Chavistas: Venezuelan street toughs: Helping "revolution" or crushing dissent?

yahoo.com ^ | April 5, 2002 | By FABIOLA SANCHEZ, AP

[Cincinatus' Wife]

CARACAS, Venezuela - From her bed in a Caracas military hospital, the wiry, chain-smoking prisoner vowed to continue a hunger strike and risk becoming the first death in Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's "revolution."

"Comandante" Lina Ron, who considers herself a modern version of "Tania," a woman who fought alongside Cuban revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevara, says she is a willing martyr for Chavez's cause. She was arrested after leading a violent pro-Chavez counter-protest against demonstrating university students.

Thousands follow her lead in Venezuela and they have increasingly quashed dissent, breaking up anti-government protests, intimidating journalists and alarming the president's critics.

Chavez has angered Washington by expressing his admiration for Cuban President Fidel Castro and adopting policies seen as anti-business. Venezuela is a key oil supplier to the United States.

"If I fail or die, the spirit of the revolution dies," Ron said. "But I'm not going to fail. I'd rather lose my life than my principles."

Just what those principles are have sparked debate across the nation.

Ron began her hunger strike after being arrested for leading a violent confrontation Feb. 26 at the Central University of Venezuela against students defending the university's autonomy against encroachments by Chavez's government.

In recent months, the 42-year-old Ron has organized and led street marches - called "countermarches" here - to stop or intimidate demonstrations by civilians and a disorganized opposition to Chavez.

Two December marches to Miraflores, the presidential palace, were stopped by Ron's "countermarches." A February march to the National Assembly to commemorate Venezuelan democracy was similarly met - and diverted - by a countermarch.

Ron and her followers burned a U.S. flag in Caracas' central Plaza Bolivar just after the September terrorist attacks in the United States. The anti-Washington demonstration appalled many Venezuelans.

More recently, Ron's followers threatened journalists at El Nacional newspaper in Caracas.

Chavez has called Ron a political prisoner. "We salute Lina Ron, a female soldier who deserves the respect of all Venezuelans," he said recently.

Ron's activism was inspired by her father, Manuel, a former director of the Social Christian Party in the western state of Anzoategui, according to her sister Lisette.

The fourth of seven children born in Cantaura, a poor town just east of Caracas, Ron cut short studies in medicine at the Central University of Venezuela after becoming pregnant.

She spent 10 years working with Caracas' homeless before joining Chavez's Bolivarian movement, named after native independence hero Simon Bolivar.

Ron is "very violent because of the 40 years of oppression, of injustice, of impunity" of administrations that ruled Venezuela since its last dictatorship was toppled in 1958, said her attorney, Oswaldo Cancino.

Now Ron has become a focal point for debate about Chavez's "Bolivarian Circles," which the government calls self-help neighborhood groups. Chavez opponents call them a violent threat to democracy styled after Cuba's Revolutionary Block Committees.

Created after Castro urged Venezuelans to "organize" to defend Chavez's revolution, the committees are forming street tribunals to demand Ron's release - and to symbolically prosecute government opponents as "traitors."

Greater Caracas Mayor Aldredo Pena accuses the government of secretly arming hundreds of Bolivarian Circles across the country - a charge the government denies.

Yet circle members have clashed with students in Caracas and labor union activists in Barquisimeto. They've warned newspaper vendors in Ciudad Bolivar that they will torch kiosks unless they stop selling a newspaper, Correo del Caroni, that is critical of the government.

After her arrest, Ron was hospitalized, forced to eat, and resumed her hunger strike, then went on a spartan diet. She is denied bail pending an April 12 court hearing on formal charges of inciting violence.

Ron suggested that violence is needed to quash mounting opposition to Chavez - whose combative rhetoric has contributed to a precipitous decline in popularity polls. It's needed, she said, to allow Venezuela's majority poor a stake in the country's governance for the first time in history.

Ron attributes her growing flock of supporters to a "gift that God gave me" so that "the people follow me and believe in me. ... We're ready for the Fatherland to call us."

Ron recently was transferred to a prison cell operated by Venezuela's secret police, known as DISIP. She said it doesn't bother her that the opposition to Chavez calls her "vulgar" and "violent."

