Pro-Maduro graffiti in Bayfront Park; $25,000 reward offered – NBC 6 South Florida

The Bayfront Park Trust is offering a $25,000 reward to whoever is responsible for the graffiti, which a Miami official said was intended as a threat to Venezuelans protesting there on Saturday.

Thousands of people took part in global protests in Miami against the results of the recent presidential elections in Venezuela. The demonstrators called on President Nicolás Maduro to disclose the election results and recognize opposition candidate Edmundo González as the true winner.

The graffiti sprayed on the wall reads in Spanish “The Bolivarian anger is here,” a reference to Maduro’s regime and election campaign, a term the president and his supporters have used frequently.

In a statement, Karen Caballero, communications director for the third district of the city of Miami, said the message was spray-painted by “elements of Maduro’s drug-trafficking dictatorship who were enraged by the significance of the rally… in the very place where this great protest for the truth was taking place. This threat is further proof that the thugs of the dictatorship continue to abuse the name of the liberator Simón Bolívar and resort to the threat written in the graffiti.”

The protest in South Florida was one of many protests around the world over the weekend. John Fox and his wife Andrea were two of thousands of people in Bayfront Park.

“This shows me that the movement is not dead. This shows me that people are not giving up,” Fox said.

Dana Arocha was born in Venezuela and moved to South Florida when she was five years old. She says the distance doesn’t stop her from doing her part.

“I feel like we are here to show our face for our country and fight for the people who are suffering there,” Arocha said. “Be well informed about what is happening in our country and the crisis we are in.”

This was the second protest at Bayfront Park this month.

Caballero wrote of the vandals: “Then let it be the ‘fury’ of the law of Miami, Florida, USA that comes down upon them.”