T-shirts celebrating Maduro's capture become fashionable among Venezuelans in Peru
With phrases like 'Free Venezuela' or 'The executioner has fallen,' these are some of the designs worn by Venezuelans in Peru on t-shirts celebrating Maduro's capture
Images of the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro have been printed on t-shirts and clothing, designs that have become fashionable among the Venezuelan community residing in Peru to celebrate this event in their country.
With Phrases like 'Free Venezuela' or 'The executioner has fallen', the designs worn by Venezuelans in Lima show Maduro detained in various circumstances, both real and created with artificial intelligence (AI). The president appears in some cases behind bars and in others guarded by U.S. military personnel.
Within hours of the arrest of Maduro by U.S. military forces, in an operation carried out in the early hours of Saturday in Venezuela, T-shirts with the image of the Venezuelan president in a cage were already circulating in Lima.
The creator of these designs was Yanelis Torres, a 22-year-old Venezuelan who arrived in Peru four years ago and works in a T-shirt printing shop in Gamarra, the largest textile emporium in Latin America, located in the center of the Peruvian capital.
“I found out at 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning (on Saturday), Lima time; we started work on Saturday at 9:00 and by 10:00 we were already producing, because as soon as I arrived I saw that people were asking on WhatsApp if we had anything,” the young woman told EFE.
“I looked for normal images of Nicolas, and you can already imagine the situation… already imprisoned. It was a montage with the help of artificial intelligence and Photoshop. When the official photo came out, it was first printed as is, and then the creativity started to add different backgrounds and phrases, like 'The executioner has fallen,' a chant that became popular in Venezuela,” Torres explained.
On the first day alone, one person bought over a hundred T-shirts to sell to Venezuelans celebrating Maduro's capture near the Venezuelan Embassy in Peru, and since then they've sold over a thousand.
“Groups of five or even fifteen Venezuelans came. Each person bought five or ten because they also wanted to send some to their families in Venezuela,” the designer commented.
And as new images of Maduro's capture emerge, Torres is already preparing new designs.
The next ones to be released will be illustrations of the Venezuelan president appearing before the Brooklyn court where he is being prosecuted for various crimes charged by the U.S. Attorney's Office, including drug and arms trafficking. "Every time more photos or videos come out, I take screenshots, feed them into artificial intelligence, or search for more images online, and I create new captions, looking for something funny to make a joke about," he added. Peru is the second country in the world with the largest Venezuelan community abroad, hosting more than 1.6 million Venezuelans, most of whom are concentrated in the capital, Lima, whose number of Venezuelan residents exceeds the population of many cities in their country of origin. EFE

