Businesses feel the strong arm of the government after offering everyday services to President Nicolás Maduro’s main political opponent

See The Tasty New Challenge to Venezuela’s Autocrats: ‘Freedom Empanadas’: After the Hernández sisters served breakfast to an opposition leader, the government shut down their restaurant. Then came an outpouring of support by Isayen Herrera, Julie Turkewitz and Sheyla Urdaneta of The NY Times. Excerpts:

"A car pulled up recently outside a modest restaurant in the state of Guárico in Venezuela’s sprawling savanna. The driver shouted from behind the wheel: “Are you the ones whose business was closed by the government? I want a picture with you!”

Bounding out of the car, the man pulled close to Corina Hernández, 44, one of the owners of the restaurant. He snapped a selfie. “We are all outraged,” he told her.

Corina and her sister Elys Hernández have emerged as unlikely political folk heroes just as Venezuela is heading into its most competitive election in years.

Their transgression? Selling 14 breakfasts and a handful of empanadas to the country’s leading opposition figure. The government’s response came just hours later — an order forcing the sisters to temporarily shut down their business.

Their case was shared widely on the internet, turning them into symbols of defiance for Venezuelans tired of the country’s authoritarian leaders. (The sisters have since gained a large online following well beyond Venezuela and have rebranded their products as “freedom empanadas.”)

But their business is just one of several that have felt the strong arm of the government after offering everyday services to President Nicolás Maduro’s main political opponent, María Corina Machado.

Ms. Machado, a former legislator and longtime critic of Mr. Maduro, isn’t even running, but she is capitalizing on her popularity to campaign alongside and on behalf of the leading opposition presidential candidate.

And everywhere she goes on the campaign trail, the people who help her are harassed by the authorities. In recent weeks, those targeted included six sound equipment operators working a rally, a truck driver retrieving supplies at campaign event in Caracas and four men with canoes who provided transportation in an impoverished Venezuelan outpost.

Some people have been detained for hours, they said in interviews, dragged in to a notorious detention center known as the Helicoide. Others have had equipment seized and businesses shuttered, stripping them of their livelihoods."

"In late May, Ms. Machado stopped at Pancho Grill with her team in between campaign events, buying breakfast and posing for pictures with the Hernández family.

But the opposition leader had barely left when the sisters received new visitors: two tax regulators and a National Guardsman, who said they were temporarily shutting the business down.

The sisters had failed to keep accounting books or declare their earnings, among other issues, the officials told them.

The sisters did not dispute these accusations. But in their two decades in operation, they had never received a visit from the tax agency, they said. And in a region where such infractions are commonplace, no one else in town was inspected that day."

"The six sound operators spent hours in detention"

"In the state of Zulia, on the country’s western edge, hotels that had hosted Ms. Machado’s team now have “closed” signs posted on their doors."

"four boatmen [in the state of Apure] with motorized canoes agreed to ferry Ms. Machado and her team toward their next campaign stop. The boats were confiscated shortly after, according to interviews with three of the boatmen, and the National Guard later visited one of their homes. There, two Guardsmen told a boatman’s wife that they had come with “orders from the bosses in Caracas” and sought to arrest her husband."