Drums of war in Venezuela

Since its inception, the Bolivarian process was identified by Washington as an excrescence that must be quickly removed from the hemisphere. All means were tried but nothing worked: neither the coup, nor the oil strike, nor the diplomatic, political and media harassment paid off. In the electoral arena President Hugo Chavez’s dominance was overwhelming: he steadfastly resisted the onslaught and his people followed him enthusiastically. The White House escalated the aggression when the slow but relentless killing in stages of the Commander was unleashed. After his death the offensive took even more brutal characteristics.

All discretion was left out: mercenary bands of Alvaro Uribe came to sow violence and death throughout the country, and today they are the "gang members" who daily (yes, daily, as I am informed by a high ranking official of El Salvador!) Obama released them from US prisons to send, with all their papers in order, to that suffering Central American country to sow chaos and destruction. Efforts to "strengthen civil society" with millions of dollars to manufacture or rent political operetta (Capriles Lopez, Ledesma, etc.) were intensified; journalists once blind to the ravages of corruption and disillusioned intellectuals because the "people" whom they longed to redeem were not white as the Polish workers of Lech Walesa but mestizos or black as Chavez, which constitutes an intolerable affront.

Due to a lack of political response from the electoral framework monies flowed copiously to Caracas: departing from Washington, via USAID and NED, flew to Madrid from where the scoundrel George W. Bush, José M. Aznar, redistributed them among his Latin America cronies with the blessing of that colossal monument of narcissism called Mario Vargas Llosa. But all was in vain, which revived Cid tropical campeador, even after the death of Chavez they kept winning elections. Fittingly, Nicolas Maduro won the presidential elections in April 2013 and then in the municipal elections of December of that year. All these attempts having failed, the economic war, perfecting the criminal plan perpetrated against Chile’s Allende, was unleashed in full fury. Scheduled shortages, hoarding of necessities, famine, ferocious currency devaluation, large-scale smuggling, media terrorism without restraint or measure, targeted killings and in early 2014, the seditious plan materialized in the sinister "guarimbas" (street barricades) with a balance of 43 dead, most of them government security forces and supporters of Chavez, and destruction of vehicles, government facilities, schools, universities and hospitals valued at hundreds of millions of dollars.

Their leaders in prison complain that they are "political prisoners" when their actions fall under the crime of sedition that in any other country in the world they would be sent to prison for life. In the "Bolivarian dictatorship", however, justice acted with astonishing leniency and the ringleader of these crimes received a sentence of just over thirteen years. In Spain or Argentina they would have received life imprisonment and in the US the death penalty. But this is the Chavista "dictatorship".

Despite failure of all these conspiracies the empire intensified the economic war with its infamous creatures, the Islamic State, and the oil price dropped from just over 100 dollars per barrel to just under 30. Not content with this President Barack Obama issued an executive order that if it were not criminal because of its consequences it would be a universal laughingstock: "Venezuela is an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United State," he said. It was the voice of the order so that the guardian dogs of the empire would launch with all ferocity against the revolution. Since then, the daily life has been a complicated ordeal to even becoming an irritant. Therefore in the elections for the National Assembly of last 6 December the opposition won a two-thirds majority in favour of over two million discouraged Chavistas who did not give their votes the right but declined to participate in the elections.

The Assembly has just passed an amnesty law that would free all those convicted of crimes committed in the seditious episode in early 2014. The High Court ruled the law unconstitutional and President Maduro declared that he would never enact such a monstrosity, which would open the door to violence and impunity in Venezuela. The situation is approaching a catastrophic equilibrium of forces but Chavismo without doubt and beyond their problems and hesitations, clearly has the people on its side that with unerring instinct know that the right comes with the knife in his teeth and ready to implement an exemplary lesson. Those who once doubted that this could well be the didactic lessons of macrismo in Argentina were persuaded that a return of the reaction would have dire consequences.

Given the above it is not surprising that in recent days there has been an intensification of the dismemberment offensive. The Washington Post published a blatantly coup-supporting editorial on the 12 April saying that, "Venezuela desperately needs a political intervention from its neighbors, that for this they have an appropriate mechanism in the Democratic Charter of the Organization of American States, OAS, a treaty which includes collective action when a regime violates constitutional norms". The newspaper, usually considered by the neoliberals as the paradigm of the "impartial and independent press," laments that the countries of the region do not assume their responsibilities to preserve democracy in Venezuela despite that, as it says, such are the things that "probably it will not be too late for there to be an explosion".[1][i] The Washington Post merely reflects what was posed in a document shortly before of the Southern Command, called "Operation Venezuela Freedom-2" and initialed on 25 February this year with the signature of its current boss, Admiral Kurt Tidd.

It states in it that "although (the opposition) is brandishing the peaceful, legal and electoral way (to impeach Maduro), the conviction that it is necessary to press with street demonstrations has grown, seeking to set and paralyze important military contingents that have to be dedicated to maintaining internal order and government security, a situation that will become untenable in the extent that many conflicts and pressures of all kinds start."

The obvious says: the right never believed in the rules of the democratic game. When accepted it is for convenience, not conviction. And they leave it as soon as circumstances warrant following the path of violent restoration. In Venezuela and everywhere, it is essential not to go wrong at this point. All the hype about the anti-Chavez opposition weapon in relation to the recall referendum is a loincloth: all they want is "the exit" of Maduro, by the grace of violence.

April seems to be the month of political definitions in Venezuelan. “In April is when…”, President Nicolas Maduro said at a meeting with participants of the Meeting of Intellectuals, Artists and Social Movements that took place last week. On the 11^th April, 2002 the coup against Chavez occurred, and on the 13^th people reinstated him in the Miraflores Palace. It is no coincidence the attack of Washington Post these days, or that one of the seditious organizations that ravaged the country in the past, Voluntad Popular, (Popular Will, in English), has organized a march for next 19^th April to demand the "exit" President Maduro. Neither is it that the Secretary General of the OAS, Luis "Judas" Almagro, declared a few days ago in an interview with El Pais in Spain that it was inadmissible to maintain neutrality in Venezuela "when there are political prisoners and democracy is not working." Almagro received a clear order from his leaders to only lambast Venezuela and forget about the massacres perpetrated in Honduras (Berta Caceres), Mexico (Ayotzinapa), Colombia (130 Patriotic March militants killed in the last year) and Paraguay (Curuguaty), to mention only the most emblematic cases. OAS confirms his status of Ministry of the Colonies of the United States, as Fidel and Che would timely characterize.

As it can be seen, the empire has mobilized all its gears and devices to end, at any price, with the Bolivarian Revolution even at the cost of plunging the country into a bloodbath. But the Chavista people will offer fierce resistance to an invasion of the Southern Command and volunteers throughout Latin America will come to their aid, transforming the US invasion a cause of the Patria Grande that will ignite the parched social prairie region exceeding the limits, expanding to the neighboring countries and seriously jeopardizing the peace talks between the FARC and the Colombian government. Therefore, solidarity with the people and the Bolivarian government is now more urgent and important than ever to prevent the execution of the sinister interventionist maneuver of the empire.