Fenómeno Lacava: Spectacle, Enjoyment, and Stance in Venezuela’s Online Political Campaigning

Abstract

On August 13, 2017, Rafael Lacava, the ex-mayor of the city of Puerto Cabello in coastal Venezuela, announced his intention to run for governor. He made the announcement via Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Here, I follow Lacava’s campaign in the months before he became governor of Carabobo to trace the deployment of his affective and emotional performances in social media platforms. I argue that Lacava’s individual style and linguistic stance emphasized the enjoyment and spectacle that his performances produced in his on- and offline audiences and contrasted with the revolutionary rhetoric embraced by his own political party. This affective charge is what he and his followers called the “Lacava phenomenon.”