Subversive plan “The Exit” According to AVN

The Agencia Venezolana de Noticias has published in English a piece entitled “Subversive plan ‘The Exit’ released in the US month before its application.” The article is based on a report by Últimas Noticias published yesterday which carries a video of Leopoldo López explaining in October 2013 to a group of supporters in Miami his strategy to remove Maduro from power.

In the video López does not speak of the possibility of a coup or even of violent protests to overthrow Maduro. He does claim that previous elections were stolen from the opposition and questions if the opposition should assume the “attitude proper to a democratic system” which, according to López, implies preparing for future elections.

However the article by AVN, following Últimas Noticas, claims that López was in truth explaining his “Putschist plan ‘The Exit’” to the “the subversive organization VEPPEX, or Politically Persecuted Venezuelans in Exile.”

This is how AVN explains “The Exit” (La Salida):

Through "The Exit" or "Solution," subversive groups used violence and terrorism to cause unrest in the country, resulting in 43 deaths, attempts against the life of children and workers, as well as hindered the right of free passage with mortal devices such as wires in major roads.

AVN also links the plan to the “Economic War” denounced repeatedly by Maduro:

The plan was carried out between February and June 2014 simultaneously with an economic war characterized by smuggling, hoarding and overpricing of staple goods, with the open target of overthrowing the Nicolas Maduro Administration.

The article ends with the assertion that López was forced to hand himself to the authorities seeking protection from a plan by “right-wing leaders to attempt” against his life:

Simultaneously to "The Exit," intelligence corps found out a plan devised within right-wing leaders to attempt against Lopez, situation that made him surrender to the Public Ministry.

Rodríguez Torres is convinced that the opposition knew about Lorent Saleh

Interior Minister Rodríguez Torres declared yesterday that he is “sure that all the Venezuelan right had knowledge of the terrorist plans by Lorent Gómez Saleh.”

Rodriguez Torres did not provide any evidence for this claim during a televised interview with José Vicente Rangel, but explained that he was convinced the opposition new of the plans because “It is the highest phase of the struggle of Venezuela’s fascism, it is something that goes beyond the guarimbas. That is where the actions of the right were aiming at.”

According to the Minister the opposition was planning a “surprise” after the violent protest in the beginning of this year: “I believe this was the surprise they were planning, they were going to [unleash] armed terrorist cells.”

“A serious opposition, one that acts politically and that really wanted to become an option for the country, would have immediately rejected the terrorist plans by Gómez Saleh. But we haven’t seen this. I am sure that all of the opposition knows what he [Saleh] was up to,” reiterated Rodríguez Torres.

Opposition leaders have rejects having links with Lorent Saleh or knowledge of his plans. 

Rodríguez Torres: Putting together the conspiracy puzzle

Interior Minister Miguel Rodríguez Torres presented a second video of Lorent Gómez Saleh, an opposition student activist who was recently deported from Colombia and handed to Venezuelan authorities. In the videos, Gómez Saleh brags about having contacts with the Colombian Army and of having secured arms (fusiles) to start an insurrection in Venezuela. He also expresses the need to “take over”, and even blow up, liquor stores, banks and the local elections authorities’ offices of the frontier State of Táchira.

For Rodríguez Torres the videos show more than the confessions of an extremist activist, they are irrefutable evidence that the opposition is planning “terrorist actions against the Venezuelan people.”

The Minister said that investigations by Venezuela’s security agencies have determined that Gómez Saleh has links with “activists of the extreme right, such as María Machado and Leopoldo López.” Other links include Colombian ex-president Álvaro Uribe, and even the Colombian Catholic Church: “We have determined that this young man has links with the Church in Colombia, with two deputies well known in the country, who precisely made the link with Uribe. We have no doubt that Lorent is a pupil of Álvaro Uribe Vélez.”

“We are putting together the puzzle of the conspiracy and insurrectional actions that we already wittnessed with the guarimbas, and that they are now trying to revive,” said Rodríguez Torres.

The US is developing a “species of chaos” to generate distress

In his TV show today José Vicente Rangel asked the new Foreign Minister and ex-Oil Minister, Rafael Ramirez, about the “permanent thread to the revolution posed by powerful internal and external enemies.”

Ramirez assured that his main duty in his new post is to do whatever is necessary to “defended the sovereignty [of the country] at any cost because we cannot allow the United States to continue to openly intervene in the internal matters of the country”

“There are sector of the extreme right in our country, linked by tutelage to North America, linked to great economic interests, which continue to bet on violence. Our government and our people have defeated all their attempts. President Nicolás Maduro has not had so far a single day of truce. We have been under a permanent state of siege, with violence on the streets, through the so called guarimbas, with the violence generated by the Economic War, and they are permanently trying to generate a situation of chaos and distress in our country. (...) We will activate the support of the international community (…) to spread the truth to the world and denounce the development, from the United States, of a species of chaos [in Venezuela],” added the Minister.

New and improved guarimbas

In his weekly TV show José Vicente Rangel said that two unidentified “businessmen in Panama” are financing the Venezuelan opposition. 

“Two businessmen, with a lot of economic resources, continue operating from Panama against the Venezuelan government, [they do this] through opposition leaders who visit them constantly and receive important economic resources,” Rangel said.

He also warned that part of the opposition plans to go back to the streets to protest against recent government’s announcements with “new and improved [mejoradas] guarimbas [street barricades].”

