Caracas Chronicles

That's is half off 666, maybe Chavez is the second coming of Jesus. I always thought he was the beast of the Apocalypse!

"Si no puedes con Chávez, únete a él" means "If you can't beat Chavez, join him."

Several odd things (well, odder things) about that sign:

First time I've seen a chavista sign with the accent on the "a" of "Chávez". They put the accent on the "e" of "él" too, but forgot the accent in "únete".

"Únete a él. Chávez te ama". Seems like the start of a really kinky gay porn. Crap, now I need mind bleach.

Juan,

I took up your challenge and started googling. I found what you did, which was that it means "the beginning and the end", that it has religious significance, and that some religious schools and organizations share the name. However, I could not find a link between the sign in the photo and these groups, so I kept looking.

Then I came across the following article in Aporrea.org:

http://www.aporrea.org/actualidad/a75536.html

Please read it (particularly the second to last paragraph). I am afraid some of the meaning (if there is any) in Spanish escapes me. However, all in all, the article and the sign share a certain weirdness that leads me to believe that this is your connection.

Please let me know what you think.

One esoteric significance of these numbers is found in the trinity.If a triangle has 3 points , going clockwise the first point is 3, the second 6 and the tip of the triangle 9.If one moves the triangle counterclockwise 3 times..we start at point 3, then comes point 6, then point 9 and the back to point 3. 3 + 3+3 = 9. Movements around the trinity create the alpha and omega...the first and last of the trinity.

The first point 3 is the wolf, the 2nd point 6 is the lamb and the third point 9 is the spirit.The wolf is needed for force,and the lamb for surrender.

The first is the father( wolf), the second is the son( lamb), and the third is the holy ghost.All in all 'The alpha and the Omega.'

Our laws in this world are based on the law of 3.

I'm glad this wacko finally made it to the news, i saw him a couple of years ago in the Plaza Bolívar of downtown Caracas with even weirder and paranoic signs.. i feel really sorry for this guy, i seriously do, he was pretty harmless (unlike most of the hyper hardcore chavistas of downtown Caracas and esquina calienta) when i approchead him and took photos of his hand made signs..

Here's two of them:
http://img684.imageshack.us/img684/2416/wck2.jpg
http://img707.imageshack.us/img707/9928/wck1.jpg

Enjoy 'em.

I remember an Evangelical meeting in the Bolívar square in Valera, the Pastor was using a fake Nostradamus prophecy to claim Chávez was god's chosen.

http://webspace.webring.com/people/fj/jgb64/Guido07.htm

A few years ago, Lina Ron wrote in one of her La Razón articles, that president Chavez was “trino y uno”, that is, three-and-one persons. She never said anything as to which specific persons was she referring to, or the theological point she was trying to drive home, but that stuck to me.

The number three has a strong tradition of esoteric and philosophical meanings: it can be seen in the Holy Trinity in Christendom, the Hindu Trimurti, the Buddhist treasures, and the Taoist Sanqing. Moreover, it is also reflected in the triadic soul of Socrates-Plato-Aristotle, and in the traditional three forms of government (monarchy, aristocracy and democracy), as well in the numbers of powers the State would distribute its sovereignty (executive, legislative, judiciary). More to our tastes, we see a relevant “three” in the dialectic method (be it Hegelian-idealist or Marxist-materialist) of thesis-antithesis-synthesis.

The MBR-200 has also used a triad: The three-rooted tree (Bolívar, Rodríguez (Robinson), and Zamora), and the often used image from one of Bolivar quotations “... los tres más grandes majaderos (fools) del mundo hemos sido Jesuscristo, Don Quijote y yo”, allegedly said in 1830, as Bolívar waited -to no avail- to sail away to Europe. Naturally, 333 is said to mean the number of the King of Kings, but mostly in opposition to the number of the alleged apocalyptic Beast (the Devil). Sulfur aside, this has many interpretations -none of them part of the official canon- and was popularised in culture by films like "The Omen". Of course, given the magical and mythical nature of the Bolivarian revolution's hold onto the popular imagination, it is only natural that this kind of thing would surface. If this sort of thing -of which there are a myriad of examples on official and para-official propaganda- is intended and abetted by rational politicians seeking to manipulate the people, or if its the genuine messianic belief of our current hegemons, can shed light on the kind of political movement we have: Perhaps not rational, although not necessarily abnormal. Could our president or some of his followers believe that he’s the second coming of these historical figures? Could he be the embodiment of all of them, or even, the embodiment of the multitude? After all, there is graffiti which read catchphrases such as “Chávez es el Pueblo” (as he has personally declared recently) and “Si matan a Chávez volverá hecho millones”.

I mention this because redemptive and apocalyptic Christianity, vulgar Marxism and Bolivarian pathos can be easily conjoined beyond the example of the enthusiastic sign-bearer pictured above. All three traditions (oh, the number again) offer a moralistic and manichean idea of history and politics, which easily lends itself to paranoid and existential struggles. Also, being revolutionary ideologies, they offer a "Merry Kingdom of the end of Days" (Eden/Heaven, Communism, etc. (Bolívar did not go this far)) for whose arrival we must suffer a number of hardships and pain (not all of us will qualify to be granted entrance into paradise), terrible ordeals which we cannot understand right now (for we are sinners, ideologically bourgeois, hampered more "by ignorance than force", as Bolívar had said of the Spanish colonial rule).

However, there are signs within the social opposition to the revolution which mirror the irrational frame of mind described: the erection of Virgin statues, the reading of rosaries, the accusations of “pava”, and all that claptrap.

As Bolívar himself said on his famous Letter of 1815, addressed to a presumably enlightened English-Jamaican, piety can serve politics very well (after all, it was the alliance between religion and the monarchy one of the factors which defeated, to the eyes of the caraquenian leader, the First Republic):

“Happily, the leaders of the Mexican independence movement have made use of this fanaticism to excellent purpose by proclaiming the famous Virgin of Guadalupe the Queen of the Patriots, invoking her name in all difficult situations and placing her image on their banners. As a result, political enthusiasms have been commingled with religion, thus producing an intense devotion to the sacred cause of liberty. The veneration of this image in Mexico is greater than the exaltation that the most sagacious prophet could inspire.”

Rhetoric tends to trump reason (unless the belief in reason becomes, in and of itself, sacrosanct).