Nicolás Maduro appeared to be enjoying the inauguration of a gleaming new baseball stadium on the outskirts of Caracas last month. Dressed in a national team tracksuit, Venezuela’s revolutionary socialist president grinned as he pitched balls for the cameras and tried his hand at batting.
State media broadcasts about the stadium’s inaugural tournament, the Caribbean Series, carried clips of a presenter speaking English with an American accent hailing it as a “total and unexpected success” — one which raked in up to $23mn in sales and created 20,000 jobs.
