It was never about politics.
Aristóteles López just wanted Venezuela’s evangelicals to have a public presence. And for years, he provided the space for that.
From 2004 to 2020, López organized his country’s Marcha para Jesus, obtaining permits and booking speakers for the event, which drew thousands of Christians from across Venezuela to the streets of Caracas each October.
Ever since Hugo Chavéz came to power in 1999, his supporters and opponents frequently protested, at times violently. Evangelical leaders didn’t seem to be interested in politics at the time; they just wanted an opportunity to publicly pray for a country increasingly divided between socialism and capitalism.
In April 2004, López, then a youth leader in his local church, met with pastors and ministry leaders at a five-star hotel in Caracas. On the agenda: bringing together the numerous rallies evangelicals were organizing across the country into a single March for Jesus.
López spent the next several months making phone calls, giving sermons, and organizing meetings with church leaders around the country. On October 12 of that year, his work paid off.
“When the authorities saw that we managed to gather more than 30,000 people on the streets of Caracas in 2012, they wondered who was behind the March for Jesus,” said López. “They accused us of having soldiers and opponents involved, but that was never the case. The march was always characterized by being politically neutral.”
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More than 20 years later, evangelicals are still marching. But this year, President Nicolás Maduro—who has been in power since Chávez’s death in 2013—may be attending. At the country’s inaugural National Pastor’s Day in January, while holding hands in unity with the new march organizer, pastor Hugo Díaz, the president announced that he had moved the event to August 2.
Meanwhile, López will be watching the event from Florida. In 2017, he fled the country after learning that Maduro’s people had plotted to assassinate him.
A display of unity
At the beginning, Venezuela’s Marcha para Jesus was an expression of unity among Christians. Participants included descendents of Lutherans and Anglicans who arrived in Venezuela in the 1700s, converts of 20th-century American missionaries, and Pentecostals, whose numbers began to skyrocket in the second half of the 20th century. The march even attracted Catholics.
“I remember one time a nun joined us, marching in her vestments and her rosary and holding a lit candle,” said López.
By the time López organized his first event, other countries had been holding marches for Jesus for over 15 years; YWAM (Youth With A Mission) organized the inaugural event in London in 1987.
For years, Venezuela’s march continued to grow, peaking in 2012 when 30,000 filled Libertador Avenue in Caracas. In 2013, Chavez died and Maduro became president, a transition that initially had little effect on the event, which continued to draw thousands of people each October.
In 2017, López was in Brazil as part of the organizing group of the March for Jesus in Rio de Janeiro when he learned of a plan by the Chavista colectivos—militias that supported Chávez and joined Maduro’s government, harassing everyone they identify as opposition—to attack him and pass it off as an attempted robbery. “Some people have called me a coward for leaving Venezuela like that. But I had to save my wife and children, because as a pastor I know that my first ministry is my family.”
López continued to organize the march from Miami for several years. But in 2020, he stepped down, and Díaz, the ministry’s accountant and the pastor of the Casa de Vida church in Caracas, took over.
In his years leading the organization, Díaz has publicly supported the Maduro government, including attending events promoting the Mi Iglesia Bien Equipada program, where the government gives out sound equipment, chairs, or construction material to churches. (As CT reported, political analysts and evangelical leaders perceived this as a government effort to win votes among the country’s growing evangelical population).
Although it is difficult to gauge how much evangelical support Maduro currently enjoys, these overtures divided the church. On one side are the pastors who accept government aid without showing remorse; on the other, those who avoid receiving this aid or attending religious events organized by the government so they can avoid losing independence.
Díaz’s support of Maduro has seemingly helped the evangelical community cultivate the president’s favor. At the same January meeting where Maduro announced the new date for the march, he also declared it a Patrimonio Inmaterial y Espiritual de la Nación (Intangible Cultural and Spiritual Heritage).
The Consejo Evangélico de Venezuela (CEV, Evangelical Council of Venezuela), though, rebuked Díaz’s decision to invite Maduro to the inaugural National Pastor’s Day and present him with a Bible.
“We believe in the separation between church and state but also in the civic responsibility of Christians. We do not believe in impositions or initiatives that may be perceived as an attempt to control or manipulate the faith, or serve the promotion of individuals,” said Jose Piñeros, the CEV’s executive director.
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Piñeros recently conducted an extensive interview with Hugo Díaz, where he allowed Díaz to justify the growing government support of Nicolás Maduro for the March for Jesus.
“We Christians did not lose the date of October 12 when the march moved to the first Saturday of August,” Díaz stated in the interview. “We have gained an additional date, because on October 12 we will declare a national day of fasting and prayer.”
More than a date change
Maduro’s decision to change the March for Jesus date from October 12 to the first Saturday of August means that evangelicals will no longer be marching on a day when spiritualists celebrate their goddess María Lionza, one of the central figures of the occult arts in the South American country. For years, the Venezuelan Federation of Spiritism, a group of 7,000 members, has organized an annual conference for witches, shamans, and fortune tellers.
Pastor Georges Doumat, who heads the Christian church Apostolic and Prophetic Ministry of the Most High God on Isla Margarita, knows the power of this federation. This touristy locale in the Caribbean, full of luxury hotels, was chosen to host the first national meeting of the Venezuelan Federation of Spiritism last March.
Aware of the spiritual struggle the country experiences around October 12, Doumat published an opinion column where he explains why it was a mistake to agree to move the March for Jesus to the first Saturday in August.
“The date chosen by ‘March for Jesus’ in Venezuela was well-intentioned. It was like a double act: We filled the streets and avenues of the cities with our prayers, praises, and slogans of faith, and at the same time we faced the satanic movement of groups that invoked their deities that same day,” wrote Pastor Doumat.
López agrees with Doumat and hopes that this October 12 the evangelicals will go out to march for Jesus as they have been doing nationally since 2004.
“Hugo says that we did not lose October 12 but that we gained another date on August 2,” said López, obviously upset. “No, no, no. You gave it up on October 12. You left it on a silver platter to these people, to those witches. They are allowing themselves to be manipulated by politicians and dividing rather than uniting the Christian people.”
Hernán Restrepo is a Colombian journalist who lives in Bogotá. Since 2021, he has managed the social media accounts of Christianity Today in Spanish.
