Who killed Robert Serra?

On Wednesday night PSUV National Assembly representative, Robert Serra and his assistant Maria Herrera, were found murdered inside their house in La Pastora, Caracas.

Reactions from government officials were at first cautious: Interior Minister Miguel Rodríguez Torres declared that investigations were under way and asked for patience. The president of the National Assembly, Diosdado Cabello, and the Mayor of Libertador, Jorge Rodríguez, both asked chavistas to remain calm, trust the authorities, and let the police investigation follow its course.

But other government officials began pointing to “political motives” and blaming the opposition for the crime almost the moment it was made public. The second vice-president of the National Assembly, Blanca Eekhout (@blancaePSUV) tweeted that same night: “Coward and murderer bourgeoisie, today they again spills the blood of young patriots.” In a press conference early Thursday, Eekhout again blamed the “fascists” for the murder: “The fascist murderers that want to sow fear and despair are very wrong. The best antidote for fear is the deep faith, courage, valor, and strength of our people.”

PSUV deputy Eduardo Piñate also hinted at the responsibility of the opposition: “We appreciate the condolences by the opposition, but we also tell them that they are responsible, in one way or another, that things like this are happening in Venezuela, because the sicariato is imported from Colombia, through Gómez Saleh, and all that importation has been made in order to destabilize and demoralize the revolutionary lines.”

The Secretary General of UNASUR, Ernesto Samper (@ernestosamperp), added fuel to the Colombian infiltration theory by tweeting: “The murder of the young deputy Robert Serra in Venezuela is a worrying sign of the infiltration of Colombian paramilitarism.”

A few hours after his first cautions declarations, Minister Rodríguez Torres revealed the first results of a police investigation which he qualified as “based on the principles of maximum experience in criminal investigation.” The results of this investigation, said the Minister, showed that “The death [of Serra] was the product of a macabre assignment. (…) We are in the presence of an intentional homicide, planned and executed with great precision,” he added.

Also on Thursday president Maduro declared that sicarios were behind the murders and that “the investigations are advancing more than we can reveal at this moment. The criminalistics evidence is in line for the identification of the material authors of the crimes. At this time, after talking to the Interior Minister Rodríguez Torres, I can say that we are near hitting hard a band of sicarios.”

But by Friday Maduro decided it was time to directly point the finger at the “intellectual authors” of the crimes, which according to him could include Colombian ex-president Álvaro Uribe acting with a “criminal band created in Miami and protected by the gringo Empire.”

Maduro also argued that the local “ultra-right” is trying to create and “opinion matrix” linking the murder of Serra to common crime. But that, he explained, “is part of their calculations.” Maduro’s interpretation is that, because government security forces had “detained several persons between Monday and Wednesday who were planning to burn cities such as Valencia and Maracay,” the “fascist minds” had changed theirs plans to the selective killing of government officials. “Fascism decided to kill Robert Serra. This is a terrorist escalation that they have been planning for a long time,” he said.

The president of the National Assembly, Diosdado Cabello, also went beyond his first cautionary remarks and on Friday declared that the crime was a message sent to intimidate the chavista people and the revolution. Cabello argued that this was no common crime, but that instead “here [we are facing] fascism acting against the Bolivarian Revolution and the people. (…) We are in the presence of a crime committed by political sicariato. It is a message to frighten our young people so as to keep them off the streets. It is the same historical format used by the right and by Imperialism to make our heroes go into hiding. They did it with Miranda [Venezuelan independence hero].”

Cabello insisted that nothing happens by chance, and as an example he made a reference to the “inoculated cancer” theory about Chávez death: “The fascist right hides everything behind common crimes. But the numbers don’t add up statistically ¿why are all the dead chavista [leaders]? That’s the same thing as all the presidents of Latina America of the left having cancer. That is not [statistically] possible.”

