A car recently stopped in front of a modest restaurant in the state of Guárico, in the vast savannah of Venezuela. The driver shouted at the wheel: “Are you the ones whose businesses were closed by the government? I want a photo with you!
When getting out of the car, the man approached Corina Hernández, 44, one of the restaurant’s owners. He took a selfie. “We are all outraged,” he told her.
Corina and her sister Elys Hernández have become unlikely political heroines just as Venezuela heads toward its most competitive elections in years.
Their transgression? Sold 14 breakfasts and a handful of empanadas to the country’s main opposition figure. The government’s response came hours later: an order forcing the sisters to temporarily close their business.
Their case was widely shared on the Internet, transforming them into symbols of defiance for Venezuelans tired of the country’s authoritarian leaders. (The sisters have since won a large online tracking well beyond Venezuela and renamed their products “freedom empanadas.”)
But their company is just one of many that have come under heavy pressure from the government after offering their daily services to President Nicolás Maduro’s main political opponent, María Corina Machado.
Ms. Machado, a former lawmaker and longtime critic of Mr. Maduro, is not even running, but she is capitalizing on her popularity to campaign alongside and on behalf of the main opposition presidential candidate.
And wherever she goes on the campaign trail, those who help her are harassed by the authorities. In recent weeks, those targeted included six sound equipment operators working at a rally, a truck driver collecting supplies at a campaign event in Caracas and four men with canoes who provided transportation in a front -poor Venezuelan post.
Some people were held for hours, they said in interviews, dragged to a notorious detention center known as Helicoide. Others have had their equipment seized and their businesses closed, depriving them of their livelihoods.
“Those days we had nothing to eat,” truck driver Francisco Ecceso said of the 47 days his vehicle was detained by police.
For opposition figures and analysts who have followed the decline of democracy in the country in recent years, such petty persecutions are clear signs that the government is seeking new ways to suppress the opposition and display its power.
Whatever the motivation, there is broad consensus that the vote, scheduled for July 28, poses problems the biggest electoral challenge to Mr. Maduro’s 11 years in power.
For the first time in years, the opposition is united around a single figure – Ms Machado – who enjoys broad support among voters. When Mr. Maduro’s government barred him from running, his coalition managed to get a replacement on the ballot, a soft-spoken former diplomat named Edmundo González.
Polls show that a majority of Venezuelans plan to vote for Mr. González and that they are frustrated by hunger, poverty and soaring migration levels, which have forced families to separate.
The Hernández sisters operate their restaurant, Pancho Grill, in the small town of Corozo Pando, a five-hour drive south of Caracas, in one of the poorest regions of the country. In all, there are five Hernández siblings – four sisters and one brother – and two of them, Corina and Elys, operate the restaurant, along with their aunt Nazareth.
Here, following an economic crisis that began around 2015, people who once had decent jobs now earn their living by looking for junk to sell, and mothers have resorted to hunting for little báquiros that look like pigs and rodents known locally as pricks to feed their children.
The Hernández family has run Pancho Grill for 20 years, selling breakfasts of pulled beef, eggs, beans and corn pancakes called arepas to those who can afford them.
Empanadas, a staple of the Venezuelan diet, are fried and crispy, piping hot from the pan, stuffed with cheese, beef or chicken and served with a generous helping of ají dulce salsa – made from the country’s favorite red pepper – as an accompaniment.
Their workspace bears the scars of the economic crisis: rust covers the kitchen due to a leak in the ceiling, refrigerators are broken and prolonged power outages force the Hernández women to often work in the dark.
In late May, Ms. Machado stopped at Pancho Grill with her team between campaign events, buying breakfast and posing for photos with the Hernández family.
But no sooner had the opposition leader left than the sisters received new visitors: two tax agents and a national guard, who said they were temporarily closing the business.
The sisters had failed to keep records or report their income, among other problems, officials told them.
The sisters have not disputed the accusations. But in their two decades in business, they have never received a visit from the tax agency, they said. And in an area where such violations are commonplace, no one else in the city was inspected that day.
The Hernández family was informed that the restaurant would be closed for 15 days.
Representatives for the tax agency did not respond to an email seeking comment.
At first, the Hernández sisters were devastated. But they had filmed their interaction with regulators and sent it to one of their daughters. The young woman decided that she might as well share the family experience with a few friends.
The video spread quickly online, and soon, outraged fans flocked to the restaurant as if they were on a pilgrimage. Donations showed up at the door: spices to season empanada toppings, a 33-pound bag of cornmeal. Then funds started flowing in from Colombia, Brazil, Mexico and even Germany.
Many people placed orders for empanadas, along with instructions for the family to distribute them to residents in need.
Recently, in her restaurant, Corina Hernández thought that Ms. Machado could have been sent to them by God himself. The government’s retaliation had paradoxically become a blessing.
“Our lives have changed since María Corina arrived to buy our empanadas,” she said. “Everything has improved.”
After 15 days of closure, the sisters reopened the restaurant and paid a $350 fine with the help of their new supporters, they said. Ms. Hernández said she had not voted since 2006, when she voted for Hugo Chavez, Mr. Maduro’s predecessor. (Mr Maduro was Mr Chávez’s hand-picked choice to succeed him as president.)
But now, she says, the tax sanction has convinced her that she should show up on July 28, this time to vote for the opposition.
Even though the Hernández family is back in business, not everyone who has had run-ins with the government has been so lucky.
The six sound operators spent hours in detention, terrified of being locked up for years, one of the men said in an interview. In the western state of Zulia, hotels that hosted Ms. Machado’s team now have “closed” signs on their doors.
Employees at one said the establishment lost a lot of money after being forced to cancel first communion celebrations planned for its two restaurants.
A five-hour drive south of Pancho Grill in Apure state, a wooden boat confiscated by authorities lies upside down on a beach next to a National Guard command post.
A few days earlier, Ms. Machado had arrived in the town of Puerto Páez, Apure. Local organizers took to the streets with megaphones to announce her presence, and residents placed yellow balloons on a truck, which she then used as a platform to address voters. The streets were full of people.
The next day, four boatmen equipped with motorized canoes agreed to transport Ms. Machado and her team to their next campaign stop. The boats were confiscated shortly afterward, according to interviews with three of the boatmen, and the National Guard then went to one of their homes. There, two guards told a boatman’s wife that they had come with “orders from the bosses of Caracas” and were seeking to arrest her husband.
He wasn’t at home because he was hiding. Now the boatmen move from house to house, sleeping in a different place every night.
National Guard representatives did not respond to an email seeking comment.
But the wife, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of further reprisals, said her husband’s decision to transport Ms. Machado was the right one. “I don’t regret it,” she said.
“I trust in God that she will win,” she said of Ms. Machado, whom many voters recognize as the real political force behind Mr. González, “and that everything will change.”
