“There are three things you can’t hide: a cough, a pregnancy and money,” says Wilmer Azuaje, an ambitious 31-year-old politician running to be mayor of Barinas, the capital of a sprawling cattle-ranching state of the same name in Venezuela’s far west.

The issue of money in Barinas may prove crucial come November’s nationwide state and municipal elections. In running for office, Mr Azuaje is not only going against his political peers – President Hugo Chávez’s United Socialist party (PSUV), from which he was expelled last month after announcing his candidacy – but against the Chávez family, which has been the unofficial ruling clan of Barinas for a decade.