Delta Amacuro is a thinly populated state of Venezuela. It still has an important group of native Americans, the Waraos. The Waraos speak a language that is not related to any other known language in Venezuela or elsewhere. They live mostly in the huge mangroves of Orinoco's Delta. The normal way of moving around there is by boat.
The state's population has been increasing very rapidly due to the migration of Venezuelans from other regions looking for job around the oil and gas field centres. The region is under heavy environmental pressure. It is poor. A lot of people live from fishing, from odd jobs around oil field providers, some limited and badly controlled tourism and handouts. It has been forgotten by the capital since time immemorial.
The Venezuelan regime still has a strong support there, but this support is not total or definite. The state has 4 municipalities and one of them, Pedernales, has a non-Chavista mayor.
Juan Cristobal from Caracas Chronicles just sent me an interesting document showing how Delta Amacuro and other thinly populated states will be overrepresented in the September elections for the National Assembly. That is true: it is very overrepresented. Still, we could turn that to our favour if we manage to support the opposition there, if we present ideas that are good for the general population of Delta Amacuro and if we make sure that we have enough people defending the vote during election day.
In the graphic above you can see a mindmap of the 2009 referendum for two municipalities: Pedernales and Casacoima. I show just the vote for "No" (100-NO and you get SI, I did not examine abstention). The blue nodes show rooms where the opposition had a witness and afterwards the acta of the voting. The red nodes show those rooms or boxes for which the opposition did not have witnesses.
The nodes with green only had not a single witness from the opposition. Mind: although Chávez very badly needed the indefinite reelection possibility for his post as president, the preference for YES or NO between chavismo and opposition was not so clear-cut as in 2007. There were quite some opposition caudillos who thought the new proposal would benefit them as it allows them now to run for their little local posts forever.
Draw your conclusions.
Ps. references to which actas we have can be found here
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