Caracas Chronicles

Scheduled precisely on the eve of the first anniversary of the 2024 presidential election, the July 27 municipal vote could mark the quiet collapse of several opposition strongholds that have lasted decades in wealthier municipalities. 

Besides the existing context of electoral apathy and institutional obstruction eroding the viability of Venezuelan electoral politics, this vote has been defined by the entanglement of the ‘opposition’. Under growing persecution, exile, clandestinity and lacking funds, what was a more or less a cohesive alliance has been shattered by opportunistic alliances, tactical withdrawals, and incoherent coalitions which threaten to undo the little ground that non-chavistas still hold. 

The result is that municipalities like Baruta, Chacao, El Hatillo, Maneiro and San Diego—names long synonymous with anti-chavista sentiment and uninterrupted opposition governance—face a significant risk of turning red for the first time in the chavista era.

Baruta, Miranda 

Baruta has been led by opposition parties for the entirety of chavista rule. This is the municipality where Henrique Capriles built a career in local politics to become the governor of Miranda and presidential hopeful versus Chávez and Maduro. This time around, mayor Darwin González is running for a third term under the slogan “let’s defend our home.” A part of the once-PJ, now-Fuerza Vecinal cohort, González’s campaign focuses on continuity from his previous terms: better local infrastructure, safer streets and municipal modernization.

His message is still tailored for the upper-middle-class voter of eastern Caracas—a base that has sharply declined due to Venezuela’s migration crisis—but his candidacy may come with strings. Darwin’s electoral muscle of 23 party tickets rests on a broad and murky alliance that includes Fuerza Vecinal, UNT, El Lápiz, Cambiemos (led by the flimsy Timoteo Zambrano), and judicially-intervened parties tolerated by the regime like Acción Democrática under Bernabé Gutiérrez.

Maduro and the Rodríguez siblings have relied on men like Gustavo Duque and Darwin González to administer pockets of Caracas enjoyed by them and their families.

González is being endorsed by Baruta councilman Luis Aguilar, who had ambitions to run for mayor but dropped his bid to avoid handing the municipality over to chavismo, in his own words. A reported linked to chavismo tweeted in early June that Aguilar was being banned from running as the nomination process approached. Three days later, Aguilar appeared in a video supporting Darwin as the main man in Baruta. Aguilar has been a member of Primero Justicia since 2022, but has been campaigning for González without the party’s black and yellow branding given the party’s policy to boycott. It isn’t clear whether Aguilar is still in PJ’s ranks.

Darwin’s opponent is Francisco González, a PSUV lawmaker for Miranda promising to overhaul public services and improve road infrastructure, a pragmatic pitch in a municipality where resentment over deteriorating services has grown even among traditional anti-chavistas.

Chacao, Miranda

A local government that has long been considered the bastion of anti-chavismo, having never been governed by the PSUV since its onset. Irene Sáez and Leopoldo López, among others, were mayors of Chacao, a tiny rich area with the best indicators of quality of life in the entire country. It was in Chacao where many demonstrations against the government took place, including the large demonstrations of 2002, and where a good deal of repression was unleashed in the protest waves of 2014 and 2017.

After the candidacy of former mayor Emilio Graterón—once a dauphin of Leopoldo— was accepted and then withdrawn by the CNE, the only opposition candidate is now incumbent Gustavo Duque of Fuerza Vecinal, who already has three terms as mayor under his belt.

The Gran Polo Patriótico chose Raiza Chacón as their candidate in Chacao, who already serves in the municipality’s council as president of the Committee on Wellbeing and Innovation. Her platform focuses on protecting public safety, improving infrastructure and re-establishing services.

El Hatillo, Miranda

In El Hatillo, the 15-year ban placed on mayor Elías Sayegh in April 2024 set off a 28J-style scramble for a new candidacy. The president of Chacao’s municipal council, Omar Nowak, had emerged as the frontrunner to succeed Sayegh until he was abruptly disqualified from the race. Leonardo Canache, the municipality’s general director, was next in line, yet the CNE also rejected his candidacy three days into the campaign. The nomination has now been passed to local councilman Fernando Melena, who remains in the race with support from 15 different party tickets

Meanwhile, former mayor Alfredo Catalán and Carlyana Arriechi (backed by the likes of Cambiemos, Fuerza Vecinal, Avanzada Progresista) have also entered the race and split the anti-chavista vote.

Even the historically anti-chavista middle class of northern Valencia somewhat identifies with Lacava’s ability to tend to their needs.

PSUV’s candidate José Gregorio Alvarado is a businessman and bureaucrat who once served as Venezuela’s vice minister of public works and held posts in Petrocasa, Corposalud Miranda, and Venezolana de Teleféricos. He now portrays himself as a pragmatic “problem solver”, campaigning on drilling shallow wells to address water shortages and working alongside the municipality’s four communes.

If Chacao, El Hatillo or Baruta fall on Sunday, chavismo will score one of its most symbolic victories yet—finally gaining control over areas already home to high-ranking officials, hidden behind mansions, luxury apartments, and sprawling complexes guarded by DGCIM convoys. Maduro and the Rodríguez siblings have relied on men like Duque and González to administer pockets of Caracas enjoyed by their families and turn them into “safe”, depoliticized and often gentrified urban spaces—to an extent, that has been the entire point of parties like Fuerza Vecinal.

