Respect Venezuela by MINCI

The Ministerio del Poder Popular para la Comunicación y la Información (MINCI) has published on its web page a book called Venezuela se Respeta. The author does not appear on the cover page, but the second page mentions President Nicolas Maduro and Delcy Rodríguez, Communication and Information Minister.

The book is very much a compilation of the government’s conspiracies interpretation of events, since the death of Chávez to present. In the first paragraph Chávez is described with the usual quasi-religious terms so common in the official rhetoric (quotes are taken from the English version as published by MINCI):

The affectionate warrior who with his accurate words guided Venezuelans through the transition between two centuries, and despite big obstacles was able to take society to an upper level regarding satisfaction of people’s needs, suddenly wasn’t there anymore to lead the path of the nation. (page 3).

Most of the theories described in this blog are mentioned in the book, from the economic war, to the Gene Sharp soft coup conspiracy, to an alleged media plot, to Imperial interference. Especially useful is the final section which outlines a “Chronology of a coup attempt”.

Curiously absent from the document is any mention of the previously made claims of a magnicidio conspiracy to kill President Maduro. The only explanation I find for this absence is that perhaps the government has not found as useful centering its conspiracy theories on the persona of Maduro, as it so often did with the more charismatic Chávez.  

Here are some relevant paragraphs just to give an idea of the tone of the document:

A new stage of the conspirational plan began then: the economic war that, according to the coup script, would act as a pressure cooker by accumulating frustrations in wide sectors of the society, which with the passage of time would lead to a sudden counter-revolutionary explosion.

(…)

 Those measures were oriented to arise the feeling of nonconformity towards the Government among the population and mobilized the mood against the President, to whom the media systematically attribute the responsibility for the problems generated by the conspirational actions.

(…)

The main protagonists of this subversive script in Venezuela are the members of a varied group of students referred to as manitas blancas (white hands), made up of youth of the extreme right wing, mainly of private universities. The students of public universities in Venezuela, which surpass the private universities in enrolments, have had little or none participation in the violent actions, despite their traditions of fight and historical sense of their communities.