Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

April 20, 2017 By Fausta

Venezuela: 3 dead at yesterday’s demonstrations

Adding to recent casualties,
At Least 3 Die in Venezuela Protests Against Nicolás Maduro

Still, despite the deaths in recent protests, now numbering seven, Wednesday’s rallies attracted thousands of people, the latest in a string of demonstrations against the increasingly autocratic rule of Mr. Maduro. Labeled by organizers “the mother of all protests,” it showed that a sustained movement in the streets against Mr. Maduro may now be forming.

However, Many Poor Venezuelans Are Too Hungry to Join Antigovernment Protests (emphasis added)

Many of the impoverished residents of the vast slums that ring Caracas and other major cities are angry about a collapsing economy and food shortages. But Venezuela’s political unrest remains mostly confined to middle-class enclaves, underscoring the struggle the opposition here faces in trying to unseat an increasingly authoritarian government.

“All I have is hunger—I don’t care if the people protest or not,” said laborer Alfonzo Molero in a slum in Venezuela’s second-largest city, Maracaibo. “With what strength will I protest if my stomach is empty since yesterday?”

Until the slums rise up, Mr. Maduro will likely hang on, analysts say.

The European Union urges the government to “de-escalate” tensions while the Secretary of State Tillerson stated that

Tillerson says the U.S. is watching the situation closely and is working with others, particularly through the Organization of American States, to communicate its concerns to Venezuela.

Here is the situation as I see it:

Maduro will continue to blunder in office for the time being.

Venezuela’s military are allegedly involved in the drug trade while possibly being outnumbered by the government-armed colectivos. As I posted yesterday,

the popular militia has added another 50,000 members (link in Spanish) – to an estimated total of 500,000. The regular armed forces total 160,000 with army reserves of 25,000, according to Clarín.

Yet, it is impossible to know the actual number of colectivos. The military may not see it in its best interest to fight them. [added:] Additionally, the military control the food supply, and will do so with any humanitarian aid.

The opposition is disarmed, and quite fragmented, aside from being mostly socialist.

Foreign actors such as Iran, Russia and the FARC are in cahoots with the government, especially Cuba, which controls the intelligence agencies. Maduro lived in Cuba in his younger days. Venezuela’s own vice-president, El Aissami, is in the U.S. Treasury Department’s kingpins list,  which  has frozen nearly US $3 billion of his assets, and he is reportedly linked to the sale of Venezuelan passports to Hezbollah.

The State has spent twelve-plus years consolidating power around itself. The amount it spends on its oil-sponsored international propaganda machine is immense. Everything is the fault of the U.S. “empire”.

The U.S. and the EU could implement sanctions against the regime, but should not intervene directly. Until Venezuela’s regime recognizes that it has become an international pariah, nothing is going to change.

Socialism fails. Let Venezuela live up to it.

In other Venezuelan news, General Motors Quits Venezuela After Officials Seize Plant

Announcing “immediate cessation of its operations in the country,” GM accused local officials of causing “irreparable damage” to the company and its 2,678 workers and 79 dealers in the country. GM said it would pay separation benefits “as far as the authorities permit.”

GM’s production in its Venezuelan plant had plummeted following the implementation of currency controls under Hugo Chávez.

At the blogs:
Must-read: Terror in Caracas

Venezuela on the March: Reaction

Venezuela seizes General Motors plant as property of the state

Cuba’s dictatorship warns other countries not to meddle in its affairs in Venezuela

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Filed Under: Communism, Fausta's blog, Venezuela Tagged With: colectivos, GM, Nicolas Maduro

April 19, 2017 By Fausta

Venezuela: Arming the thugs UPDATED: 1 killed

Demonstrations for and against the regime scheduled for today, the anniversary of Venezuela’s 1810 independence from Spain.

As The Guardian put it, Venezuela braces for the ‘mother of all protests’ as both sides call for rallies.

In anticipation, Maduro announced that the popular militia has added another 50,000 members (link in Spanish) – to an estimated total of 500,000. The regular armed forces total 160,000 with army reserves of 25,000, according to Clarín (see their FB video).

Hugo Chávez created the so-called popular militia in 2010 (allegedly with Iran’s assistance), to defend the “socialist revolution.” I have posted in the past about the deadly colectivos, the government-sponsored marauding motorcycle gangs doing the dirty work. They and the military are the only ones allowed firearms.

Additionally, the regime summoned all government employees to congregate in front of the presidential palace,

This is how chavismo does protests: #19A #SomosMás! pic.twitter.com/HYdJRijKdU

— Emiliana Duarte (@emiduarte) April 19, 2017

Recent protests have left five dead, and hundreds injured.

Will today’s demonstrations have any lasting effect? Or instead

Venezuelans will be doing something that feels historic, but the expectation that we can agree on its meaning either now or in the future seems misplaced.

The Twitter hashtags for today’s events are #19a, #19Abr and #19Abril.

Cross-posted at WoW! Magazine.

UPDATE
Venezuelan opposition marches against Maduro; student killed

“Maduro’s GBN [Bolivarian National Guard] Mercenaries ATTACK the opposition’s march in #Maracaibo”

#19VzlaEnLaCalle #19Abr GNB Mercenarios de Maduro ATACA marcha de la oposición en #Maracaibo. pic.twitter.com/Myk4yf8TxU

— TemplarioResistencia (@TemplarioResisT) April 19, 2017

“NOW Venezuelans throw themselves into the Guaire river upon the GN’s repression on Francisco Fajardo highway.”

