victims of communism ponce

Carlos E. Ponce

Dr. Carlos Ponce is general coordinator of the Latin American and Caribbean Network for Democracy, co-editor of the political magazine "Nueva Politica" and member of the Steering Committee of the World Movement for Democracy and the ISC of the Community of Democracies.

Honduras, A Bottomless Pit

January 11, 2017

Honduras, A Bottomless Pit

For Venezuela and its illegal president, Nicolas Maduro, Xiomara Zelaya's triumph in Honduras would be his first international victory.

Op-Ed: Venezuela's Coup Made in Cuba

January 10, 2017

Op-Ed: Venezuela's Coup Made in Cuba

Dr. Carlos Ponce says that if Hugo Chávez has been in a coma all this time, Venezuelans have been in the presence of people who usurped power.

Carlos Ponce: The Summit of the Americas, Unfulfilled Promises

January 10, 2017

Carlos Ponce: The Summit of the Americas, Unfulfilled Promises

The VI Summit of the Americas brings an opportunity for dialogue among governments and is the only regional forum that includes the United States and Canada.

Carlos Ponce: Venezuela Election – Hope is in the Air

January 4, 2017

Carlos Ponce: Venezuela Election – Hope is in the Air

More than 3 million votes cast in the primary is a strong start for the Democratic United Table (MUD) opposition to Chávez in Venezuela.

Opinion: Brazil is an Imperialist Killing the OAS

January 4, 2017

Opinion: Brazil is an Imperialist Killing the OAS

Once the champion of regional integration and human rights, Brazil has been changing its foreign policy approaches and now it is the enemy of the Inter American Human Rights System and an active promoter of “non-intervention” in terms of democracy and human rights.

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/op-ed-venezuelas-coup-made-in-cuba

op ed

Almost a month after his last public appearance and from his surgery to continue the treatment against an aggressive cancer, Hugo Chávez remains in intensive care in Cuba with multiple respiratory, abdominal and infectious complications.

Chávez never delegated power to his Vice President Nicolas Maduro, he only obtained a temporary permit to travel to Cuba, but he supposedly remained in total control of the presidency. Nobody knows the true extent of such delegation of duties or if Chávez is actually awake or has been in coma all this time.

The information provided by the regime has been more than contradictory. The only source of information has been the social media. If Chávez has been in a coma all this time, then we have been in the presence of people who usurped power and they have been running an illegal government.

Hugo Chávez was aware of the potential complications of this new surgery and he clearly said that in case he became unable to take oath on January 10th, or in case of his death, his chosen one to run for president was Nicolás Maduro.

And the Constitution in Venezuela is clear: the mandate began on January 10th, 2007 and ends January 10th, 2013, and if the elected president can’t take the oath that day the Assembly’s President assumes power temporarily and calls for new elections within a maximum of 30 days.

But for Cuba, which receives more than $10 billion a year plus other benefits from Venezuela, this is not acceptable. Fidel and Raúl Castro have been close friends and supporters of Chávez's regime for economic reasons. Thanks to Hugo Chávez and his fake revolution, the Cuban dictatorial regime has been able to survive this past decade. For Castro’s regime, the future of Chávez will also mark Cuba’s future.

The Castro brothers have become the conciliators and advisors of the two most powerful acolytes of Chávezas well as of some fractions from the military. Castro has been coordinating the meetings among Diosdado Cabello, the president of Venezuelan National Assembly, Vice President Maduro, Chávez’s family and some sectors of the military.

They also initiated an international lobby with Brazil and other countries to gather support for their plans on Venezuela. They have developed the thesis of the “continuation” of the government: for them the re-election of Chávez last October was just a confirmation or referendum of his regime, and for that reason he doesn’t need to be inaugurated or take the presidential oath.

Venezuela is far from been a democratic country. Hugo Chávez has been ruling the country in an authoritarian and abusive way, and the only quasi democratic side to it was that periodical general elections. Without those elections the country becomes a dictatorship. Neither Maduro nor Cabello were elected. Chávez transformed Venezuela in his big circus but now the clowns have taken control of the circus. We don't know if they are keeping Chavez artificially alive just to keep control of the country; only an independent medical board can determine his current condition.

