With little hope of a fair vote, opposition candidates risked despair to confront Venezuela's deep-rooted dictator Nicolás Maduro.

Opposition candidate Américo De Grazia, who is running for the office of the governor of Bolivar State, answered a phone call at his party headquarters this month. CEDIT...

Photo of Adriana Loureiro Fernandez

Upata, Venezuela-His opposition to the Venezuelan dictatorship led him to bloodshed by government mobs, forcing him to hide in foreign embassies, and pushing him into exile in Italy for nearly two years, where he followed his own ideas Selling bakery at the train station.

Américo De Grazia's political resistance also cost him his marriage and savings. However, he returned to his hometown in southeastern Venezuela, sweating on the stage-this is one of the thousands of opposition candidates participating in the election this Sunday, and they are almost certain to lose.

"We are in a turbulent period," Mr. De Grazia, 61, told voters when the drums rang behind him, "This requires us to fight."

The party opposed to Venezuela’s dictatorship leader Nicolás Maduro has refused to participate in elections for years, believing that doing so will legitimize a man who spent nearly a decade imprisoning enemies, detaining journalists, wooing parties and banning key elections . Opposition figures are falling into an economic and humanitarian crisis in the country.

But on Sunday, the opposition will return to the ballot box and nominate candidates in the race for governor and mayor across the country. They say this change is to unite a disillusioned voter before the future presidential vote. This should be This will happen legally in 2024.

According to data from the Non-Party Venezuelan Election Observatory, although nominally better than in the past few years, the conditions are far from liberal and democratic. This change is a gamble for the opposition.

Mr. Maduro, who is facing economic sanctions and an investigation by the International Criminal Court, is eager for democratic legitimacy. He is likely to use this election to push the United States and the European Union to ease their stance against him.

But this shift also shows how desperate many Venezuelans are for any opportunity that seems to change. Mr. De Grazia’s struggle to become the governor of one of the country’s largest states is a symbol of this despair.

"This election is not free, unfair, opaque, it's not like that," he said at lunch one day after the election rally, where he distributed a small number with his name, face, and personal phone number. Pieces of paper-plain election campaign. Second-rate. But, "To defeat this regime, you must face it."

Bolivar is a large state in southeastern Venezuela, with steel and aluminum plants and large amounts of gold, diamonds and coltan. Despite having these resources, the people of this country have suffered tremendously in the country's economic recession. According to data from the Catholic University of Andrés Bello in Caracas, 95% of the country's people are now living in poverty.

In Bolivar, families line up outside the food kitchen every day, and children often die from treatable and preventable diseases—malaria, hydrocephalus, malnutrition—because their parents cannot afford medicine.

In interviews in six cities across the state, many people said that after Mr. Maduro decided to relax the economic regulation of the government that once defined him, the inflow of dollars that began two years ago hardly penetrated the wealthiest households.

Mr. De Grazia, the son of Italian immigrants, founded a series of bakeries in Bolivar in the 1950s. The original shop, Panadería Central, is still open, across the street from the home where Mr. De Grazia lives with his mother, who runs the bakery.

He entered politics at the age of 14 and eventually became an outspoken critic of the government of Hugo Chavez and his successor, Mr. Maduro, who claimed to be a champion of the socialist revolution.

Mr. De Grazia's career has often focused on workers' rights and corruption in the mining industry. He was a member of Congress for ten years and said he was beaten at least four times in the National Assembly. The last time, the result was captured by a camera in 2017, when a man wearing a ski mask made him bleed on the patio of the legislature.

In 2019, he supported the decision of Juan Guaidó, the Speaker of the National Assembly, to declare himself interim president, a move that was supported by the United States and dozens of other countries.

Subsequently, the Maduro government issued an arrest warrant to De Grazia and many other opposition figures, forcing him to flee. He first went to the Italian Embassy, ​​lived there for seven months, and then went to Italy to work in a bakery run by one of his seven children.

Around that time, his wife issued an ultimatum: Leave politics or we will be divided. They split. "She can't live that kind of life anymore," he said. "This is part of the price."

