“El Aviador” identity revealed by Rodríguez Torres

Contrary to what I incorrectly reported yesterday, Minister Rodríguez Torres did mention “El Aviador” in his press conference. He is Rodolfo Pedro González Martínez, and Rodriguez Torres claims that he is the “logistical operator” of the guarimbas in Caracas.

“This gentleman is the logistical articulator of all the operations in Caracas. How do we know this? Because of his computer: that after two days is still revealing valuable information for the investigation,” declared Rodríguez Torres.

Here is a good summary of yesterday’s press conference published by Últimas Noticias, including several screen shots of Rodríguez Torres’ power point presentation.

Here is commentary by Willy McKey of the rhetorical devices (mis)used by Rodríguez Torres during his explanation of the “strange circumstances” of Eliézer Otaiza’s murder.

 

“Insurrectional Conspiracy”: Rodríguez Torres provides more theories but no evidence

President Maduro had announced two days ago that today Interior, Justice and Peace Minister Miguel Rodríguez Torres, would reveal the evidence of coup d’état plans by the opposition against the Venezuelan government.

Moments ago, in a press conference Minister Rodríguez Torres gave details of “a plan of insurrectional conspiracy with the clear aim of overthrowing the legitimate government of the country, [a plan] that adheres to the permanent strategic objective of the State Department of the United States.”

Rodríguez Torres did not provide any evidence to sustain his claims. However he did give new details of the plot by the United States already denounced by President Maduro. According to him Venezuela is under attack on at least two fronts: drug trafficking and Human Rights. These two fronts are used to create an environment that would make acceptable a military intervention in the country.

On the Human Rights front, Rodríguez Torres explained that unspecified “US institutions” and NGOs “compile manipulated information in order to try to make the world believe that in Venezuela human rights are permanently violated.” On the other, “drug trafficking” front, “they name high Venezuelan government officials as implicated in financing terrorism and drug smuggling activities with the aim of making Venezuela appear as a rogue State.”

Short of evidence, Rodríguez Torres reminded the audience of the several times he has alerted of this plot, for example he again accused student and opposition leaders of having met last year in México to plan the recent protests in Venezuela. He also again recalled the arrest of the US national Timothy Allen on charges of being a CIA agent in April 2013. A long list of the usual suspects of conspiring against the country was also provided: Álvaro Uribe Vélez, Vilca Fernández, Lorent Saleh, Julio Rivas (JAVU), Carlos Vecchio, María Corina Machado, David smolansky, Gustavo Tovar Arroyo, Leopoldo López, Eligio Cedeño, José Antonio Colina, Gene Sharp, Pedro Burelli, Gustavo Tovar Arroyo, Daniel Ceballos, Lester Toledo, and Freddy Guevara. He also said that there are 58 foreign nationals detained so far accused of being mercenaries. He warned that the murder of chavista leader Eliézer Otaiza "was not casual," just as Maduro had suggested two days ago.

Rodríguez Torres finally explained the aims of these attacks on the country: “In the first place, a political-strategic objective is to halt the continental propagation of the Bolivarian Ideal, this is something fundamental for the United States and [in the second place] to gain control of the Orinoco Petro-belt, the biggest in the planet.”

Image by El Universal

Otaiza’s murder was planned in Miami

The police investigation of chavista leader Eliézer Otaiza’s murder is still in progress and results are pending. President Maduro, however, says he already knows the truth about the case: The assassination was plotted in Miami by “sectors that once had media and economic power in Venezuela.”

Maduro made the revelations during his May First commemoration speech broadcast live on national cadena. “Otaiza’s murder was planned and executed as a false positive so it could be presented to public opinion as only another crime event, just as they do it in Colombia,” he explained.

The conspiracy theory has found echo in several articles published by the chavista web page Aporrea.org. For example, the author of Otaiza Odiar a los gringos (Otaiza hate gringos), argues that “we have terrorists deployed in the nation that are acting with impunity in the name of human rights. This counter-revolutionary program will not cease even with dialogue. The phase of elimination of [revolutionary] leaders has increased. (…) the interesting thing is that we don’t have to wait for the gringos to invade, they are already in the country. They are terrorist groups that have been trained during six years by NGO’s and financed by the NED [National Endowment for Democracy], they are paramilitaries and some of the opposition militants. The gringos are playing their game with dummies made for USA in Venezuela [in English in the original].” 

Another article, Los conspiradores escogen muy bien a sus víctimas [Conspirators chose their victims well], criticizes the government for being too complacent with conspiracies. The author believes Otaiza was chosen as a target because the opposition knew that, in the event of a coup d’état, Otaiza would lead the resistance in the Libertador Municipality.

What motivates the opposition?

In the official narrative of recent protests in Venezuela, these are not driven by legitimate grievances. Instead the opposition is guided by obscure anti-patriotic motives. According to President Maduro “They [the opposition] do not accept that Venezuela for the first time owns its natural resources, that it is absolutely independent and sovereign, and dos not ask or accepts advice from anybody in this world.”

As the opposition is incapable of accepting this newly won national independence, it resort to repeated coup attempts in order to regain power and hand the nation’s natural resources to the Empire. Maduro explains: “They tried to do it during February, March, and April, and they are trying to do it again now. They have vanguard groups of crazy people that don’t care that we won the elections, and that want to create chaos and fish in troubled waters. (…) [Behind these groups] are the imperial sectors that want to lay their hands on Venezuela and put an end to the example of the Bolivarian Revolution, and they want to take the oil from our fatherland, and also put the economies of China and India on their knees by [taking] their energy [sources].”

The disgruntled opposition, according to Maduro, is acting according to a plan already practiced in Ukraine: “The same thing happen in Ukraine. A group of Nazi terrorists toppled a democratic government. How did they do it? Well they hired from 3,000 to 4,000 mercenaries that collapsed the Ukraine capital and this led to the overthrow of Yanukóvich (…) and then they handed power to Ukraine’s ultra-multi-millionaires.”

The President has announced that tomorrow (May 2), Interior, Justice and Peace Minister, Miguel Rodriguez Torres, will present a detailed report of the evidence of a coup d’état gathered by Venezuelan intelligence services. Maduro advanced that the group behind the coup includes “two very heavy narcos,” one US citizen, and one person of Arab origin named Jayssam Mokded Mokded. He also mentioned again “El Aviador” as leader of the group, and added that “some opposition actors are very nervous, (…) they know that he is a key figure and that they have been training him for more than four years for terrorism.”