Chronicle of an Advertised Theater: How the Right-Wing Built Their Distorted Narrative
Andres Bello polling center, Caracas, Venezuela. Photo: Brian Mier, Venezuelanalysis
August 4, 2024 Hour: 12:34 pm
TeleSUR’s journalist Brian Mier covered Venezuela’s 3-week presidential campaign season, the elections, and their fallout for TeleSur English, and described the atmosphere in the surroundings of the Andres Bello polling center in a primarily middle-class voting district in downtown Caracas on July 28 elections.
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Mier says he and the channel’s team spent the afternoon inside the Andres Bello school, doing live hits at 2:30, 3:30, and 4:30, moving out to the front of the building shortly before the polls closed Andres Bello, which was one of the largest polling stations in the city, had more volunteers gossiping than voters in its hallways.
The journalist tells that when they finally closed the doors, a crowd of around 40 TV crew members and social media videomakers had gathered, with around 30 citizens who stood in front of the doorway and cheered as the doors shut, and a group of around 5 police officers guarding the doors.
“Minutes later, a crowd of around 100 people rushed up to the door and started yelling, “Let us vote! Let us vote!” Suddenly, there were live streamers everywhere. An Argentinian coworker pointed out a crew from Argentina’s Javier Milei-aligned Channel 13 that was streaming everything as a dour, conservatively dressed reporter asked crying women and angry-looking men why Nicolas Maduro wouldn’t let them vote,” Mier says.
In addition, he recounts that half an hour later a group of hundreds of men rode up on loud motorcycles, some of which seemed to have had their engines adjusted to provide constant backfires, with some riders in black hoods and masks.
“A group of motorcyclist rode up onto the sidewalk to the entrance, everyone else got off their bikes and left them blocking the road. Together, they marched into the crowd and rushed for the door, pushing at the police,” Mier says.
TeleSUR English’s TV reporter described how a small group of Maria Corina Machado supporters lingered on, yelling, “We want the results! We want the results!” with far-right social media filmmakers cutting in close on their smartphones to make it look like they were in the middle of a big crowd.
Mier says that other journalists told him while waiting for the results from the Miraflores palace, as in other polling stations the same scene occurred. One journalist telled him where she was located, the crowd started yelling, “Shut the doors! Shut the doors!” at 6. As soon as the doors shut, they started yelling, “Let us vote! Let us vote!”
“What I witnessed in front of Andres Bello polling station on Sunday night appears to have been a form of theater – one of many tactics used to produce and disseminate videos to delegitimize the election, that was standardized at many polling centers across Caracas,” he said remembering that weeks before the elections Maria Corina Machado and Edmundo Gonzales Urrutia announced they were not going to respect the democratic rule of law and would tally their own election results.
Autor: Brian Mier - ACJ
Fuente: Venezuelanalysis