Venezuela's 'color revolution?' The complexity of wearing red.
| San Crist贸bal, Venezuela
The color red sets off alarm bells these days in this western Venezuelan city, where antigovernment protests sparked nationwide demonstrations that have endured since early February.
Save for the red stripe on the Venezuelan flag, which also has yellow and blue, here anything of that color looks suspiciously allusive to the late president Hugo Ch谩vez, who popularized red among his supporters as the official color of his self-styled 鈥淏olivarian鈥� revolution.
In this bastion of anti-Chavismo, however, it puts protesters on alert.
As I wandered on a recent afternoon from barricade to barricade along Carabobo Avenue, a normally busy road that has been choked off from traffic for a month by protesters, I caught the eye of a young man with an air of authority. He was one of the leaders of the student-organized protests. 鈥淎re you with the press?鈥� he asked tensely, glancing at the press credentials hanging from my neck. 鈥淒o you mind if I look?鈥�
I showed him the credentials and he relaxed. There鈥檚 no problem, he assured me. It was just that the lanyard on my press card happened to be red and he thought I was with one of the government media outlets, whose reporters, the opposition says, often spy on their movement.
鈥淗opefully soon we will all be able to wear red again,鈥� he said, alluding to stripping the color of its political tinge.聽
As the protests continue here, the opposition is becoming more radicalized. But for now, most analysts agree, there is little chance that the government of President Nicol谩s Maduro 鈥� Chavez鈥檚 hand-picked successor 鈥� will be changing its colors any time soon.
