Miguel, 74, spends his days reading, sometimes playing with his grandchild, painting a door or building his home. Without uniform, Miguel is not like one of the 130,000 civilians prepared for war by the revolution of Hugo Chavez.
Wearing his militia uniform, Miguel is another person, her face and voice change “Neither the foreign boot or the bourgeois will defeat the revolution” he says.
Chavez is all for him. “… he returned to us the country that we had lost, subjected to the right party, to the bourgeois. Now I have to support Maduro, who will continue the legacy. I’ll follow the revolution,” says Miguel.
Miguel, with two children and six grandchildren, integrates the Chavez Bolivarian Militias, established in 2005 as a plan to support the armed forces to defend the country. The government call it the “people in arms” but his detractors “Praetorian Guard”.
Text by Maria Isabel Sanchez