South Florida Venezuelans head to New Orleans to cast vote for president

Posted on Saturday, 04.13.13

South Florida Venezuelans head to New Orleans to cast vote for president
By Juan O. Tamayo
jtamayo@ElNuevoHerald.com

The numbers tell the story of the determination of Venezuelans in South
Florida to vote in their country's presidential election Sunday — and
perhaps help end the legacy of the late President Hugo Chávez.

More than 1,730 Venezuelans will spend 36 out of 48 hours or so aboard
31 buses that will drive 1,728 miles to New Orleans and back so they can
cast their ballots at their nearest voting center.

The trip will be difficult, 65-year-old Ilda de Marcano acknowledged
Saturday as she joined the long line waiting to board the buses at the
J.C. Bermudez Park in Doral. "But harder still is what is happening in
Venezuela."

Many of her fellow travelers wore the starred baseball caps, t-shirts
and other symbols of opposition candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski,
former governor of the state of Miranda and Chávez' opponent in the Oct.
7 presidential elections.

If there were any supporters in the crowd of acting President Nicolás
Maduro, handpicked by Chávez as his successor before he died March 5,
they were not wearing the red symbols of the ruling Unified Socialist
Party of Venezuela.

Caravan organizer Vanessa Duran said 1,736 Venezuelans had paid $75 each
for a seat on one of the 31 buses that left for the long drive to New
Orleans in at least two waves Saturday afternoon.

Most of the travelers carried bags or backpacks with just enough
supplies for two days — "fresh shirts, underwear, and breath mints,"
said 35-year-old bank employee Jorge Ramirez — and the buses packed
cases of donated sandwiches and bottled water.

Charter bus company owner Juan Carlos Monroy said the trip would take
about 18 hours and four pit stops each way, and he hoped the buses would
be back to Doral by Monday afternoon.

Another 10 buses were expected to leave from Weston, West Palm Beach,
Tampa, Orlando and Atlanta, and 850 other Venezuelans were to fly to New
Orleans and back, with four airplanes taking off from Miami and one from
Fort Lauderdale.

The Venezuelan consulate in New Orleans is the nearest polling place
approved by the government's National Electoral Council for voters in
the southeastern United States because Chávez ordered the consulate in
Miami closed in January of 2012.

The shut-down came after the U.S. government expelled the Miami consul
general, Livia Acosta Noguera. U.S. officials gave no reason, but news
media reports had linked her to a meeting regarding a cyber attack on
U.S. interests.

Venezuela's consulate in New Orleans arranged for the estimated 20,000
Venezuelans registered to vote in the Miami consulate to cast their
ballots in the city's Pontchartrain Convention and Civic Center.

Helping to organize the voters' caravan were the Miami branch of
opposition coalition Democratic Unity Committee, the Votodondesea voter
activist organization and several Venezuelan businessmen in South Florida.

About 1,400 Venezuelans joined a similar caravan from South Florida to
New Orleans to vote in the Oct. 7 elections handily won by Chávez, who
controlled much of the mass media, the electoral council and the
country's judicial system.

But now Chávez opponents see a chance to defeat Maduro and end the late
president's brand of "21st Century Socialism," which has thrown the
economy into a tailspin and pushed tens of thousands of Venezuelans to
move to South Florida.

Miamian Leonor Johnson, 53, said she was going to New Orleans to vote so
that "our country gets fixed, and so that communism collapses."

Nelis Rojas, a Cuba native who lived in Venezuela for 33 years, said she
did not mind the long bus rides ahead of her.

"That's not important. For the fight for freedom and democracy, we have
all the time in the world," she declared. "We are going with our hearts
in our hands, and ready to win back freedom in Venezuela."

Read more here:
http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/04/13/3342198/south-florida-venezuelans-head.html#storylink=misearch#storylink=cpy