The alternatives for Chávez’s cronies are five: 1) Accept the impossibility for Chávez to return to power and call for an election in 30 days. In this case they may have a good chance to win due to the Chávez’s influence and memory, as well as the drama that would surround such an election; 2) Reduce Chávez’s sedation and mobilize the Venezuelan Supreme Tribunal to inaugurate the new term in Cuba; 3) Keep control of the government by force; 4) Convince some members of the opposition of a transition regime; 5) The unconstitutional an undemocratic interpretation of the Constitution that would allow them to give Chávez a special permit of 90 days, renewable, to delay the inauguration.

They need the time to consolidate their power without Chávez and to buy more time in control of the institutions and cash flow, so they can also project themselves as the continuation of Hugo Chávez revolution. They also need more time for the campaign and to create the image of a possible government without Chávez but with Chávez ideals.

For the opposition, an election in 30 days will be a major tragedy because they don’t have a clear candidate. Even though the “Mesa de Unidad” has been playing an extraordinary role creating a coordinated effort among numerous opposition groups and parties, their ideological differences and their mutual suspiciousness are still a great challenge.

Sadly, Venezuela will face a major political, economic, institutional and social crisis in the upcoming months. Several countries and groups will try to control the game, but now it is a Pandora box, anything can happen.

If the democratic opposition begins to change Cuba’s game and become more active in developing alternatives and implementing a democratic fight, as well as implementing some strategic planning, the game can change in favor of recovering democracy in Venezuela.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/carlos-ponce-venezuela-election-hope-is-in-the-air

foxlatino follow us]

The impossible challenge for the Venezuelans to built a “Unitarian” opposition to Mr. Hugo Chávez it is not an utopian goal anymore. The totalitarian and authoritarian regime from Mr. Chávez finally has a young and active contender. More than 3 million votes in an opposition primary for the Democratic United Table (Mesa de Unidad Democracica) mean more than just numbers.

The challenge of organizing an effort to unify an opposition with hundreds of micro political parties and individual leaderships, an opposition that failed in the past with divisive approaches, was more than a success. The courage of Venezuelans voting in a election that will openly mark them as opposition, more in a country in which the government persecute the opposition, or the democratic showroom of people with courage it just inspirational.

In France, only 2 million people voted a recent Socialist Party primary in a country with more than 45 million people. The tendency in all the primaries is always less than 10 percent of the votes. In Venezuela, it was more than 16 percent. But Chávez has been manipulating the electoral register numbers from 6 million voters in 1999 when he began his dictatorship to more than 17 million in only 13 years.

In just two years in power, he changed the electoral database from 6 to 12 million, which is impossible. The last census numbers don’t match with the electoral database. Chávez controls all the institutions, including the electoral one, and has been wasting more than $1 billion in 13 years, so he is more than a typical president.

Chávez has been losing two elections in the road. The last one, he just changed the rules of distribution of electoral circuits one month before the election to avoid losing the parliament, but he lost the electoral vote.

Venezuela's Devil Dancing

Chávez portrayed himself 20 years ago in his coup d’eta as an alternative to corruption and the past. Now Chávez represent the past in more than 13 years of corruption and destruction.

If we review the numbers from the last parliamentary/Congress election, the opposition defeated Chávez , and they obtained 6 million votes, now in a primary they got more than 3 million, which means that they obtained more than half of their electoral votes in a primary. If we do the math we are talking of more than 6 million voters against Chávez in a real electoral base of 11 million.

I had the opportunity to coordinate an international observer’s mission yesterday in the Venezuelan Primaries with observers from Colombia, Costa Rica, Spain, Nicaragua and the US, and for the first time we can say that this was the first free election in Venezuela in the last 12 years. Our mission, Latin American and Caribbean Network for Democracy, focused its effort in the most dangerous “CHavistas” neighborhood voting centers in Catia, 23 de Enero, Petare, El Valle and La Pastora, and we saw the beginning of the end of Chávez. People voted, even with open treats against their integrity and their jobs. People voted with hope and defeated fear.

The joint picture of six contenders in an election, that even with their differences decided to join forces with the winner, the same day of the election, it is a good one. The winner, Henrique Capriles, a young leader of only 40 years old, called to a united opposition with all the forces, and a country for all the people without colors or ideologies. New leaderships came to Venezuela, new generations against the same old Chávez.

Of course, the road ahead is not easy, with Chávez sick of power and controlling all the institutions, the fight will be an unbalanced one.

