Conspiracy Season’s Greetings

President Maduro celebrated Christmas Eve in Miraflores Palace with the “Committee of Victims of the Guarimbas and Ongoing Coup.” According to the Agencia Venezolana de Noticias (AVN) the Committee represents the families of the 43 dead and 800 injured during the opposition protests in 2014.

AVN insists in its report that all the deaths and injured are attributable to the “terrorist actions organized by right-wing political parties as part of a plan for a coup d’état.” No mention is made in the AVN note about the government’s repression during the protests, or about the documented responsibility of police and pro-government groups in at least some of the casualties.

Instead, Maduro stressed that “during this year our Fatherland was capable [of resisting] those who wanted to destroy it and, even if we are suffering from some wounds, our Fatherland continues to move forward.”

In his Christmas message Maduro again congratulated himself that the year 2014 had ended peacefully “in spite of the guarimbas, the terrorist actions organized by rightist sectors as part of the plans for a coup d’état that left 43 dead and 800 injured.”

(Image AVN)