Superheroes with an iron fist

The wife enters the presidential office of the Miraflores palace and asks her husband: “What are you doing, Nico?”

And he, without stopping mechanically moving the hand that he signs, responds, with an inspired look: “I am approving projects for the benefits of the people.”

An evil Uncle Sam, in his own office, comments with a devilish smile, and says: “There will be no benefits for your people after what I have prepared”;

and he presses a button to launch Extremist, the five-headed monster.

This will be enough for President Maduro, just like Superman does, to take off his daily clothes and be dressed in his colorful superhero suit, red and blue, shorts and cape included, and take off in rapid flight to face the monster that He seeks to sow chaos and destruction in the streets, and defeats it with a few blows of his iron fist.

Another task accomplished for SuperBigote, in defense of the homeland and the Bolivarian revolution!

But the cartoon series, which shows SuperBigote deploying superpowers to confront the imperialist enemy, is completed with the 12 million dolls of the superhero and superheroine distributed to children in the neighborhoods at Christmas 2022. An invincible couple, because his wife Cilia is like Superman's Supergirl, and wears colorful outfits.

The series emerged in 2021, and in its first chapter SuperBigote destroys the electromagnetic drone sent by a villain resembling Trump, who has left the country in the dark, a comic strip replica to the reality of national blackouts caused by corruption and the negligence of Maduro's own Government.

By transforming into SuperMustache, Maduro becomes muscular and leaves all the excess fat;

He couldn't be any other way, his red suit is very tight.

And the librettists of Miraflores forget, or do not want to know, that those costumes with which the cartoonists began to disguise the superheroes in the comics came from the tradition of the circuses, just as the jugglers, tightrope walkers and trapeze artists dressed under the tents.

SuperMustache always defeats villains and evildoers, because he is invincible, he is invulnerable, and he is infallible;

more than Superman, because there is no kryptonite that can weaken him.

We are in the world of cartoons where reality is superfluous.

In that world of flat colors there is neither corruption nor waste, nor multimillion-dollar fortunes transferred to the banks of Andorra.

It matters little whether the populist superheroes of the 21st century proclaim themselves from the left or the right;

The important thing for its propagandists is to establish their invulnerability.

Although there are still no cartoons of SuperBukele, his image experts, who, by the way, are also Venezuelans, are in charge of presenting him as a

supercool superpresident,

who makes his entrance on stages between streams of light.

Like the video of his visit to the mega-prison, the ultra-modern Terrorism Confinement Center, a whole super-production with drone shots, low-level shots, the bays with the three-story cabins where the prisoners, in white T-shirts and

shorts

, climb like strange birds, the camera follows them as they run to crouch in the bays in closed platoons, close-ups of their tattooed faces, shaved heads.

And that he, in

jeans

and a sweater, with no formalities, except when dressed in black tie for the Miss Universe gala, tours the spectral facilities, a dystopian world like those of Orwell or Margaret Atwood, while the submissive prison chief gives him rehearsed answers to rehearsed questions: prisoners do not come here to be re-educated, Mr. President, but to pay the debt to society.

Whoever enters here never leaves again, Mr. President.

The young president with the backwards cap and neatly trimmed beard is popular, no doubt;

He has imposed peace and order against the gangs under a permanent regime of exception, citizen guarantees suspended, and has just won the elections with 85% of the votes.

And he is never wrong either.

He has an accurate answer for everything, he shines for his sagacity, and he is capable of leaving the most intelligent person in silence and humiliated if he tries to question or contradict him, whether it is the wisest person most versed in law, the most knowledgeable economist in cryptocurrency, or the most sagacious and acute journalist.

The networks abound in clips planted by his Venezuelan gurus, where he is seen standing in front of the lectern, listening with patient demeanor to his victim's question, and we already know that the impertinent will bite the dust of defeat in the face of the devastating forcefulness of the answer that will leave you wishing you had never asked.

“The best president in the world” is not only

cool,

he is infallible.

Politics as a comic strip.

A whole epic told, frame after frame, in cartoons.

Sergio Ramírez

is a writer and Cervantes winner.

His last published book is

The Golden Horse

(Alfaguara).

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