How to Win an Election in Venezuela: Control the Food

Nicolás Maduro has overseen Venezuela’s worst economic disaster in recent times. Nine out of 10 people here can’t afford enough food to eat. And yet he was re-elected by a landslide. Few signs point to anything getting better here, so how will he be able to run this country? To answer this, let’s look back and see how he was elected. It’s the day before the presidential election, and I’m here in a leaky basketball court in a neighborhood that voted heavily for Maduro in the last election. There’s no stump speeches, no candidates, no flags for any party. But there are eggs and frozen chickens subsidized by the government. Maduro’s campaign has been widely criticized for dangling food in front of the poor in exchange for votes. Brigid is a Maduro party supporter, a community leader in charge of food distribution for 100 or so families in the barrio. This isn’t new. Handing out food and promising benefits have been popular “get out the vote” tactics here since Hugo Chávez’s time. What is new is the level of desperation. Maduro has turned this need into a not-so-subtle pitch: “I give and you give.” Now it’s the morning of the election and Maduro supporters are out in force. This neighborhood has been hit hard by the economic crisis and you still have die-hard supporters of the president turning out the vote. For years now, they’ve benefited from this party’s welfare system. Yasmín is a community leader. She’s going around the barrio knocking on doors, making sure people vote for Maduro. Some here don’t blame the president for their hunger. They blame the U.S. Others don’t buy that line. But Maduro’s critics don’t have many other choices. He’s already banned or jailed his most popular rivals. If anything, this election seemed to be about perfecting a system in which his party always wins. Not 50 yards away from the voting station is a punto rojo, or a red station, the color of Maduro’s party. They’re writing down the number of your benefit card, what’s called the Fatherland Card, to make sure that you voted, and promising a special bonus if Maduro is re-elected. A hungry country should be a weakness. But in this election, it was Maduro’s strength because his government owns the food. Is this how it’s going to be from now on? Walking around the streets of Caracas it feels like we’ve passed a crossroads, one where the president had everything going against him, and yet he still wins.