Posted on 04/17/2002 10:42:28 AM PDT by Defiant
What Is Really Happening in Venezuela
By Agustin Blazquez with the collaboration of Jaums Sutton
The news on April 11 could not have been better for the cause of freedom in the Americas: Chavez, the dictator of Venezuela, had been deposed by popular, pacific demonstrations reminiscent of the fall of communism in Eastern Europe.
Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, is a close friend and ally of the last tyrant in this hemisphere, Fidel Castro. In addition to Cuba, he is associated with other equally anti-American, anti-Semitic, anti-democracy terrorist states including Libya, Iran and Iraq. Chavez also sought and obtained an alliance with communist China.
Chavez called Gadhafi's Libya, "a model of participatory democracy."
Embracing the fundamentalist Ayatollah of Iran, he declared, "We have Sister Revolutions with equal struggles and the same destiny."
Chavez praised Iraq's Saddam Hussein calling his regime a "model" for "my Venezuela."
And of his mentor, Castro, he said, "Now we can talk of a single team." He also said that Cuba and Venezuela are "swimming together toward the same sea of happiness."
In addition, Chavez took an active part in the international terrorist network by helping the violent Marxist narco-guerrillas of Colombia and offering sanctuary in Venezuela's territory for their operations on the border with Colombia.
The Chavez (in cahoots with Castro) plan for Venezuela is to build a regime similar to Cuba.
To that effect an invasion of Cuban "workers" replaced many Venezuelan workers (leaving Venezuelans unemployed), started mingling in internal affairs, and introduced communist indoctrination. This indoctrination extends from children in elementary school through to university.
Cuba sent additional "teachers" and "doctors" to help in the proselytizing.
And China -- notorious for violations of human rights and unfriendliness to America - also sent "workers" to help Chavez's regime.
As Castro did in Cuba after 1959, the armed forces of Venezuela were reorganized by putting Chavez's cronies in charge of all important positions in the military. And as in Cuba, promotions became conditional on political beliefs. Cuban military advisers and intelligence operatives descended on Venezuela to help organize the repressive apparatus necessary to keep the new dictator in place.
The so-called "Cubanization" of Venezuela was well underway when, on June 10, 2001, Chavez, following Castro's example and guidelines, created paramilitary battalions to repress and intimidate his political adversaries. While in Cuba they are called "Rapid Response Brigades" Chavez called his "Bolivarian Circles."
As the infamous Cuban "Committees for the Defense of the Revolution," Chavez created in Venezuela similar repressive organizations to spy on the citizenry in each neighborhood with branches in companies, hospitals, schools and universities. His excuse for the creation of these repressive organizations was "to defend the Bolivarian revolution against counterrevolution." Meanwhile, Chavez exported great quantities of oil to Cuba at subsidized prices in exchange for Castro's help with all of these efforts.
A June 26, 2001, article by Jack Sweeney published in The Washington Times, under the headline "Chavez angles for absolute power" noted:
"Since returning to Caracas from a 21-day tour of Russia and Asia, Mr. Chavez has sharpened his rhetoric. During a rally on June 9, he warned bankers, industrialists and owners of news media that they would soon be arrested on tax-evasion charges and would have to forfeit personal and corporate assets. The next day the president announced the expulsion of foreigners critical of his government."
And in his radio address to the nation on the first weekend of August 2001, Chavez declared, "private property is not sacred."
Chavez also began close surveillance and intimidation of the free press with the goal of controlling freedom of expression.
No wonder the people of Venezuela are fed up with their dictator and the way he is driving their country into the same "sea of happiness" -- an euphemism for catastrophe and despair -- as Castro's Cuba.
That is the reason that Chavez's popularity rating had dropped to 20%.
Thus, on April 9, 2002, the people of Venezuela began a general strike and demanded the resignation of Hugo Chavez.
More than five hundred thousand people took to the streets of Caracas, the capital of Venezuela for a few days of peaceful demonstrations and marched to the presidential palace, Miraflores.
U.S. network television news refused report this unprecedented popular upraising, denying the people of Venezuela international support and understanding -- for their effort to get rid of the only dictatorship left in South America.
Chavez's paramilitary "Bolivarian Circles," were ordered to shoot the demonstrators.
About 40 of them were killed and hundreds wounded.
This massacre by Chavez was likewise not widely reported in the American media.
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, among the dead was journalist Jorge Tortoza and among the wounded journalists Jonathan Freitas, Enrique Hernandez and his brother Luis Enrique.
Then the military took Chavez away from the presidential palace and flew him to Fort Tiuna, an army facility in Caracas.
Jubilation followed among the population, who believed he was gone for good and a new provisional president, Pedro Carmona was appointed until new elections were held.
But soon the jubilation turned to despair.
