Venezuela’s mustachioed superhero is ‘at war with imperialism’

Caracas, Venezuela:

Venezuela has its own caped superhero. He wears a red construction helmet and his weapon is his iron fist. He is called “Super-Bigote” and is made in the image of President Nicolas Maduro.

Super-Bigote is Spanish for Super-Mustache, an allusion to the famous bushy lip growth the cartoon character shares with Maduro, and where he draws the power that makes him “indestructible.”

As Clark Kent turns into Superman, Maduro becomes Super-Bigote on national TV and the internet to valiantly defend Venezuela against its enemies — a returning rival is a masked blonde anti-hero in the White House.

According to a well-known source, who is not allowed to speak to the media, Super-Bigote was commissioned in 2021 by Maduro’s entourage.

The brief was to create a hero “at war with imperialism,” the source told AFP.

Maduro had referred to himself as Super-Bigote in the past, with a video of him ironically declaring, “I’m not Superman. I’m Super-Bigote. Look! A government is falling”, while wiggling his mustache.

Ten years after the death of his much more popular predecessor Hugo Chavez, Maduro has eagerly embraced propaganda and cult of personality as a means of endearing himself to the Venezuelan people.

Super-Bigote is used to deflect blame for the country’s many problems: he battles a mechanical mole that is robbing the country of electricity, a monster that prevents the delivery of vaccines, a Frankenstein monster created by the CIA.

The character is everywhere: on baseball caps, T-shirts, in graffiti and official murals in Caracas and other cities and even at carnivals, where both children and adults dress up in Super-Bigote costumes.

Shops do a brisk trade in Super-Bigote dolls.

Not hell, just purgatory

“It’s not a cult of personality, it’s love for the country! It’s not the person, but what he represents. He’s a leader who fights with us,” Balbina Perez, a 65-year-old wearing a Super-Bigote T-shirt during a carnival parade in Caracas, AFP told AFP.

Elias Pino Iturrieta, a retired historian and personality cult specialist, believes that Super-Bigote’s character probably did not come about at random, but was “well thought out”.

“Chavez was very popular. Maduro is less so. So we invented this character. You have to find something that makes you think you’re not just living in hell in purgatory,” Pino told AFP.

Maduro needs all the help he can get. Venezuela has been going through a serious economic crisis since 2013.

GDP has shrunk by 80 percent and hyperinflation has eroded purchasing power. About seven million of the country’s 30 million inhabitants have left.

For Pino, Super-Bigote is a “distraction” to assuage public anger and discourage discontent and protests.

“It’s a circus trick. Like a trapeze artist grabbing your attention. It’s great from a marketing point of view, but pathetic in terms of disdain for the populace,” he said.

It is probably no coincidence that the initials SB appear on the character’s chest.

They are an abbreviation for both Super-Bigote and Simon Bolivar – a Latin American independence hero whose name is reflected in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

Many Venezuelan leaders, including Chavez, had a habit of invoking Bolivar’s name when trying to put themselves in a good light.

“Politics in Venezuela is completely personal,” said Daniel Varnagy, a political scientist at Venezuela’s Simon Bolivar University.

“Chavez is the reference and he has an almost magical or religious power,” he added.

With the heroic memory of Chavez still lingering, Maduro is fighting to gain more space in the public psyche, Pino said.

“There’s less and less Chavez and more Maduro… and Super-Bigote,” he said.

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