Skip Nav | Home | Mobile | Editorial Guidelines | Mission Statement | About Us | Contact | Help | Security | Support Us

World

A slow coup in Venezuela?

W. T. Whitney Jr. | 27.10.2009 16:31 | Anti-militarism | World

"In Miami, rightwing Cuban exiles and Venezuelan ex-military officers and wealthy exiles have maintained a joint anti-Chavez project. Like Cuban-American counterpart groups, the so-called Venezuelan Patriotic Union carries out training exercises in the Everglades."

A slow coup in Venezuela?


October 26th 2009, by W. T. Whitney Jr. - People's World
U.S. measures for resisting progressive changes in Latin America have included funding of rightwing opposition groups, military deployment throughout the region, and the Fourth Fleet for monitoring a continent. This year seven new bases have been announced for Colombia, one in Peru and two in Panama.

Efforts to destabilize Venezuela's socialist government have been part of the mix. Assets include despondent, formerly entitled Venezuelans and Colombian military force. The failed coup to remove President Hugo Chavez and attempted shutdown of the state oil company were early signs seven years ago. Since then Colombian paramilitary formations, in league with the U.S. puppet government there and rightwing elements in Venezuela, have embarked upon mayhem.

First hand testimony suggests paramilitaries plotted to assassinate President Hugo Chavez.

El Nuevo Herald of Miami recently published a prison interview with Geovanny Velásquez Zambrano. The ex-paramilitary said he attended two meetings almost 10 years ago at which Manuel Rosales, then mayor of Maracaibo, offered $25 million for killing Chavez. He hinted at U.S. sources. Velásquez reported that paramilitary chieftain Jorge Iván Laverde - known as "el Iguano" - accepted the offer: "I have the guys to kill this gentleman."

The plotters established a training camp in Catatumbo to prepare for forays into Venezuela. Velásquez' own group entered Venezuela in 2000. According to the Nuevo Herald, Laverde, also a prisoner, accused high Colombian Army officers of orchestrating paramilitary ventures.

From 2000 to 2008, Rosales governed border state Zulia. In 2006 he was the rightist candidate in a losing bid for the presidency and that year allegedly met again with Colombian paramilitaries in a border town. He escaped to Peru in April.

In late September, a video rendition of Velasquez' testimony before Colombian prosecutors appeared on the Al Jazeera web site, along with lawyer Eva Golinger's commentary. Interviewed by TeleSur, she characterized paramilitary intrusion into Venezuela as "part of what the United States classifies as irregular war [using] military groups to promote violent actions." She saw the 2004 assassination of Venezuelan chief prosecutor Danilo Anderson as one example. Citing a U.S. Southern Command document dated April 13, 2003, Golinger accused Washington of creating a new "United Self Defense Forces of Venezuela" organized by paramilitaries of the United Self Defense Forces of Colombia.

Golinger recalled the arrest in 2004 of over 100 Colombian paramilitaries lodged at a farm near Caracas who were preparing to assassinate Chavez. She estimated 3,000 Colombian paramilitaries are active in Venezuela now. Acting upon Geovanny Velásquez's revelations, Venezuela's Attorney General Luisa Ortega recently began an investigation of paramilitary threats against President Chavez.

Such reports are not new. In media interviews in 2003, 2006, and on Sept. 3, former Colombian intelligence official Rafael Garcia, imprisoned for bribery, claimed that Colombian government officials conspired with paramilitary chiefs to create turmoil in Venezuela and assassinate Venezuelan leaders, including Chavez. In the recent session, televised by Noticias Uno and disseminated by TeleSur, Garcia asserted that "It was all a conspiracy against the Venezuelan government in which the DAS (his own intelligence agency) and factions of the Northern Bloc [of paramilitaries] participated." Dissident Venezuelan military officers were involved.

An imprisoned Colombian Army officer, again interviewed by El Nuevo Herald, corroborated. Mauricio Llorente, a School of the Americas graduate convicted of allowing paramilitary massacres in Catatumbo in 1999, indicated that "professional soldier" José Misael Valero Santa (aka "Lucas"), while under his command, was preparing to kill Chavez. Llorente told the interviewer that Lucas still commanded 1,000 paramilitaries.

In Miami, rightwing Cuban exiles and Venezuelan ex-military officers and wealthy exiles have maintained a joint anti-Chavez project. Like Cuban-American counterpart groups, the so-called Venezuelan Patriotic Union carries out training exercises in the Everglades.

Retired Miami area FBI head Hector Pesquera attended a meeting in 2003 in Panama where, according to the Nuevo Herald, the assassination of Prosecutor Danilo Anderson was planned. Closely allied with Cuban-American honchos in Miami, Pesquera headed the FBI investigation leading to the conviction and skewed sentencing of the Cuban Five political prisoners.

Eva Golinger described the purpose of a seminar organized jointly last May by the conservative Cato Institute in Washington and a U.S.-funded non-governmental organization in Caracas as "training youth in the tactics of ‘gradual coup' and subversion." Destabilization and whittling away at governance are traditional U.S. tools for maintaining hegemony. Under Operation Mongoose in the 1960s, U.S. operatives bedeviled Cuba with assassination attempts, guerrilla insurgency, wholesale sabotage, and terrorism. A decade later in Chile, prior to the Pinochet takeover and death of President Allende, they "made the economy scream" and carried out selective killings.

 atwhit@roadrunner.com

-----

Please spread widely. General Joe

W. T. Whitney Jr.

Publish

Publish your news

Do you need help with publishing?

/regional publish include --> /regional search include -->

World Topics

Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista

Kollektives

Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World

Other UK IMCs
Bristol/South West
London
Northern Indymedia
Scotland

Server Appeal Radio Page Video Page Indymedia Cinema Offline Newsheet

secure Encrypted Page

You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.

If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

IMCs


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech