April 17, 2024
The president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, criticized the Chilean government’s interference in the internal affairs of Venezuela, and stressed that through dialogue and respect it will be possible to combat transnational organized crime.
“What is necessary is cooperation, respect, not interference,” President Maduro said on Monday, April 15, on episode 41 of his TV program Con Maduro+. “I do not get involved in the internal affairs of Chile, I have never gotten involved, and they should not get involved in the internal affairs of Venezuela. Many things can be achieved with respect and dialogue, with communication.”
“I publicly urge President Gabriel Boric, if you want to talk about these issues, let us talk personally, because some accusations were made, and then the media and social media have turned it into a campaign against Venezuela,” President Maduro added.
He made these comments in reference to recent allegations from the Chilean authorities that the government of Venezuela is associated with the Venezuelan criminal gang Tren de Aragua which is allegedly currently operating in Chile also. He pointed out that these criminal groups were originally financed by the Chilean far-right “to invade Venezuela from Cúcuta [Colombia], with the help of the US government.”
“Who took these criminals to Chile? Who knew them, hired them, and supported them in Cúcuta, to invade Venezuela on February 23, 2019?” he questioned. “It was the recently deceased former president [of Chile], Sebastián Piñera. The Chilean right backed an invasion of Venezuela… and had as its vanguard a thousand criminals that it hired throughout the central-western part of Venezuela and some 300 criminals from Cúcuta.”
He also highlighted that Venezuela has made progress in tackling organized crime with the Peace Quadrants security strategy that has disbanded many criminal gangs, including Tren de Aragua.
“We have a successful civic-military-police union and we have made progress in liberating the territories so that citizens have security and peace,” President Maduro added. “I put at the service of our sister nations of Latin America the model that we have built, a model of citizen security that has helped us put an end to the Tren de Aragua and many other gangs.”
The controversy is related to an international attempt to smear the Venezuelan government, using the murder of Ronald Ojeda, former Venezuelan military official who was expelled from the army, in Chile. Until now, the US propaganda machine has failed to attribute the murder to Venezuelan authorities since the Chilean judiciary clarified that it was related to criminal activities. However, most importantly, the accusation goes against the clean human rights record of the Venezuelan government in its relation with far-right coup-plotters.
This recent controversy is another example of the Boric administration’s recurrent policy of making interventionist statements against Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua that fit perfectly with the US government narratives against these countries.
Source: Alba Ciudad translation Orinoco Tribune