In an April 14, 2002 article in Spanish titled Perro no come perro [Dogs do not eat dog] by Jose Luis Fernandez of the agency La Voz de Cuba Libre in Los Angeles, an intriguing analysis is presented of the sudden political reversal in Venezuela which then brought Chavez back to Miraflores.
According to the Fernandez analysis, contrary to popular understanding, the Armed Forces of Venezuela were not all against Chavez.
Most of those against him had already been replaced. And when the security of Chavez was at stake during the mass demonstrations that broke out around Miraflores, his loyalists intervened, took him to safer ground and provided him protection for the following 24 hours.
Fernandez said that during that period, Chavez and his cronies were able to identify all their opposition leaders for future retribution.
After the names were recorded, the farce was over and the same loyalists that rescued him from Miraflores returned him to power.
All these steps were part of a very carefully prepared plan developed for just such a crisis.
So, Chavez returned with more power than when he had left a few hours earlier.
Fernandez, as well as other political analysts from Venezuela, said that this incident is the equivalent of Castro's 1961 Bay of Pigs victory, which gave Castro even more power and control over Cuba.
If that is the case, according to Fernandez and others in Venezuela, Chavez will use the incident as reason to first nationalize the private radio and TV stations as well as the main newspapers, then the printing houses, the big businesses and eventually all private property -- just as Castro did in Cuba.
According to reports coming directly from Venezuela (not being reported by the U.S. network television), Chavez's paramilitary thugs have been well armed with expensive weapons.
*They are intimidating the people on the streets, and forcing them to stay inside their houses.
*Gunshots from automatic weapons have been heard in many neighborhoods.
*Calls for police protection are not being answered.
*There has been heavy looting by Chavez's thugs of the businesses that participated in the general strike.
*Radio, TV stations and newspapers have been surrounded by Chavez's paramilitary thugs, reporters have been intimidated, and many remained hidden inside their offices.
There is chaos and fear in Venezuela.
Among the many messages asking for international help and to publicize the nightmare that has befell that country since Chavez came back to power, there is the voice of a Venezuelan woman (for obvious reasons I will not disclose her name) that sent this desperate message via email on April 15, 2002, to the international community:
"My country has been deceived. We need to ask for help more than ever from international organizations and beg them to come to Venezuela to see what is really going on. The reality is not as it appears.
"I worry about my country, the freedom of expression and its security. Don't let yourself be deceived. This man [Chavez] instructed by Fidel has been intelligent enough to manipulate the whole world."
Is the U.S. media going to do justice for the people of Venezuela and report what is happening?
Are American television journalists going to support and show their solidarity with the Venezuelan journalists killed, the injured and those whose lives are in peril by Chavez's thugs?
Somehow, I doubt it, based on their long record of protecting -- and covering-up for -- left-wing dictators, including Chavez, a protege of the American media's favorite dictator, Fidel Castro.
So far, the U.S. television network media has only superficially reported the incidents in Venezuela, and usually in relation to the effect on the price of crude oil.
This clearly shows their true lack of concern for the welfare of the people of that nation, one that is located in our own Americas.
Jim Guirard, Jr., former Chief of Staff of the U.S. Senators Allen Ellender and Russell Long, called me on April 12th and told me of a motto that he created and gave me permission to use. It clearly defines the reality of the struggle of the people from Venezuela: "Venezuela si, Cubazuela no!"
So, I pass it on to you: "Venezuela si, Cubazuela no!"
Agustin Blazquez is Producer/Director of the documentaries COVERING CUBA, COVERING CUBA 2: The New Generation & the upcoming COVERING CUBA 3: Elian, and author with Carlos Wotzkow of the book COVERING AND DISCOVERING.
If Chavez tries to steal the next election, or doesn't hold it, then we can come in and be the guys restoring democracy in Venezuela.
Funny you should say that. I have made it a point, ever since Chavez was elected, not to do any sort of business with Citgo gas stations.
Cuba, Venezuela Increasing Ties*** In June, Chavez decided to create citizens' groups charged with taking care of their neighborhoods. To some, the move evoked images of Cuba's infamous revolutionary block committees. Most criticism has been leveled by Venezuela's teachers, who oppose Cuban funding and Cuban-inspired curricula in public schools. A key Chavez program affords millions of poor children a chance to go to school. But many teachers condemned a course on the late Cuban revolutionary Ernesto ``Che'' Guevara, and a May protest ended in clashes with pro-Chavez activists in front of the Cuban Embassy.
Cuban celebrate Venezuelan president's return to power, term his victory his nation's 'Bay of Pigs' *** A delegation of Cuban sports officials also traveled to Venezuela on Tuesday to visit with some of the more 600 Cuban sports technicians, physicians, physical therapists and other specialists working there.***
What the hell are you talking about?
Because after a year, Chavez will purge the government, and he will end up stronger than ever just like his idol Fidel Castro after Bay of Pigs in 1961.
Are you familiar with people like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson?
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