People’s Army and Prolonged Popular War

Ruling socialist party (PSUV) leader and pro-government Constitutive Assembly member Pedro Carreño believes that, in the case of a conflict with the United States “or Colombia,” the new “military doctrine” of Venezuela should be “the war waged by all the people.”

Carreño says he has a proposal to “integrate the party (PSUV) to the prolonged popular war. [There are] 13,682 Bolívar-Chávez Battle Units (UBCH), each UBCH will form a platoon.” The UBCH are the electoral mobilization units of the PSUV.

Carreño offered himself as one of the leaders of this new people’s army: “I call all patriots to look at themselves in the mirror of Sadam Hussein and Gadhafi. We the leaders need to set the example of suffering and restlessness and tell the world that our luck is bound to the luck of the people.”

On the economic war front, Carreño declared that inflation in Venezuela is “totally induced,” and therefore the country needs to take “war actions.” These actions would be directed against the Web portal dolartoday:

“Comandante Chávez left us [armed forces] with excellent electronic war units to hack all dolartoday and similar pages, which generate an increase in the Dollar-Bolívar reference. […] We need to inoculate them with a thousand Trojans.”    

A Real Plot! Failed…

A real conspiracy to overthrow Maduro is behind the arrests of several active military in the last months, according to Bloomberg’s Ethan Bronner, Andrew Rosati, and Fabiola Zerpa. The failed plot, code-named Operation Constitution, wanted to capture Maduro and put him on trial. Bloomberg reporters interviewed one escaped conspirator, who claims the plot was betrayed by a double agent. The government has been trying to link opposition leader Maria Corina Machado with the plot, but Bloomberg’s source denies that link.

“Bottom line,” says Bloomberg Businessweek, “A military coup to topple Venezuelan President Maduro -the most serious threat he’s faced in his five years in office- was quashed when dozens of plotters were arrested.”

Colombian Government Planning a War against Venezuela

“A series of military incidents and provocations are being prepared by the Colombian government of Juan Manuel Santos, from the Colombian territory and inside the Venezuelan territory, in order to generate an armed conflict between Colombia and Venezuela,” Maduro told National Bolivarian Armed Forces officers yesterday during a ceremony.

The Venezuelan armed forces should therefore be on guard, Maduro said: “I ask you, military officers of Venezuela, to raise your guard, be on the alert all along the Colombia-Venezuelan border. Operational Strategic High Command, take all the intelligence, counter-intelligence and logistical measures to nullify any provocation or incident that the outgoing Colombian government would like to leave behind as a rotten pot  against the Colombian Venezuelan relations.”

Maduro also asked the Colombian security forces not to be part of its government plot: “From here I send a message to the Colombian military, to the Colombian police forces, not to lend themselves to the dirty dealings [marramucias], the traps that the outgoing Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos wants to leave incubating: a military conflict, doing the errand for the North American Imperialism against the independent and sovereign Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. I trust you, Colombian military, not to lend yourselves to a conflict between brothers.”      

Maduro Reveals Military Conspiracy

The Bolivarian Armed Forces high command has again publically pledged loyalty to Nicolás Maduro, reelected president on the 20 May elections, boycotted and denounced as a fraud by most of the opposition.

In a statement called “Proclama de Lealtad y Compromiso” read during the pledge ceremony by a middle ranking officer, the armed forces were defined as “Bolivarian, Zamoristas, Chavistas, anti-imperialists, and anti-oligarchic.”

“You [Maduro] can count on the loyalty and commitment of these patriotic soldiers to continue on your side on this stoic battle against imperialism. We are firmly committed to the continued construction of a great, socialist, free and sovereign fatherland, ruled by the principles of social justice, equality, common wellbeing, solidarity and peace,” read the statement.

Maduro thanked the armed forces for their loyalty and said that the Proclama should be signed by all officers and published. But he also warned of a conspiracy by the United States and Colombia. “In the last weeks we have dismantled a conspiracy financed by Colombia and encouraged by the United States to divide the Armed Forces and to stop the May 20 elections,” he said.

He also said that the leaders of the conspiracy have been arrested and that security forces are still searching for its main “financial backer” [financiasta].

Local media has reported that at least 38 military officers have been arrested in the past two weeks. Miguel Rodríguez Torres, Chavez’ ex defense minister has been under arrest since March 13 on charges of “espionage, conspiracy, and instigation to commit crimes.”

The arrested military officers “have confessed and have been convicted, they sold themselves to Colombia to betray the Bolivarian Armed Forces. ¡Be all on alert! ¡Do not drop your guard! This is a time for combat. They wanted to affect our elections and democracy: the North American empire, the Colombian oligarchy,” said Maduro.

Critical Chavistas have their own conspiracy theories

“In Venezuela’s political scene of the last 20 years, nothing has happened by chance,” claims Javier Antonio Vivas Santanta in his most recent article published by Aporrea.org.

Aporrea, a chavista Web portal has increasingly become a space for critical chavismo. The term usually applies to people who defend the “legacy” of the Comandante and claim that president Maduro has betrayed that legacy.

Conspiracy theories about Maduro’s true intentions are an important part of critical chavismo. Vivas Santana, for example, is not shy to call his own analysis a Teoría madurista de la conspiración contra Chávez.

According to Vivas Santana, Maduro´s conspiracy against Chávez, which includes Diosdado Cabello as co-conspirator, began way back in 1999 with the approval of the Bolivarian Constitution. The fact that now president Maduro has convened a new Constitutive Assembly in order to “abolish” that Constitution is evidence, for the author, of Maduro’s intentions, since that year, of stablishing a “neo-totalitarian project”.

Russia’s Vladimir Putin is the main “international connection” of Maduro’s conspiracy. “Why did not Putin invite Chávez, as Lula DaSilva did from Brazil, to treat his cancer in Moscow if he was then Russia’s prime minister?” asks suspiciously Vivas Santana. “It becomes evident that the origins of the conspiracy against Chávez had tow clear long term aims,” answers the author, “The first was the abrogation of the 1999 Constitution in order to ‘legally’ implement neo-totalitarianism. The second was to sell PDVSA [Venezuela’s oil company] and hand our oil, gas, mineral, and gold reserves to international groups, mainly Russian and Chinese, as a way to consolidate power with the help of foreign governments with unipersonal political systems and with enough power within the UN Security Council.”

Vivas Santana promises a second part to his piece. In it he will consider “if the cancer that affected the Bolivarian leader was really murder.”