Carlos Aznarez / Venezuela and the Presidents’ Conspiracy

July 13, 2015.-

Thanks to the enemies of the revolutionary process, Venezuela has become a one country laboratory in which all imaginable destabilization methods are being concocted to be used against it. Very often these sinister attacks have been combined and are simultaneously carried out against the Bolivarian government.

On the one hand there is an intensification of the protracted economic war that affects the entire population, coupled with media campaigns that use an overtly defamatory tone meant to hide the progress made in recent years in the field of education, health, housing and other basic items. In addition to all this, there is the continuous flow of paramilitaries who arrive from Colombia and insert themselves in neighborhoods of Caracas and other major cities of the country. From there these mercenaries directly engage in drug marketing, generating criminal activities or they hide among the general population and remain as incubating cells waiting for the right time to take action.

All of these elements are part of a comprehensive destructive plan that seeks to undermine the revolutionary social body of Venezuela in order to nurture an opposition that has not been able to find outlets through legal channels and appear periodically to promote violent activity.

Lately a new component of greater depth and significance has appeared in this destabilizing scenario. This could be called the “conspiracy of the Presidents” with all of them belonging to the European and Latin American right. Each of these characters have been repudiated by their respective people and now are trying to put their noses in the Venezuelan process by giving advice and support to the right-wing opposition in Venezuela.  Primarily they are championing the wives of Leopoldo López and Antonio Ledezma, the rightest detainees who are politically responsible for the violent guarimbas that have cost the lives of many people.

The visits to Venezuela of this group of former ultra-ring rulers has included Spanish Presidents Felipe González, who headed up the GAL (“death squads” responsible for the murder of Basque militants), Jose Maria Aznar, along with Colombian Andrés Pastrana, the Mexican Felipe Calderón and the Bolivian Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga. All of them met behind closed doors on June 24 under the auspices of the European Parliament to prepare and coordinate visits to Venezuela on July 18 – 19. But Gonzalez’s preliminary visit to Venezuela turned out to be a great failure. It was not only condemned by President Nicolas Maduro but also it was unanimously rejected by all the revolutionary Chivista sectors of the country. Gonzalez was forced to leave Venezuela in a plane sent by Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, who received him with great fanfare in Colombia. This episode has generated doubts about whether this mission will take place. Regardless of this, both Gonzalez and Aznar have been very active in this conspiracy by recently receiving in Madrid the wives of Lopez and Ledezma, and promising to defend their husbands from the “Chavista dictatorship.”

It is important to note that this plan is encouraged and supported economically by various organizations linked to the United States and its intelligence agencies and includes the National Endowment  for Democracy (NED), the International Republican Institute (IRI), the National Democracy Institute (NDI), the Pan American Foundation for development (PADF), Freedom House, and the European Foundation for Analysis and Social Studies (FAES), which is headed up by Aznar and the current Spanish President Mariano Rajoy. All of these agencies have received financial support from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) for various programs and events such as conferences, workshops, training of new leaders and other supposedly legal projects of enterprise. In essence the aims of this formation is to encourage subversion in countries like Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua and other progressive countries in Latin America.

How else could mouth pieces of this thrust like Cuban Joani Sánchez or the Venezuelan Mitzi Capriles and Lilian Tintori be able to travel all over the world and are received by right-wing mayors such as the Argentine Mauricio Macri, or by former Chilean President Ricardo Lagos or even by the Brazilian Lula Institute linked to certain sectors of the Workers Party.

In 2013 information was revealed indicating that NED spent more than $1,700,000 for the development of over 25 subversive programs aimed against Venezuela, all of them were designed to work with young people. Other similar data confirmed that the US State Department has spent on many occasions millions of dollars to finance Venezuelan media outlets and journalists to amplify the terrorist media campaign against the Bolivarian Revolution. Much of these funds are also aimed to encourage destabilizing actions featured in corporate media such as “ABC”, “El País”, “El Mundo”, and events organized by right-wing foundations in Spain and France. An example of this was an event that took place in Guadarrama Spain on the FAES Campus between June 29 and July 5. In a workshop entitled, “Democracy, populism and dictatorship”, former French President Nicolás Sarkozy and representatives of many right-wing European Governments participated in what was essentially an anti Chavista workshop. Also participating was the director of the newspaper El Nacional of Caracas, Miguel Henrique Otero, and “guest of honor”, Mitzy Capriles de Ledezma, who talked wildly against the totalitarianism of the popularly elected government of Nicholas Maduro.

As if that wasn’t enough for this reactionary forum, Lilian Tintori de Lopez addressed the audience from Caracas, by teleconference, where she expressed, “my country is a victim of the abuses of hatred and scandalous acts of corruption, violence and death”.

Similar campaigns to the one that took place in Spain against Venezuela, was reproduced in Ecuador.  Jaime Nebod, the right-wing Mayor of Guayaquil, who currently advocates for violent demonstrations to destabilize the Government of Rafael Correa, is a favorite on the NED and the American USAID list. In his speeches Nebod continuously rants against Venezuela and Cuba and raises the slogan calling for the repudiation of the “Venezulation of Ecuador”.

It is important to remind everyone that these characters who abhor the participatory democracies sweeping the Latin American continent led their people to situations of extreme economic crisis, high unemployment, cruel austerity and they responded with repressive measures against any resistance to their neoliberal recipes.

A good example of these types are the former presidents of Colombia, Andres Pastrana and Alvaro Uribe Velez, who acted out their time in office as pawns of American policy in Colombia and in the region. Their links with the terrorist organization Cuban-American National Foundation (CANF) and the right wing of Miami are clearly documented and they were significant financers of their 1994 presidential campaign. Another good example is former Mexican President Felipe Calderón. During his tenure in office organized crime and narco-politics in Mexico intensified resulting in general lawlessness and corruption.  In 2009 alone the financial support from the United States to Mexico was more than 780 million dollars, mainly designed to interfere in the internal affairs of the country.

The disastrous deterioration of Bolivia during the right wing presidency of Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga paved the way for the emerging positive image of Evo Morales. Now that Quiroga has become a political corpse he has eagerly jumped on the train of conspiracy against his country and its collaboration with Venezuela. Behind him are the money and the backing of the European Christian Democrats, the International Freedom Foundation and that set of fascist and neoliberal characters that make up Unoamérica.

Aznar and Felipe González are two sides of the same coin and they too are firmly on board of the train of reaction and neo liberalism. Both have been deeply involved in the destruction of the Spanish economy, making the rates of unemployment and poverty reach heights which have not been seen since the years of the civil war. They are the architects of all the repressive instruments in current use by the Spanish State (anti-terrorism Act, paramilitary groups, systematic torture, political dissidents, gag laws, etc.), rendering them useless in giving lessons on democracy to anyone and much less to the Venezuelan people.

That is why the reality of all these campaigns of destabilizing due to the damage they cause bring them crashing back to earth again and again. In reference to their internal and external opponents both Presidents Nicolas Maduro and Rafael Correa has told them, “If you want to take over the government, we will see you at the ballot box”.