"I am the ugly part of the process - the part that is unpleasant, that is angry," she declared after the El Nacional protest, one dispersed by police using tear gas and water cannons.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Lina Ron, a supporter of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, is shown during an interview with The Associated Press in Caracas, Venezuela, Friday, March 22, 2002. Ron says she'll willingly become a martyr for Chavez's revolution, and for thousands of street toughs nationwide who follow her lead and have increasingly quashed dissent, alarming Chavez's numerous critics. (AP Photo/Leslie Mazoch)

Chavez Marks Election Anniversary with Bolivarian Revolutionary Movement neighborhood committees

Opposition lawmakers attacked by supporters of Venezuela's President Chavez

Hugo Chavez is Castro II

April 5, 2002---- Labor Protest: Venezuela (Chavez) Vows to Keep State Oil Firm Running **** "Workers of all sectors of PDVSA are starting today a progressive, collective suspension of work in operational and administrative areas," Horacio Medina, one of the spokesmen, told reporters. He gave no details of how vital producing, refining and export operations might be affected.****

[dennisw]

Another crazy Marxist POS on a "mission from god". She sounds as mad as the Jihadists who at least among the Pallies are often chain smokers too.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

She's a communist revolutionary calling on Chavez as her savior.

[Bogie]

Block Committee, and Neighborhood Watch, have decidedly become the replacement terms for "Local Soviet" of Lenin's day.

Or, as some famous Democrat once said, I forget his name, "All politics is local."

[Cincinatus' Wife]

"Self-help" groups. More like help themselves to the loot after reporting on their neighbors.

[livius]

"Comandante" Lina Ron, who considers herself a modern version of "Tania"...

Well, there's one born every minute. And dictators certainly know how to attract them.

Aside from this rather pathetic woman's story, however, I think that Chavez is definitely using this moment - when there is unrest, but the opposition still doesn't seem to have any clear plan of how to get rid of him - to entrench himself more deeply.

Having goon squads of revolutionary " wannabees" may seem, at first glance, somewhat insignificant. But these people can nonetheless have a very paralyzing effect on dissent, if only because they manage to turn every event into chaos.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

They are violent and Chavez's backing has made them bold and dangerous. They've attacked anyone who's tried to march in protest. It has a chilling effect on dissent. Chavez has entrenched himself with new laws, new constitution, new schools (Bolivarian curriculum praising him), hand-picked judiciary, lock-step congress, the whole nine yards. Any protest against Chavez's rule by Venezuelans, is greeted by brick weilding (and now it seems gun toting) Chavistas.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Venezuelans clash in Barquisimeto, March 20, 2002. Supporters and opponents of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez clashed in Venezuela Wednesday, fighting running street battles in a western city and skirmishing with punches, sticks and stones outside the presidential palace in Caracas. REUTERS/Juan Perez/El Impulso

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Castro and Chavez with their good luck necklaces. This is not a made-up photo.

[WyldKard]

They've warned newspaper vendors in Ciudad Bolivar that they will torch kiosks unless they stop selling a newspaper, Correo del Caroni, that is critical of the government.

Thugs and opressors. These people are no different from the "facists" they claim to hate. They are just a differnt sort of "Facist".

Why is it that there is never a hardline communist "democracy" with freedom of the press or any of the other protections our "crumbling, decaying, decadent, capitalist" country enjoys? We all know the answer. Communism and the basic rights of Humanity are incompatible with each other. Communism as a system is so weak and fragile that it can not stand to be criticized. Yet our own nation appears to THRIVE through the existance of free political debate. This is not mere coincidence.

I find it highly sad, and ironic that Commie groups in America, like MIM and RAIL enjoy the Government protection that allows them to post their drek about how awful America is, and how they want to overthrow the Government...yet these people would strip away all the rights that ALL Americans enjoy, were they ever to succeed.

[watcher1]

Castro and Chavez with their good luck necklaces.

I think comrade chavez will need more than a necklace to stay in power.
Chavez is in bed with FARC big time
When will we take out this commie dictator?

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Communism and the basic rights of Humanity are incompatible with each other. Communism as a system is so weak and fragile that it can not stand to be criticized. Yet our own nation appears to THRIVE through the existance of free political debate. This is not mere coincidence.

