Is the opposition taken by the more “gallos” ask some of those who have analyzed the procedures and speeches of the self-proclaimed Juan Guaidó, his wife Fabiana Rosales, and some characters from their environment with the same style.
By Clodovaldo Hernández
[The question needs a previous semantic clarification: in present-day Venezuela the word “gallo” is given a connotation absolutely contrary to what it has in other latitudes (or that it had had here in other times) related to the brave character of the male that imposes his law in the corral and sings very loudly. Now it is synonymous with someone not very clever, stuck, half dumb, out of touch with the street. By the way, even more curiously about the colloquial uses of language, the woman who has such characteristics is not called “gallina” (chicken) , but “galla” . See for yourself].
Those who have the perception that we are living in times of “gallos”, start from the basis that Guaidó expresses himself verbally and non-verbally in a very different way from previous opposition leaders, such as the union leader Carlos Ortega, one of the architects of the deviation of the great opposition march from its original route (ending in Chuao) to Miraflores, on April 11, 2002, triggering the wave of planned murders that day.
Ortega, an adeco with a rioting pedigree, was characterized by his shrillness and dominated the discursive stage of the opposition until “the oil lockout was out of hand” (refering to the oil lockout of 2002-2003) and lost its ascendancy among the anti-Chavista masses.
Guaidó is obviously very far from being an Ortega. This, for the sympathizers of the current opposition leader (you have to recognize that) is his great advantage. On the other hand, for the detractors, it is the reason why his reign will not last and is already quite blurry.
This raises more questions. For example, was that decaffeinated leadership format designed in this way by the laboratories that created Guaidó (again, you have to recognize there was a laboratory) or is it a product of the hazards of recent political history that has left (opposition) leaders out of the game with a little more spice in their words and in their way of being on the stage.
Brief tour of leadership
In the years following the failure of Ortega as a shouting leader, the opposition lurches between deficient speakers to the limits of laughter, as Manuel Rosales and others very insipid, as Henrique Capriles Radonski.
Maria Corina Machado has always stood out in the field of the hard outspoken, but it seems that the rage of her speeches does not end up connecting her with the feeling of even the most radical ones. Perhaps it is their unhideable oligarchic essence that makes identification with ordinary mortals impossible.
Already in times after the death of Commander Chávez, the opposition coalition MUD wanted to make an effort to connect better with the feelings of the masses and that is why it dismissed his secretary Ramón Guillermo Aveledo, a dapper smooth talking social Christian and handed over the responsibility to Jesus “Chúo” Torrealba, who established a new stage of rude (and shrill, incidentally speaking) speech on the right wing.
In 2016, after the resounding opposition victory in the parliamentary elections, another veteran adeco had its incandescent moment: Henry Ramos Allup, who inaugurated himself as president of the National Assembly, and ordered the portraits of “Bolívar amulatado” (darkened Bolivar according to him) and Chávez to be taken out of their building. And giving a smug expiration time of six months to President Maduro. Ramos Allup’s bravado soon crashed into reality and became something more folkloric.
With the Sharp Manual
In 2017, members of the millennial generation of Voluntad Popular and Primero Justicia stormed the MUD’s cockpit and launched a new wave of guarimbas, the bloodiest known to date. This tremendous political violence was presented, however, in a narrative of struggle for democracy and freedom, following the guidelines of the Sharp Manual on so-called soft coups.
The excesses committed in that time, added to the failed assassination against Maduro in 2018, eliminated from the stage several of the leaders with very aggressive discourse: David Smolansky, Freddy Guevara, Juan Requesens appear in that lot.
The way was left open for Guaidó, an almost unknown leader who expresses the most radical points of view, including his terrifying vision of human lives as a necessary cost for the change of government. But he does it in a way that suggests the word “gallo”, in its current meaning of Venezuelanism.
Of course it is necessary to distinguish between the background and the form. The content of Guaidó’s speeches is almost certainly the most anti-sovereign and prone to civil war that the opposition has had (at least openly) in twenty years. His submission to the imperial line of interference and dispossession is total. In form, however, he gives the impression of being a moderate, especially when compared to the shrillness of digital warriors operating from Miami. Strictly speaking, Guaidó takes the same (positions) as the most fanatical, but with a different pose. There, it focuses, to a large extent, its dangerousness.
Lilian and Fabiana
On the feminine side, it has been inevitable the comparison between Fabiana Rosales and her predecessor in those conflicts of “wife of the great democratic leader”, Lilian Tintori, the wife of Leopoldo López.
Since she began to appear publicly, commentators have pointed out that the girl seems to be under a strict program of imaging, which leads her to appear, in the words of a Twitter user, “as if she had just left an Amish colony”. The same procedure that was followed with Tintori, who toured the world with the candid air of Little Orphan. Annie.
“I would like to know why the advisors believe they have to disguise them like that … as gallas,” commented another social network activist when she saw the photos of both in a composition published in an Instagram account.
In that great media of these times, social networks, the video of a “representative” of Guaidó in Ecuador was also highlighted, addressing a group of Venezuelans. In his words, he asks for calm to wait for “President Guaidó” to advance in the three phases of his road map, but he does so with so much of what he asks (calmly) that someone compared him with “El Patúo Candela”, a character of Virgilio Galindo on Radio Rochela, who sang salsa in a languid tone and worthy of yawns. Had he been a character of this time, the “Patuo” would have told him that as a singer he was a tremendous “gallo”.
Translated by JRE\EF
