Mission Florentino

Mission Florentino was a Bolivarian mission organized by the government of Venezuelan President, Hugo Chávez, to coordinate the populace to vote "No" in the Venezuelan recall referendum of 2004 to keep him in office. The organizational centers of the Mission were named Comando Maisanta, as the ideological central headquarters (election brigades) for those who wished to keep Chávez as the President of Venezuela for the remainder of his presidential term. The mission's name was inspired from a poem by Alberto Arvelo Torrealba entitled "Florentino y el Diablo (Florentino and the Devil)" in which a singer, Florentino, is tempted by the Devil to join him. Chávez claimed that reading the poem reminded him of the political situation in Venezuela at the time and encouraged his supporters to follow the example of Florentino fighting the Devil (those who were going to vote in favor of removing him from office). The name of the "Comandos" came from the Caudillo Pedro Pérez Delgado, great grandfather of Chávez and nicknamed "Maisanta", who fought as a guerrilla fighter against Juan Vicente Gómez for control of the country during the early years of the 20th century. In June 2004, Chávez announced that the campaign conducted by the Mission Florentino for the referendum will bear the name of "Battle of Santa Inés". The campaign will have the intention of reenacting the battle fought in 1859, in a town near the city of Barinas, in which Ezequiel Zamora lured the government army of the west into an area where he could defeat them in a counterattack Chávez referred to Zamora's enemies during the Federal War as members of an oligarchy and, in the same way, to all of those who wished to vote against him in the Referendum.