Rodríguez Torres: we respected human rights even when dealing with extreme Right conspiracy

Yesterday during the Regional Meeting of UNASUR in Caracas to discuss human rights and citizen’s security, Venezuela’s Interior and Justice Minister, Miguel Rodríguez Torres explained that in the previous regimes the intelligence police service (then called DISIP) “was an institution outside of the law. They did everything they wanted with the human rights of Venezuelans. The DISIP was involved in the banishment of people, torture, and the murdering of many Venezuelans for political reasons.”

Instead, according to the Minister, the current Servicio Bolivariano de Inteligencia (SEBIN) is an institution that upholds human rights. The proof of this is the way in which the SEBIN and the National Guard dealt with the opposition protests at the beginning of this year: “We broke the guarimbas [street barricades]. It was three months of a conspiracy on the streets by the extreme Right that wanted to reach power by violent means, and we did this with a maximum respect to human rights, and whenever and officer incurred in any violation, we proceeded immediately. We have several officers that are facing trials for the use of fire arms of for having mistreated Venezuelans,” said Rodríguez Torres.

Five officers of SEBIN stand accused of having fired live rounds at protesters on 12 February in La Candelaria, Caracas, killing one person and injuring several others. The SEBIN has repeatedly been accused, by the opposition and human rights NGOs, of human rights violations.

(Rodríguez Torres. Image AVN)

Bolivarian National Guard: The most sublime representation of the People

During the 77 anniversary of the Bolivarian National Guard (GNB) commemoration ceremony, president Maduro praised the role of the GNB in the repression of the violent opposition protests in February this year, and alerted that the “fascist right” is preparing new conspiracies.

“The GNB [during the protests] acted in strict accordance to its new doctrine, to the Constitution, and acted to safeguard the peace of the Republic. They paid no attention to the insults, provocations, harassment, and attacks prepared by the laboratories of psychological warfare of the right without a Fatherland [apátrida]. Of the pro-imperialist oligarchy,” Maduro told the officers.

He added that it was important for the military to study thoroughly the “crimes of the fascist right” committed in February, so as to learn “how they planned and deployed, and to discover the secrets that allowed them to plot this malevolent and perverse conspiracy against the peace of our Fatherland.”

He also warned that “when Hugo Chávez passed away, all conspiracies broke loose,” and that the right continues to conspire in Venezuela using “methods of nonconventional warfare. There are groups of the ultra-right that continue to prepare new stabs against the country.” But he assured that the conspirators will “be faced by the National Guard and the people who want to live in peace. [The NGB] will dissipate and punish the terrorists, the guarimberos.”

According to the Agencia Venezolana de Noticias, during the ceremony “President Nicolás Maduro granted the Military Medal General López Contreras to the officers of the GNB that were wounded while defending the Venezuelan people from the violence unleashed by sectors of the extreme right last February.”

Minister of Defense, Carmen Meléndez, also praised the GNB and called it “the most sublime representation of the People in uniform.”

(Image from AVN)

Maduro reveals the continuation of an on-going coup against his government

Venezuelan government officials and public media have recently announced that the “on-going coup d’état,” they claim has been attempted since February this year, has been finally defeated. In the official rhetoric this should be understood to mean that the guarimba [barricades] street protests of the last months are decreasing.

President Maduro however announced yesterday that this is not necessarily the case, and that the “on-going” character of the coup should be understood to mean that it is truly constant and continuous.

According to Maduro opposition leaders have recently met to plan the “collapse” of the country by the month of June. He says he had access to information about this meeting through “internal informants” he has inside the opposition ranks.

“They say that June will be the month of collapse, that in June the people will rise against the Government, that June is the month of the coup d’état, that June will see the end of the Revolution. (…) The crazy coup mongers will try to promote violence in June,” Maduro warned.

He also insisted on the claims previously made by Interior Minister Miguel Rodríguez Torres that drug use is driving the street protests: “Some perverse coup mongers and guarimberos have been hiring criminal bands, and they are paying them with drugs and other means so that they can act violently and go out and kill. In some cases they are well known political and television figures. They want to drive the country into chaos. I denounce it. We have been constantly denouncing it.”

Maduro also said that he had ordered Rodriguez Torres to show the evidence of the government’s claims, because “there can be no softness or impunity with these coup mongers, these guarimberos, no matter what their last names are, no matter what their position is. Whoever is against the Constitution and the peace of the country will have to face justice. No one can blackmail me. No power will force me to give in [torcer el brazo].”

Paracos, Food, and Propaganda

Reporter José Vicente Rangel declared today that the guarimbas (barricades) of recent opposition protests show a level of organization and a capacity for mobilization that is “beyond the characteristics of Venezuelan [opposition] movements, of common militants and students.”

According the Rangel the fact that the protests have been so resilient and prolonged in time can be explained by the “existence of a new component:” Colombian paramilitaries linked Colombian ex-President Álvaro Uribe Velez.

The accusation that paracos (Colombian paramilitaries) are behind the opposition protests has become common in official discourse. This picture taken from the web page La Patilla shows a bag of rice sold in government stores. “No guarimbas! No paracos!” shouts a red shirted person while kicking a rat. On the background a women proclaims “With peace we also guarantee our food security!” perhaps implying the food shortages are also caused by the guarimbas.