(Image El Universal)   

Externally induced economic crisis

According to the President of the National Assembly, Diosdado Cabello, Venezuela is not really dealing with an economic crisis generated by misguided policies, but with “economic difficulties that are not internal [no son propias], they are generated, are totally exogenous. We must all be conscious about this, we must tell the people.”

For Cabello, the opposition is trying to generate a “public opinion matrix” which presents socialism as a failed model.

The opposition, also explained Cabello, is “rightist and essentially fascist, because fascism if capitalism in last stage of degeneration.”

The Elias Jaua Grand Conspiracy Tour

News agency EFE informs that Foreign Minister Elias Jaua gave a press conference today at the Venezuelan Embassy in Paris. According to EFE, Jaua denounced a campaign orchestrated by transnational interests to destabilize the country trough violence.

“This is a campaign that has been perfectly articulated by powerful transnational interests, and the opposition plays a sad role: they are in charge of exercising violence against their own compatriots,” explained Jaua.

The Foreign Minister is on a European tour presenting the Venezuelan government’s narrative on the recent opposition protests to UN institutions.

He has already met with Irina Bokova, General Director of UNESCO. “We have come to the headquarters of UNESCO and have met its General Director, and we have made a presentation of the whole situation that the Venezuelan people are now going through: facing an antidemocratic, violent, and armed current that has harmed basic rights such as education and communication,” declared Jaua after the meeting.

Jaua will also travel to Rome where he will meet Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) officials and present evidence of an “ecocide” committed by the opposition by cutting down trees during the protests. He will also explain that the opposition has contaminated drinking water sources.

“We will go to each and every one of these institutions [so that] every day there is more and more awareness of the [presence of a] neofascist and violent current, with high levels of intolerance, racism and xenophobia that have unfortunately been inoculated in Venezuelan society,” said Jaua.  

Image from AVN

Obama could sign the order to kill Maduro

Yesterday President Maduro once more announced that the Government of the United States has plans to assassinate him:

“[President Obama] should know that this would be the worst mistake of his life: to sign the [order] to kill President Maduro and fill Venezuela with violence,” said Maduro referring to himself in the third person.

Maduro provided no evidence for his accusation against the US President, but assured that he is aware of “a series of recommendations, some of which are very extreme,” made to Obama by the Department of State and the Pentagon. These recommendations would include the magnicidio (assassination of head of state) of Maduro and a coup d’état against the Venezuelan Government.

The plot also involves, according to Maduro, the use of “officials form the United States embassy [in Caracas] who are trying to put a stop to the Peace Conference. These embassy officials have been talking to opposition political bosses, such as Julio Borges, to drag them into the coup d’état.”

The note by the public Agencia Venezolana de Noticias ends with this paragraph in which the Venezuelan Government’s narrative of recent opposition protests is stated as a fact, including the argument that opposition protestors have “assassinated” all those that have died during the protests, including opposition sympathizers:

“Since the past February 12 fascist groups have assassinated more than 20 persons and perpetrated acts of vandalism in some of the Municipalities governed by the right, [these actions] have also left hundreds of people injured and damaged facilities and public roads, with the aim of [generating] a coup d’état that would remove the people from the power they have gained [with the Revolution].” 

Government rejects Joe Biden’s declarations

Venezuela’s Vice-president Jorge Arreaza read an official communique rejecting declarations made by the Vice-President of the United Sates, Joe Biden. “[Maduro] has tried to distract the attention of his people from the most important issues at play in Venezuela by inventing extravagant conspiracies about the United States that are totally false,” said Biden to the Chilean newspaper El Mercurio. (Biden’s interview is translated into Spanish in the original).

The communique read by Arreaza reaffirms some of the conspiracy accusations made by the Venezuelan government. Here are some excerpts from the text:

The President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro Moros, in the name of the people and the Venezuelan Government, categorically rejects the declarations made by the Vice-president of the United States, Joe Biden, because they constitute disrespect to Venezuela’s sovereignty, and a direct act of aggression against the people who has suffered the attacks of a fascist sector that has advanced a strategy of on-going coup d’état.

