The March

Today I had the opportunity to see a political march/demonstration. I do not take sides in the Venezuelan political scene. I don't feel that I should nor do I have a right as a visitor to do that. Neither do I want to have a huge political discussion on the blog about Venezuelan politics, Hugo Chavez, or the opposition. But it is interesting. I see the whole political situation here as very complex even though the press - both Venezuelan and foreign - like to slot all the players into neat little categories. Since I have been back it has been much quieter politically than it was last summer when I was here. I left a couple of weeks before the referendum and during the summer there had been quite a bit of political activity. But since then it has been very calm. Even the elections in December were nearly a non-event. I did have occasion to take a taxi last week and my driver was very anti-Chavez. He tried very hard to get me to say that I thought Chavez was terrible. He did not want to accept my stock reply that I didn't think I should express an opinion either way. Today there were demonstrations planned for both the Chavistas and the opposition and I thought it would be fun to check it out. Since I live in the east side of the city, the demonstration close to home was the opposition - probably the safer one for a gringa. I'm posting a couple of pictures just to show what it was like. The people carrying the red flags are from a political group "Banda Roja" or Red Flag, which is the most left-wing political party in the country - even more so than the Communist Party. I find it to be very interesting that they are marching with the opposition rather than the Chavistas. Make you think about how accurate the portrayal of Chavez as a radical leftist really is.