A Closed Consulate May Limit Venezuelan Votes in the U.S.
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Version 0 of 1. Six years ago, María Carolina Norgaard, a Venezuelan immigrant living in South Florida, drove a mere 20 minutes to the Venezuelan Consulate in Miami to cast her vote in the Venezuelan presidential election. This time around, as President Hugo Chávez runs for re-election on Sunday, Ms. Norgaard will have to travel much farther to register her dissatisfaction with him. The extra travel burden for Ms. Norgaard and the nearly 20,000 other Venezuelans in the area who are registered to vote is a result of Mr. Chávez’s decision this year to close the Miami Consulate. These Venezuelans, who lean heavily toward the opposition, will now have to vote at the New Orleans Consulate instead. The move is being criticized by Mr. Chávez’s many critics in this country as an effort to disenfranchise Venezuelans living in Florida and nearby states. “It is a very diplomatic way of cutting votes,” said Ms. Norgaard, 33, who left Venezuela in 2003. Mr. Chávez, who has been president for nearly 14 years, is in a tight race with Henrique Capriles Radonski, a state governor. In the last presidential election, in 2006, Mr. Chávez won 62 percent of the vote, but only 2 percent of the 10,799 votes cast in Miami. A diplomatic tiff between the United States and Venezuela prompted the closing of the consulate. In January, the United States government expelled Livia Acosta Noguera, the Venezuelan consul general in Miami. No specific reason was given, but the ouster followed a Univision news report linking her to people in Mexico who had raised the possibility of a cyberattack against American interests. “That particular individual is not welcome here for reasons of behavior incompatible with her status,” Victoria Nuland, the State Department spokeswoman, said during a daily news briefing. Mr. Chávez denied the news reports and closed the consulate. “That government, the one of the United States, does not respect,” Mr. Chávez said during a speech to the Venezuelan National Assembly. Despite the inconvenience, many Venezuelans say they consider the election so critical that they intend to travel to New Orleans. Venezuelan activists are organizing a mass mobilization, chartering buses and planes and coordinating caravans. “Ninety-eight percent of the voters in Miami are against him,” said Andres Morrison, a founder of AeroVotar, a nonprofit organization that is gathering donations to book charter flights to New Orleans. “It is completely a political and electoral strategy.” Because she is pregnant, Ms. Norgaard, who was planning to drive to New Orleans with her family, was given a spot on one of AeroVotar’s flights. VotoDondeSea Foundation, Spanish for “Vote Wherever,” has raised more than $20,000, which will pay for nine buses to New Orleans and two meals per passenger. “This is something that makes us all passionate,” said Vanessa Duran, a founder of VotoDondeSea. Despite the coordinated efforts, an employee of the Venezuelan Consulate in New Orleans, who was not authorized to speak on the record, said the consulate was not expecting more than 7,000 voters to make the trip from Miami this weekend. Daniel Hellinger, an expert on Venezuelan politics at Webster University in St. Louis, said: “It’s a highly polarized environment. This will be one more factor raised by the opposition if it loses a close election.” |