Jay Nordlinger: Who Cares About Cuba? ****Cubans and Cuban-Americans feel a persistent hurt over the general American attitude toward them. One exile in Boca Raton reports that he can no longer talk with his Anglo neighbors about his homeland. "If I explain to them the reality of Cuban life, all I get is, 'Oh, you're a right-winger,' or, 'You're biased against President Castro.' Can you imagine being biased against the tyrant who deprives you of rights, throws you in jail, and makes life so intolerable as to force you into the open sea on a homemade raft? Many Cubans especially resent this honorific "President" before Castro, as if the dictator were the equivalent of a democratic leader. Worse is the affectionate, pop-star-ish "Fidel." We would never hear, for Pinochet, "Augusto." Gus!

The oppositionists and their supports are extraordinarily, even disturbingly, grateful for any sincere attention they receive. They are accustomed to being snubbed or defamed. Another exile writes, "Prisoners cling to newspaper articles about human rights in Cuba as their only hope against being abandoned and forgotten. The sense of helplessness, that no one is listening, that no one cares, is what kills their souls. I've known many such people, including within my own family."

Back in the Reagan years, Jeane Kirkpatrick became a heroine in the Soviet Union for the simple act of naming names on the floor of the U.N.: naming the names of prisoners, citing their cases, inquiring after their fates. Later, in Moscow, she met Andrei Sakharov, who exclaimed, "Kirkpatski, Kirkpatski! I have so wanted to meet you and thank you in person. Your name is known in all the Gulag." And why was that? Because she had named those names, giving men and women in the cells a measure of hope. Kirkpatrick says now, "This much I have learned: It is very, very important to say the names, to speak them. It's important to go on taking account as one becomes aware of the prisoners and the torture they undergo. It's terribly important to talk about it, write about it, go on TV about it." A tyrannical regime depends on silence, darkness. "One of their goals is to make their opponents vanish. They want not only to imprison them, they want no one to have heard of them, no one to know who or where they are. So to just that extent, it's tremendously important that we pay attention."

Indignation and concern are not inexhaustible, of course; no one, including Americans, can watch the fall of every sparrow (although, somehow, it seemed possible in South Africa). But American attention is a powerful thing; so is an American consensus. "Fidel will eventually die," some people say, with a shrug. But certain other people have waited long enough. ****

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Chavez is in bed with FARC big time When will we take out this commie dictator?

FARC- A Terrorist Regime Waits in the Wings

[hchutch]

We'll need someone like Carlos Castano to help out with that. But in their infinite wisdom, the State Department has listed Castano on the same bad list that Al-Qaida is on.

What the heck, over?

[Cincinatus' Wife]

I guess he's gone too far out on the edge. US to Broaden Colombian Aid**** At a later news conference, Hutchinson declined to comment on whether an operation was afoot to capture the rebel, Tomas Medina, of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. U.S. prosecutors say his unit, based in jungles near the Brazilian border, conspired with Brazilian traffickers to ship cocaine to the United States. Hutchinson said Colombia's main paramilitary leader, Carlos Castano of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC, is also under U.S. investigation for drug trafficking. The DEA has cited Castano before as a drug trafficker, but he has not been indicted in the United States.

Whether Castano - and other guerrilla leaders beside Medina - are indicted will depend on how much evidence U.S. authorities can collect, Hutchinson said. Hutchinson was also asked about a message posted on the Internet Tuesday by Castano, in which the paramilitary leaders says he has been trying to help dozens of Colombian drug traffickers turn themselves over to U.S. justice - apparently in plea deals. "We do not negotiate with narco-traffickers unless they simply want to know how to surrender," the DEA chief said.****

[hchutch]

I've heard Castano has shaken down narco-traffickers, but both Time and the Washington Post have not been able to lay a glove on the guy. I don't think they have even been able to make that accusation, and they would if they could.

Castano's clean, IMHO.

[StopGlobalWhining]

Great thread. Are you from Venezuela or have you lived there?

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Thanks. I became interested in Venezuela and Chavez when I noticed how he was cozying up to Castro,
who I was following quite closely. I've never been to Venezuela.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Maybe some day we'll know the whole story.

[Free the USA]

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