A Colombian man built a chessboard using figures depicting the presidents of Colombia and Venezuela after ongoing tensions between the two countries sparked the idea.
Faryd Jose Quintero and his wife, from the Colombian department of Huila, took an alleged six months to build the board and fashion each of the figures, which are made from resin, reported newspaper El Tiempo Wednesday.
As with the standard chess set, Quintero’s game has kings, queens, bishops, knights, rooks and pawns. The difference is that each of his figures represents a real life character. For example, President Alvaro Uribe and his Venezuelan counterpart Hugo Chavez, are the kings for each side.
Next to Uribe in the front lines appear the First Lady Lina Moreno (queen), then the interior minister Fabio Valencia (bishop), Foreign Minister Jaime Bermúdez (bishop), former Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos (horse), and Vice President Francisco Santos (horse). The rooks are represented by U.S. government aircraft platforms.
On the other side, led by Chavez, are Senator Piedad Cordoba (queen), the President of Bolivia, Evo Morales (bishop), the Ecuadorian president, Rafael Correa (bishop), the Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro (horse) and the President of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega (horse). The rooks are T-72 tanks, which Venezuela recently bought.
This is not the first politically charged chess set Quintero has made, the previous one depicted the Colombian government and the FARC guerrilla force and was purchased from Quintero by a Venezuelan politician for 2 million pesos.