The “magnicidio” week

This last week was the “magnicidio” week, with almost daily claims by government officials that the opposition is plotting to kill either President Maduro, or National Assembly President Diosdado Cabello.

On Sunday 22, José Vicente Rangel announced the plot, citing as his source the blog La Colmena, written by Grima Gallardo.

On the 23^rd Maduro and Cabello jointly insisted on the magnicidio claims: “If they were to do something to me, the wrath of the gods and of the people would be uncontainable, they would be banned for 10 centuries and the Revolution would acquire a new character,” declared Maduro. Cabello also stated that “if they dare to do something, they are going to have a hard time.”

Cabello repeated that the “source” of his information is José Vicente Rangel and La Colmena: “he [JVR] made a very serious denunciation, that a CIA group, from Chile and in contact with the pinochetistas, are planning to kill Maduro, or if they fail, kill me.” 

That same day, on a separate event, Maduro announced that Diosdado Cabello would be showing, “within hours”, the proofs of the ongoing assassination plot: “I have designated Diosdado Cabello, as head of the PSUV, to reveal all the truths of how attempts to assassinate me have been planned for month.” 

Those proofs have not yet surfaced. The 24^th however Diosdado Cabello , on his address commemorating the 446 anniversary of the foundation of Caracas, again alerted of the existence of the conspiracy and the consequences if it were to succeed: “If something were to happen to Maduro, the people would be ruthless with you [the opposition].” This time Cabello argued that the conspiracy is based, not in Chile as previously mentioned, but in Miami: “This right wing people, together with some other people in Miami, are preparing an attempt against the life of the compañero Nicolás Maduro, and this is very serious.”

I am still surprised that local commentators and media seem to not have taken the time to actually read the famous La Colmena blog by Pedro Grima Gallardo, the only “source” of the plot publically revealed so far. As I argued in a previous post, La Colmena is really an eclectic re-blog of almost every conspiracy theory circulating on internet. The last articles include claims that the US government is hiding contacts with extraterrestrials, and a denunciation that the US Federal Reserve is really a private bank owned by Jews plotting to take over the world.