By Angel Guerra on April 8, 2020
Photo: Ariana Cubillos
The records of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), categorically deny the banal accusations of drug trafficking made by Donald Trump against his Venezuelan counterpart, Nicolas Maduro, and members of his government. It is clear that the new and bellicose onslaught by the real estate magnate turned president against Venezuela has nothing to do with defending democracy either. On the contrary! It is a consequence of the absolute failure of all the coup and destabilizing plans of his administration against the constitutional and legitimate government of President Maduro.
Not least of all, it is also the result of a desperate electoral attempt to make the Americans look the other way and not to the hellish picture of their increasingly disastrous and deadly management of the coronavirus pandemic. The US now has negative comparisons comparing to other countries, most noticeably how it is outpacing in cases and deaths in the other countries most affected by the disease. And another reason for the anti-Venezuelan trumpet attack is most likely due to the very erroneous calculation that the pandemic situation would put the Bolivarian country in a desperate light to make it the object of the immoral and illegal bravado and threats from the former casino owner. It turns out that Venezuela is showing an impressively well-conducted strategy to contain the virus, supported by its population, and also by recognized experts from Cuba, China and Russia.
Let’s make a very tight summary of the milestones of the anti-Venezuelan onslaught. In a series of scenes that more than acts of state resemble a grotesque farce, first, U.S. Attorney General William Barr (at the time commissioned by the Bush Sr. administration to provide the legal basis for the 1989 invasion of Panama) accused President Maduro and several members of Venezuela’s top government of narco-terrorism and, in Wild West style, offered rewards for information leading to their arrest.
Interestingly, the indictment includes two generals who long ago deserted from the military institute in Venezuela and are now living abroad. Legally speaking, Barr’s accusation is totally invalid, since according to the UN Charter and even the rotten OAS, the government of one country has no jurisdiction over the territory of another. And let’s not fail to mention that Barr did not present any evidence against President Maduro and the other Venezuelans supposedly involved, simply because he does not have any.
An accusation, it must be remembered, is not even remotely a finding of guilt, so its use, in this case, is nothing more than a twisting of the law by Barr to fulfill Trump’s anti-Venezuelan political purposes. The point is very clear. The DEA claims in all of its reports through 2019 that Colombia is the primary source for cocaine captured in the United States. According to the Cocaine Signature Program developed by the DEA in 2018, approximately 90 percent of the cocaine samples analyzed were of Colombian origin, 6 percent of Peruvian origin and 4 percent of unknown origin. In other words, according to U.S. federal drug agency records, no cocaine or other narcotics from Venezuela are found in the United States.
So the press conference held at the White House a few days after Barr’s indictment in which Trump announced the start of the largest anti-drug operation in the Western Hemisphere and the deployment of an entire army and Navy in the Caribbean towards Venezuela, is just another episode in the anti-Venezuelan charade aimed at putting pressure on Caracas and justifying an eventual attack, whether by paramilitaries from Colombia or by a larger operation.
The only reasonable thing that the United States can do in a humanitarian situation as dramatic as the one being suffered by humanity, and its own population in the first place, is to support the call for peace and to silence the weapons in the world formulated by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, to lift the blockade on Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Palestine, Iran and Syria. Once and for all there must be respect for the right of Venezuela to self-determination and that Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, stops presenting frameworks for so-called transition to democracy in Venezuela, that the people of that country will like always throw in the trash when their sovereignty and independence has been threatened.
Source: La Pupila Insomne, translation, Resumen Latinoamericano, North America bureau