During a speech marking the one year anniversary of the day he was elected President of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro said he saw this week’s lunar eclipse as a “socialist moon.”

Maduro narrowly defeated Enrique Capriles-Radonski to succeed Hugo Chavez after Chavez died from cancer last March. Chavez was a promoter of socialism who frequently wore a bright red shirt to advertise his commitment to the cause. His followers likewise often show up at rallies wearing red. So when there was a “blood moon” this week Maduro saw it as symbolic of the departed Chavez.

“When I looked up at the sky, it was already the 15th, and it was marking
exactly one year since the results of the popular vote were announced.
And in front of me I saw a red moon. How about it? Like a message,
right? Like a historical message, clear like the full moon but also very
red the moon was at night. We had a ‘Chavista’ moon last night. A
socialist moon, a very red moon full of symbology.”

Enrique Capriles-Radonski also made a speech to opposition supporters on the anniversary of his loss to Maduro. He said “Today marks one year since we took a great leap, although they did not
want to recognize it. A year ago we expressed ourselves in favor of
change, which was not able to take place due to institutional control.
One year later and here are the results; we are a country with the
highest inflation rate in the world, the least security and a very
difficult problem of scarcity.”

Capriles-Radonski also published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal in which he wrote:

These protests are not a conspiracy, and Mr.
Maduro knows it. They were not hatched in Washington. They are the
cries of students who study for seven years just to graduate from
university because their teachers aren’t paid enough to educate them.
They risk being robbed or even raped on their way to class, as the
government accepted long ago that gun-toting criminals would rule our
streets.

The protests are born from men
and women, young and old, who have stood for hours in the hot sun,
hoping to purchase basic goods that have disappeared from our shelves
because of government corruption and incompetence. They arise from the
patriotic spirit all Venezuelans share. The protesters are rightly
outraged at a government that views the law with contempt, eradicating
our political freedoms and constitutional rights.