Corina Hernández, 44, one of the restaurant’s owners. He took a selfie. “We are all angry,” he told her.
As Venezuela heads into its most hotly contested election in years, Corinna and her sister, Elise Hernandez, have become unexpected political folk heroes.
Their illegal behavior? 14 breakfasts and some empanadas were sold to the country’s leading opposition figures. Hours later, the government responded with an order forcing the sisters to temporarily close their business.
Their cases were widely shared online, making them symbols of defiance for Venezuelans fed up with the country’s authoritarian leaders. (The sisters have since gained a massive online following well beyond Venezuela and renamed their product “empanada libre.”)
But their business is just one of several companies feeling the power of the government after providing daily services to President Nicolás Maduro’s main political rival, María Collina Machado.
Ms. Machado, a former legislator and a long-time critic of Mr. Maduro, is not even running, but she is using her popularity to campaign with and on behalf of the main opposition presidential candidate.
Everywhere she went during her campaign, those who helped her were harassed by the authorities. Targets in recent weeks have included six sound equipment operators attending rallies, a truck driver retrieving supplies from a campaign event in Caracas, and four canoeists who provide transport services in impoverished Venezuelan outposts man.
Some were detained for hours and dragged to the notorious “Helicoide” detention center, they said in interviews. Others have had their equipment confiscated, businesses shuttered and their livelihoods taken away.
“We had nothing to eat in those days,” truck driver Francisco Ecceso said of the 47 days his vehicle was impounded by police.
For opposition figures and analysts who have seen the decline of democracy in the country in recent years, this small-scale persecution is a clear sign that the government is seeking new ways to suppress opposition and demonstrate its power.
Whatever the motivation, the vote scheduled for July 28 is widely seen as posing the biggest electoral challenge to Maduro’s 11-year rule.
For the first time in years, the opposition has coalesced around a single figure – Ms Machado, who enjoys broad voter support. When Maduro’s government barred her from running, her coalition managed to find a surrogate on the ballot, a soft-spoken former diplomat named Edmundo González. ).
Polls show that most Venezuelans plan to vote for Mr González but are frustrated by widespread hunger, poverty and a surge in immigration that is forcing families apart.
The Hernandez sisters run their restaurant, Pancho Grill, in the small town of Corosopando, five hours south of Caracas and one of the poorest areas in the country. In all, Hernandez has five siblings — four sisters and one brother — and two of them, Corinna and Elise, run the restaurant, along with their aunt Nazareth.
Here, in the wake of the economic crisis that started around 2015, people who once had decent jobs now make a living scavenging for trash, while mothers feed their children by hunting piglet-like báquiros and rodents locally known as “picures.” .
The Hernández family has owned Pancho Grill for 20 years, selling breakfast items such as pulled beef, eggs, beans and tortillas to those who can afford it.
Empanadas are a staple of the Venezuelan diet, fried to a crisp and served piping hot from the pan, stuffed with cheese, beef or chicken and served with generous portions of ají dulce salsa (made with the country’s favorite red peppers). production).
Their workspace bears the scars of the recession: The kitchen is rusty, the refrigerator is broken, and prolonged power outages mean the Hernandez women often work in the dark due to leaky ceilings.
In late May, Ms. Machado stopped with her team at Pancho Grill between campaign stops, buying breakfast and taking photos with the Hernandez family.
But no sooner had the opposition leader left than the sisters received new visitors: two tax supervisors and a National Guard soldier, who said they would temporarily close the business.
Officials told the sisters that they failed to keep accounting books or declare their income, among other issues.
The sisters did not dispute the charges. But they say they have never been visited by tax authorities in the two decades they have been in business. In an area where such violations are common, no one else in town was inspected that day.
The Hernandez family was told the restaurant would be closed for 15 days.
Representatives for the tax agency did not respond to an email seeking comment.
At first, the Hernandez sisters were frustrated. But they filmed their interactions with regulators and sent it to one of their daughters. The young woman decided she might as well share the family’s experience with a few friends.
The video went viral and soon angry supporters were making pilgrimages to the restaurant. Donations showed up at the door: spices to season empanada fillings, a 33-pound bag of cornmeal. Then money started pouring in from Colombia, Brazil, Mexico and even Germany.
Many people submitted orders for empanadas and directed their families to distribute them to locals in need.
In her restaurant recently, Corina Hernández mused that Ms. Machado might have been sent to them by God himself. Paradoxically, the government’s revenge became a blessing.
“Our lives have changed since Maria Corina came to buy our empanadas,” she said. “Everything gets better.”
The sisters said the restaurant reopened after 15 days of closure with the help of new supporters and a $350 fine. Hernandez said she had not voted since 2006 for Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chavez. (Mr Maduro was Mr Chávez’s handpicked choice to succeed him as president.)
But now, she says, the penalty from the tax authorities has convinced her that she must be there on July 28, this time to vote for the opposition.
Although the Hernandez family is back in business, not everyone who has run afoul of the government is so lucky.
Six sound operators were detained for several hours and feared they would be locked up for years, one of the men said in an interview. In Zulia state on the country’s western edge, hotels that once hosted Machado’s team now have “closed” signs on their doors.
Employees at one of the restaurants said it lost a fortune after being forced to cancel First Holy Communion celebrations at two of its restaurants.
Five hours south of Pancho Greer in Apure State, a wooden boat confiscated by authorities stood upside down on a beach next to a National Guard command post.
Ms. Machado arrived in the town of Puerto Paes in Apure a few days ago. Local organizers carried bullhorns through the streets to announce her presence, and townspeople affixed yellow balloons to a truck that she later used as a platform to address voters. The streets were crowded with people.
The next day, four boatmen in motorized canoes agreed to drive Machado and her team to their next campaign location. The boats were confiscated shortly after, and the National Guard later visited one of their homes, according to interviews with three boaters. There, two guards told a boatman’s wife that they had come with “orders from the boss of Caracas” and tried to arrest her husband.
He is not at home because he is hiding. Now the boatmen move from house to house, sleeping in a different place every night.
National Guard representatives did not respond to an email requesting comment.
But the wife, who asked not to be named for fear of further reprisals, said her husband made the right decision to transport Ms Machado. “I have no regrets,” she said.
“I believe in God that she will win,” she said of Ms. Machado, who many voters see as the real political force behind Mr. Gonzalez. “Everything will change.”
