July 2001 - Venezuelans Protest Kidnappings (Chavez suspends gun licenses--threats to jail militiamen)*** Forty-one people were reported kidnapped in Venezuela during the first six months of this year, compared to 39 kidnappings reported in all of 2000. Seventeen Venezuelan kidnap victims are currently being held for ransom.
``The number of kidnappings is undoubtedly on the rise. That's why we are here demanding that the government take immediate action,'' said Jose Luis Betancourt, president of the National Ranchers' Federation. Ranchers living along the country's remote 1,400-mile border with Colombia face the constant threat of kidnapping and extortion by Colombia's leftist guerrillas who can cross the border. Common criminals and gangs often cooperate with rebels.
Earlier this year cattlemen proposed forming private militias to fend off local criminals and rebels from neighboring Colombia. The idea was abandoned as President Hugo Chavez suspended the issuance of new gun licenses and threatened to jail would-be militiamen.***
Venezuela: New Pro-Chavez Group Makes Its Presence Known***A new clandestine armed group in Venezuela that calls itself the Carapaica Revolutionary Movement has taken credit for the Aug. 2 attack against Metropolitan Police (PM) forces in the poor western Caracas neighborhood of 23 de Enero, Caracas daily El Universal reported. Nine people, including civilians and officers, were wounded. The group's spokesman said in a press conference at an undisclosed location within the neighborhood that the MRC has no links to President Hugo Chavez or his government, but warned that its members were prepared to use deadly force against all enemies of Chavez's so-called "Bolivarian revolution." Chavez also denied Aug. 4 that the snipers who pinned down the Caracas police forces were tied in any way to his government.***
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Upon taking office, Chavez declared a new "Bolivarian revolution" and installed a National Assembly and Supreme Court controlled by his cronies. But now even these supporters are turning on this avowed protégé of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro as the economy continues to slide. …… The appointment of Central Bank Director Gaston Parra, a stalwart Chavez supporter and leftist crony with ties to Cuba, as the new head of PDV adds weight to the view that Chavez is increasingly isolated. Parra is the oil company's fourth president in little more than three years. Neither the Chavez government nor PDV officially explained Lameda's removal, but the reaction from foreign oil companies operating in Venezuela is decidedly negative. PDV workers at all levels greeted Parra with great disdain and antipathy.
Parra, 68, imposed higher royalties on foreign oil companies operating in Venezuela - from 18 to 30 percent, the highest in the world. The Wall Street Journal reports that Lameda couldn't agree to a government program that demanded a 25 percent reduction in overall costs because it would limit the company's operational abilities. Sources tell Insight that Lameda was on the outs with Chavez for months because of his refusal to turn PDV into a cash cow for socialist engineering. Yet an obvious area for immediate savings is Venezuelan sales of oil to Cuba, which is allowed to buy petroleum from PDV below the market price and then resells it to raise badly needed foreign exchange.
More ominously, the same sources with direct access to the highest levels of the Venezuelan military tell INSIGHT that the Cuban connection remains strong, directly contradicting U.S. press reports that the Cubans have soured on Chavez. Indeed, sources in the U.S. intelligence community tell INSIGHT that the Cubans have their claws deep into the chaotic Chavez regime. One senior U.S. official reveals that the entire security force protecting Chavez is made up of Cuban military personnel and that Venezuela's elite military intelligence force also has been largely penetrated by Cuba's intelligence services. *** Source: Chavez Venezuelan Revolution May Be in Retreat