These violent sector, promoted by the most radical wing of the Venezuelan right, are open executors of destabilizing calls, and receive funding from offices of the United States government with the purpose of threatening the tranquility of the Venezuelan people, and thus hurting a solid democracy that has received popular support in 18 elections during the last 15 years.

The Government of the United States has linked itself to an international media conspiracy that aims at generating a false image of war and repression within the Venezuelan territory. The truth is that [violence] has been limited to specific points created by the authors of violence against the people.

(…)

The Government of the United States, the main promoter of world violence, expert in invasions, economic blockades, wars initiated by economic interests under the pretexts of fictitious threads, creator of lethal weapons of mass destruction, and responsible for the death of thousands of millions of civilians around the world, has no moral standing to object to the respect of human rights in Venezuela and the efforts of the Venezuelan Government to preserve the peace of our country.

However, the Venezuelan Government reiterates its clear will to restart and renew relations with the Government of the United States of America, through direct and transparent dialogue, under the basis of mutual respect, the non-interference in internal affairs, and necessary cooperation. Therefore, [the Venezuelan Government] has decided to designate a new ambassador to that country [United States].

The Government and the people of Bolívar, the people of Chávez, with its history of heroic deeds, will always fight to keep its impendence.

Venezuela is to be respected!

Long live Chávez! The Fatherland will live on! [¡Chávez vive, la patria sigue! ]

Caracas, March 9, 2014.

The Eternal Fascist. Fascism in Venezuela’s Political Rhetoric

Yesterday, February 28, during the Peace Conference convened by President Maduro in Miraflores Palace, the General Attorney Luisa Ortega Díaz informed that “the number of deceased due to fascist violence has risen to 17.” On February 27, Foreign Minister Elias Jaua, declared in Brazil that “the violent [protest] groups have a racist character and have been trained under the guidance of neo-Nazis and neo-fascists, financed by United States institutions, such as the NED [National Endowment for Democracy] and USAID among others.” President Maduro has often referred to protestors and to the opposition in general, as a “fascist group.”

Public state media also uses the word “fascismo” to describe the Venezuelan opposition groups, sometimes as quotes from government official, but often as a definitional category on its own right: The web page of the Agencia Bolivariana de Noticias for example, carries a link on its front page under the title “Fascismo,” illustrated with a swastika and a fist. The link takes the reader to series of articles: most prominent is an piece reporting Jose Vicente Rangel´s declarations, claiming the opposition used “fascist tactics” during the violent events which followed the April 15 Presidential Elections. Rangel also explains that “Venezuela lived under the most genuine fascism between 1958 and 1998.”

But the AVN link also features historical pieces that interpret fascism as “the last ditch of capitalism”. In an interview, writer Luis Brito García explains that fascism emerged from the need to “counter bolshevism,” and that it is defined by “a collusion of the power of the State and big financial capital. (…) It is the big financial capital allied to the power of the State, and when they don’t have that power, they will try to achieve it.” 

A video “The Masks of Fascism” explains the relation between “big capital” and fascism. The caption by AVN summarizes the content of the video: “Contemporary historical events have demonstrated that big capital is an accomplice of fascism, and therefore, rightist politics are potentially fascist when their interests are put in jeopardy and they are unable to stop changes to the political system, changes that diminish their privileges but that redeem the great majority of the population.”

These historical interpretations of the origins of fascism are at the core of what government officials in Venezuela understand by the term.

Sometimes fascismo is used by the government to characterize only some of the most radical opposition leaders, but most often it is deployed as a general category which includes all of the opposition to the chavista political project, be it opposition from the left or the right of the political spectrum. As such, in Venezuelan political rhetoric, fascismo has become a trivial term of abuse that precludes considering the opposition as a political adversary and portrays it as a dehumanized evil enemy.