’Twas 85 nights before Christmas when the decorations went up – at least in Venezuela, where President Nicolás Maduro has decided festivities should start early in an apparent attempt to lift spirits and distract minds after the recent election scandal.
A month after Maduro announced that Christmas 2024 would begin in October, residents of Caracas left home on Tuesday to find the capital’s boulevards and plazas decked with LED light strings and sculptures declaring: “Feliz Navidad.”
The “big switch-on” of Oxford Street’s world-famous Christmas lights won’t happen until 5 November. But at Caracas’s Paseo Los Próceres – a monument to South American independence heroes near the military base where Venezuela’s authoritarian leader lives – authorities have already erected a bright red Christmas tree and wrapped palms in green lights.
Christmas concerts and events were reported across the country this week, including in Barinas state, the birthplace of Maduro’s mentor, Hugo Chávez, and Aragua, where more than 900 people are being held in a high-security prison after Maduro’s post-election crackdown. At one nativity event in Caracas, stilt-wearing actors danced salsa while dressed as the Three Wise Men.
The interior minister, Diosdado Cabello, popped up at a party thrown by Venezuela’s criminal investigation unit, and was greeted by fake plastic snowmen and children wearing Santa hats bearing the English phrase: “Merry Christmas.”
“The people are happy,” Cabello declared, calling critics of Maduro’s move embittered Christmas-wrecking Grinches. “They need to understand that this country is a country of happiness, of enthusiasm and of the future,” Cabello said.
Adolfo Guillén, 52, a street hawker who sells children’s toys on the Paseo Los Próceres, hailed Maduro’s decision to, quite literally, paint the town red.
“It de-stresses you. It boosts the economy … It stops you thinking about political problems,” enthused Guillén, a supporter of Maduro’s political movement, Chavismo.
“These are positive things that the state and the government are doing to help distract Venezuelans, because they’re well aware that Venezuelans are stressed out at the moment … Things aren’t easy, you know?” added the vendor, who lives in Petare, one of the working-class areas that briefly rebelled after Maduro’s alleged theft of July’s presidential election.
There have been reasons galore for stress in the two months since that bitterly disputed vote, which Maduro still insists he won despite widespread domestic and international skepticism.
A ferocious political crackdown has seen more than 1,500 people jailed. Edmundo González, the opposition candidate who claims to have comfortably beaten Maduro, was forced to fly into exile in Spain last month to avoid prison himself. Last week, Maduro claimed González’s key political backer – the opposition leader María Corina Machado – was preparing to flee abroad too, although Machado denied that and insisted it was Maduro who had to go.
But with Christmas – not to mention the scheduled inauguration of Venezuela’s next president on 10 January 2025 – fast approaching, there is no sign of Maduro surrendering power.
The EU, US and South American countries including Argentina and Chile last week urged Venezuela’s leaders “to begin constructive and inclusive discussions on a [political] transition” paving the way towards “a more democratic, prosperous and secure future”.
Yet there is little indication those discussions are happening, or that Maduro might be willing to negotiate an end to his 11-year rule.
“Sadly, I don’t think anybody expects Maduro to hand over the presidential sash to Edmundo González on 10 January. I don’t think that’s in the realm of possibility,” said Geoff Ramsey, a Venezuela expert from the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Latin America Centre.
That said, Ramsey thought Maduro’s strength should not be exaggerated. “Detaining [nearly] 2,000 people, shutting down the use of social media and launching a massive repression campaign are not the actions of an authoritarian ruler who feels safe,” he said.
Ramsey suspected Maduro’s decision to bring Christmas celebrations forward was designed “to transmit the message that resistance is futile and Venezuelans should accept another six years under his rule … [and] go to the beach, basically”.
The prospect of a third Maduro term has left even some of the president’s opponents grateful for a dose of Christmas cheer, however premature.
One health ministry official strolling along the Paseo Los Próceres with a friend on Tuesday evening said the decorations might at least boost Venezuelans reeling from Maduro’s harsh political crackdown and the country’s economic woes.
The 49-year-old official, who asked not to be named, saw a painful disconnect between the multi-coloured blaze of Christmas lights around her and the bleak situation facing Venezuela. “But I think the country’s facing such a difficult moment that it does need certain spaces where people can somehow drain all the anxiety to which they’ve been subjected,” she said of the festooned promenade where locals had gathered to relax.
“It’s a loathsome contrast,” she added. “But here we are anyway, coming out to clear our minds … Like I said, it’s a matter of mental health.”