But in Italy, Mr. De Grazia is increasingly convinced that the opposition alliance he once supported has no plan to break the deadlock. He said that abstention in the election has separated the coalition from voters and has almost no weapons in the fight for fairer election conditions in 2024.

In February, he announced that he would participate in this year's vote. He left the league and was expelled from the party named Causa R that he joined at the age of 14. In April, he announced his candidacy for governor.

A few months later, many coalitions that rejected him announced that they would also vote. Among the candidates for this year's election is David Uzcateji of Miranda State University, who called the abstention "a mistake."

"Voting is a tool you can fight with," he said.

Mr. De Grazia and many other opposition candidates have limited chances of winning. In a report before the vote, the Venezuelan Election Observatory stated that although the government allowed wider participation in this election than in the past few years, it continued to "restrict the full freedom to exercise the right to vote" in a variety of ways, including illegal use Public funds are campaigning for the ruling party.

Hundreds of political prisoners are still in custody, and many voters worry that if they do not vote for a candidate supported by Maduro, they will lose their benefits.

Republican approach in Virginia. Glenn Youngkin campaigned vigorously in the governor’s educational contest and avoided the shadow of Donald Trump. His victory could become a blueprint for the Republican midterm elections.

Shift right appears. Mr. Youngkin’s 2020 performance in Virginia outperformed Mr. Trump, and the unexpectedly strong performance of the Republican candidate in the New Jersey governorship campaign made Democrats uneasy.

Democracy panic is on the rise. Less than a year after taking power in Washington, the party faces a grim future as it strives to inspire voters and continues to lose to the information war of Republicans.

New York City’s new direction Eric Adams will become the second black mayor in the city’s history. The victory of the former police captain initiated a more center-left Democratic leadership.

The results of the Democrats in the city were mixed. Voters in Minneapolis rejected an amendment to replace the police department, and progressives won the election for mayor of Boston.

Many candidates in Bolívar and elsewhere have also divided their negative votes. This situation may help Mr. Maduro win.

Mr. De Grazia spent approximately $12,000 in savings during the campaign, and he claims that even if he loses, the effort is worth it.

At a recent rally in Upata, he stood in front of more than 200 supporters, many of whom wore T-shirts with the ecological name of his party. A bunch of sunflowers lay at the bottom of the stage, green balloons dangling from the rafters, and Mr. De Grazia dared to give a speech where many people would not.

"Our basic question to Maduro is: Where is the gold stolen from Bolivar?" he said. "They cannot continue to plunder our gold, diamonds and coltan, leaving us without water, no health care, no services, no transportation, no education."

In another election event, 50-year-old teacher Carmelis Urbaneja said that for the first time in history, Mr. De Grazia inspired her to run for local office. "We lost everything," she said. "What else can I lose?"

But critics of Mr. De Grazia say his gamble is not worth it.

The strongest opposition to participation is Mr. De Grazia’s former political mentor Andrés Velázquez, who ran for Bolivar governor in 2017.

According to the preliminary ballot published on the website of the National Election Commission in 2017, he won.

But according to local and international media reports at the time, the result quickly disappeared. Then the government candidate and the current governor, a general named Justo Noguera, were sworn in in a surprising midnight ceremony.

Last year, Juan Carlos Delpino, a member of the National Election Commission, publicly stated that the count had been manipulated.

Mr. Velázquez claimed that Bolivar was too important to the government economically to allow opposition candidates to take over.

Mr. Velazquez said that the same election fraud could happen to Mr. De Grazia-and Mr. Maduro is using Mr. De Grazia and all participating opposition candidates.

"He hopes to be able to say to the world:'There are competitive elections in Venezuela, and there are opposition parties that can participate in Venezuela.'"

However, Mr. Velázquez said, “Some dictatorships use democratic tools to maintain power.”

"Being normal in the face of election procedures manipulated in various ways is not right for me," he said. "This is an accomplice."

Isayen Herrera is from Caracas, and María Ramírez is from Callao, Ciudad Bolívar, El Palmar, Guasipati, Puerto Ordaz and Upata, Venezuela.