AHORA
Venezolanos se lazaron al rìo Guaire ante la represión de la GN en la autopista Francisco Fajardo#19Abr #UnidosContraElGolpe pic.twitter.com/HY9d9F0pO0

— VenezuelaSomosTodos (@ComandoSB) April 19, 2017

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Filed Under: Communism, Fausta's blog, Venezuela Tagged With: colectivos

May 6, 2014 By Fausta

Venezuela: Armed civilians fight protesters

Maduro unleashes the colectivos of war.
(Colectivos is one of the names for the marauding motorcycle gangs I’ve written about in the past.)

Armed Civilians Fight Venezuela Protesters
Government Goads Self-Appointed Guardians of Revolution to Counter Unrest

Mobs of civilians on motorcycles have swarmed antigovernment demonstrations, sometimes firing weapons, sometimes swinging bats, and have stormed a university and burst into apartment blocks in search of adversaries, witnesses and rights groups said. Created under late President Hugo Chávez’s government, these so-called colectivos—or collectives—are the self-appointed guardians of Venezuela’s socialist “revolution.”

But the recent protests under President Nicolás Maduro have thrust them into a far more prominent role, say human-rights groups and opposition members. Among their concerns is that the civilian groups, while loyal to the government, aren’t explicitly under its command, and can largely act as they please.

No colectivo leaders have been arrested.

Maduro uses the colectivos not only to attack Venezuelans, he also uses them for propaganda purposes: “If the gringos invade us, the colectivos will swallow them live.” So much for the Obama administration’s smart diplomacy.

The colectivos attacked nearly a third of the protests staged in March, and of their leaders, José Pinto, head of the Tupamaro Revolutionary Movement, was at the “peace negotiations” last month at Maduro’s invitation:

Tracing their origins to the urban leftist guerillas of the 1960s, armed civilian groups faithful to Venezuela’s populist government grew in power under Mr. Chávez, who was accused by opposition leaders of arming civilian groups in his 14 years in power.

There are now in Venezuela roughly a dozen major armed civilian groups, with 2,000 to 3,000 members, said Javier Ciurlizza, Latin America director for the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based organization that does in-depth reports on conflicts world-wide, including here.

They also act as Chavismo enforcers:

the society of motorbikes is a creation of chavismo who has subsidized them heavily in the early years because they were their storm troopers to quickly go around town to crush any anti Chavez protest. Remember Lina Ron? Now they are out of control, a threat to regime itself. One shudders at the idea that suddenly 300 bikes could appear in a neighborhood and start looting while the cops look helpless. Because they are armed, you know, the bikers, better than the cops probably.

Juan Nagel writes about Human Rights Watch’s finding of “systematic” human rights violations in Venezuela:

Pay close attention to the language in which their main conclusions are presented (emphasis is mine):

  • “What we found during our in-country investigation and subsequent research is a pattern of serious abuse.” (Page 1)

  • “Judges often confirmed charges against detainees based on dubious evidence presented by prosecutors … Prosecutors and judges routinelyturned a blind eye to evidence suggesting that detainees had been subject to abuses while in detention…” (P. 2)

  • “(O)ur research leads us to conclude that the abuses were not isolated cases or excesses by rogue security force members, but rather part of a broader pattern, which senior officers and officials must or should have known about, and seem at a minimum to have tolerated. The fact that the abuses by members of security forces were carried out repeatedly, by multiple security forces, in multiple locations across three states and the capital (including in controlled environments such as military installations and other state institutions), and over the six-week period covered in this report, supports the conclusion that the abuses were part of a systematicpractice by the Venezuelan security forces.” (P. 3 and 4)

  • “Security forces routinely used unlawful force against unarmed protesters and other people in the vicinity of demonstrations.” (P. 8)

  • “In the scores of cases of detentions documented by Human Rights Watch, the majority of the detainees were participating in protests at the time of their arrests. However, the government routinely failed to present credible evidence that these protesters were committing crimes at the time they were arrested, which is a requirement under Venezuelan law when detaining someone without an arrest warrant.” (P. 10)

  • “In every case in which individuals were detained on private property, security forces entered buildings without search orders, often forcing their way in by breaking down doors.” (P. 10)

  • “Security forces repeatedly allowed armed pro-government gangs to attack protesters … ” (P. 12)

  • “The detainees were routinely held incommunicado for extended periods of time, usually up to 48 hours, and sometimes longer. While, in a few exceptional cases documented by Human Rights Watch, detainees were released before being brought before a judge, in the overwhelmingmajority of cases prosecutors charged them with several crimes, regardless of whether there was any evidence the accused had committed a crime.” (P. 19)

  • “In virtually all of the cases we investigated, detainees were not permitted to contact their families during the initial 48 hours of their detention despite repeated requests to do so.” (P. 19)

  • “Virtually all detainees were not allowed to meet with their defense lawyers until minutes before their initial hearing before a judge.” (P. 20)

  • “Hearings were routinely and inexplicably held in the middle of the night, a practice that lawyers interviewed by Human Rights Watch had not experienced in other types of cases.” (P. 21)

  • “While most of those charged were granted conditional liberty in the cases we investigated, judges repeatedly placed conditions (medidas cautelares) on detainees’ freedom that prevented them from exercising their fundamental rights to freedom of assembly and expression, such as prohibiting them from participating in demonstrations or talking to the media.” (P. 21)

  • “Never before, (defense attorneys) said, had they encountered such acomprehensive battery of obstacles affecting so many cases.” (P. 22)

  • “(I)n many of these cases, the investigative police, the Attorney General’s Office, and the judiciary are themselves implicated in serious due process violations, as well as in failing to intervene to address abuses by security forces against detainees.” (P. 26)

Read the HRW report, Punished for Protesting
Rights Violations in Venezuela’s Streets, Detention Centers, and Justice System
.


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Filed Under: Communism, Venezuela Tagged With: #LaSalida, #SOSVenezuela, colectivos, Fausta's blog, Human Rights Watch

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