The last three rallies that Hugo Chávez has held show a qualitative change over the heyday of the now fat Dictator’s popularity. In one, in the El Valle area of Caracas, attendance was so bad that Huguito had to cut short his speech. The buses were there, but the people weren’t
Then we had the rally in El Calvario with the “Peasant Militias”. The militias attended in brand new uniforms and Cogollo hats, evidence that they recently got to their attire. They surely got paid to go, I guess they got to keep the hat and the uniform, but had to return the rifle. There were no bullets.
Then we had yesterday’s militia rally, once again a way of guaranteeing attendance. We don’t know how much they got paid for attending, but note the uniforms are different below from those in El Calvario.
And yes, it was supposed to be a militia rally, but it was also supposed to be a celebration of the phantom rise of the “people” in favor of Chavez in April 13th. 2002. This time, like then, the “people” decided to stay home as evidenced by the pictures below, taken from the front:
or from the back:
There are more “militia” than people. It is not that the people have become militia, it is that dressing them in fatigues and giving them guns, it is harder for them to escape to the Malls or parks of Caracas.
Not all of them had guns, I guess you did not get your unloaded gun if you were in bad shape:
or if you were too weak or to old to carry one all day around the heat of Caracas:
Some people say that the rally was made to scare the Venezuelan military. I am not sure they were scared by this not-ready-for-prime-time-force, I would hope that the real Venezuelan military is in better shape than this one. I would be afraid of leading these people with loaded weapons to go visit Parque del Este, even if only for an ice cream, let alone to fight someone who has fired a weapon once in his or her life.
But in the end it is all a matter of images. To someone in Santa Cruz de Mora, these images may impress or intimidate, but only as long as they did not see that the militias are in the end protected by the images of Hugo, Che and, of course, Snow White:
The Devil's Excrement 