If Francisco González Chacón or Alvarado were to win (or the chavistas outright stole those elections) it would signal that parties like Fuerza Vecinal are no longer needed for those purposes and that PSUV’s elite seeks full control there.

Maneiro, Nueva Esparta

Morel Rodríguez Salcedo, of Fuerza Vecinal, is seeking a third term in Nueva Esparta’s wealthiest municipality. His grandfather, Morel Rodríguez Ávila—one of Venezuela’s longest-serving governors—was unseated in May by PSUV’s Marisel Velázquez. While the incumbent retains name recognition and a functional local structure, his administration has been criticized for stagnation. The PSUV has never governed Maneiro, the area where the Sambil shopping center and the village of Pampatar (a hotspot for luxury tourism) are located.

Chavista candidate Alejandro Navarro, is campaigning around the municipality’s most pressing crises: healthcare and water. Navarro’s team has prioritized door-to-door campaigning in Pampatar and Los Robles, promising concrete infrastructure investment (much like his grandad has done, without much success) and exploiting the people’s fatigue with traditional leadership.

San Diego, Carabobo

San Diego was once an undisputed bastion of antichavistas, with the Scarano family at the helm since 2004: Enzo Scarano held the mayorship for a decade until he was ousted and jailed amid protests, yet the family’s influence prevailed through his wife, Rosa Brandonisio, who ran the local government until 2017. The son of Enzo and Rosa, by the way, was imprisoned for three months immediately after last year’s presidential elections, in a local display of repression-by-proxy that is now one of the regime’s favorite practices.

The Scarano’s dynasty came to an end with the election of León Jurado of Fuerza Vecinal, who now seeks re-election. Jurado has built his brand around urban planning, education, sports programs and modern municipal services.

Carabobo has deeply changed after years of Rafael Lacava’s rule. Focusing on efficiency, delivery, and urban modernization, Lacava has built a brand for himself as a centrist chavista. The result? Even the historically anti-chavista middle class of northern Valencia somewhat identifies with his administration’s ability to tend to their needs and maintain their living standards.

This phenomenon is exactly what puts the PSUV challenger, Marcos Campos, at an advantage. He has led a Lacava-style campaign, focusing his efforts on providing direct social aid, organizing neighborhood medical fairs and children nutrition programs, and renewing sports spaces of the municipality.

The end of winning alliances

So why are these once-safe territories in such danger? Part of the answer lies in the state-enabled simulations of pluralism under the guise of opposition. The alliance between Un Nuevo Tiempo (UNT), led by Manuel Rosales, and Henrique Capriles’ Unión y Cambio (Única) held together for the regional and parliamentary vote in May, but collapsed for the upcoming municipal contest. According to UNT’s Angelo Palmieri, local leaderships were left to build their own agreements “strictly at the municipal level”, resulting in contradictory endorsements and multiple non-PSUV tickets competing in the same races.

In municipalities like Carrizal, Los Teques, Sucre, and even Zulia’s Guajira, Única and UNT are backing different candidates or skipping the race entirely. By not even attempting to build a ‘unitary’ strategy. judicially-intervened parties like the faux AD, Copei and PJ managed to integrate into these ad-hoc coalitions, while most people looked the other way, of course.

The result is a web of candidacies that serve more to confuse the voter than to challenge chavismo, regardless of whether one is for or against voting this time. For years, it was precisely the capacity to gather many parties around one opposition candidate that led antichavismo—or lukewarm new parties like Fuerza Vecinal—to defeat PSUV.

But before attempting to steal Chacao or San Diego, PSUV isn’t so much winning as waiting for the ground to collapse beneath its opponents. And it just might.

UNT leader Stalin González, who had his new parliamentary seat gifted in May, insists there was no formal pact with alacranes (faux opposition politicians) and only localized negotiations:

“This is a very local election, and local leaderships are what prevail. We simply accompanied our leaders in each municipality as they made the decisions that needed to be made,” González said.

“There was no pact with anyone. We let our local leaders decide how to defend their ground.”

He also attempted to confirm “ongoing, permanent” talks with regime officials over the release of political prisoners—one of the main themes of the UNT-ÚNICA alliance this year—after the agreement struck by Bukele, Trump and Maduro last week. Stalin, like Jorge Rodríguez, seems to suggest that systemic non-chavista politicians had a stake in those negotiations.

Such deceptive pragmatism is now the survival tool of what remains of the opposition. These alliances aren’t simply tactical but state-enabled by design, simulating choice while opening the terrain for PSUV advances in places where they’ve never had the numbers to compete.

The mass exodus of Venezuelans has surely reduced the opposition’s voter base by millions. Yet widespread discontent and growing electoral apathy may still dampen turnout, even in the most staunchly anti-chavista strongholds. Whether voters follow María Corina Machado’s call to abstain or simply stay home, worn down by electoral fatigue, remains to be seen. After last year’s events and chavismo’s relentless drive to dominate every inch of Venezuela, these mayoralties seem more vulnerable than ever to electoral fraud.

But before attempting to steal Chacao or San Diego, PSUV isn’t so much winning as waiting for the ground to collapse beneath its opponents. And it just might.