The Venezuelans need to keep the unity alive. They also need to build trust in the population in the possibility of a better future without Chávez, and the need for a change. Chávez will be using the money and power of being the last autocratic dinosaur in the region against Henrique Capriles and the united opposition. They will need to fight against the manipulation of the electoral database, the control of the electoral authority in the hand of Chávez and the violent contender. Millions of dollars and ultimate power in one hand trying to defeat the hope of a country trying get rid of the autocrat.

Venezuelan Beauty Queen Turned Cancer Crusader Dies

The US and the international communities can play a fundamental role putting pressure on Chávez to accept international observers in the October 07 presidential election. But it is not only the need for electoral observers; they need well-prepared and technical observers to travel to Venezuela in advance of the election to monitor the entire electoral process. They need to have as heads of international electoral missions former head of states like former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso or Nobel Prize winner and former Costa Rican president Oscar Arias. They need a mission from the Organization of American States with real electoral technical teams, not the friends of the OAS Secretary General, Jose Miguel Insulza. The only possibility of an OAS electoral mission for Venezuela to be successful is to be independent from the manipulation of Insulza, and it needs a former head of state as chief of the mission. A mission like that will be able to support the negotiation effort if Chávez lost the presidential election as well as effectively monitor election fraud.

The US must avoid wasting U.S. taxpayer money funding another electoral mission with the inefficient and weak friends of Insulza, missions that only served to validate electoral fraud in the past. We need to have an open eye in Venezuela because Chávez has been proving that he is not democratic and he will be trying to persecute and terrorize the opposition as well as his followers to prevent losing power. It is time for true solidarity against the autocrats.

The bad news for Chávez is that he represents the past, an inefficient one, and now his people have a face in the other side to negotiate “golden bridges” to save themselves when the time came. Anyone in Chávez's structure now has a face to negotiate how to have a better country without Chávez.

If Capriles and his team, former candidates and the heads of the “Democratic United Table”, including its head Dr. Ramon Guillermo Aveledo or its international coordinator Dr. Ramon Jose Medina, keep their agenda, innovate, promise a country for all and overcome the challenges from Mr. Chávez, we can say that hope is in the air for Venezuelans, as well as for Cubans, Nicaraguans and Ecuadorians. Maybe we will see a “Latin American Spring” soon.

Dr. Carlos Ponce is the elected general coordinator of the Latin American and Caribbean Network for Democracy, co-editor of the political magazine “Nueva Politica” and member of the Steering Committee of the World Movement for Democracy and the ISC of the Community of Democracies. Twitter: @ceponces http://twolatinamericas.blogspot.com/

9/13 update 17

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/honduras-a-bottomless-pit

Former president Mr. Mel Zelaya conspired against the institutions and tried to impose a Constitutional change just to allow him to run for the presidency again. Nevertheless, the country turned the page and they will have a general election on November 24, 2013.

Since his election on November 2009, President Porfirio Lobo wasted two of the four-year presidential term trying to gain international support. By then, it was too late for to attack Honduras’ endemic problems including violence, a bad education system, a health system crisis, a lack of job opportunities, inefficiency, corruption, and insecurity/crime, critical environment.

Honduras needs a political change to begin to change the path of misery, and electing the wife of the same well-known authoritarian will not guarantee that change.

— Carlos Ponce

In this critical environment, populists like Zelaya find the perfect condition for their destruction of the democratic system. Mr. Zelaya created his own political party, “Libre”, and since the Constitution blocked him from running for the presidency, he promoted his wife Xiomara Castro de Zelaya as the candidate for the next election. The majority of Honduras population is showing that they gave up on political parties and the system and they are willing to vote in favor of the Anti-System, represented by Mrs. Zelaya on the “left” and the TV presenter Salvador Nasralla on the “right”.

Xiomara does not have too much in terms of political experience or the background to rule the country. Her government plans include: Increase food production with government financial and technical assistance, Recover energetic and telecommunication sovereignty (return to government control), Immediate inclusion in the Bolivarian Initiative of the Americas (ALBA) and Petrocaribe (Venezuela’s funded authoritarian alliance of the Americas), Eliminate hunger in Honduras with solidarity projects, Promote the agricultural reform and promote the “solidary” state, Build a “solidarity” economic system, Develop a central housing and to regulate the rent and sale of properties according to government priorities, Pursue political sovereignty and Central American integration following the ideals of Simon Bolivar and Francisco Morazan.

Xiomara Castro de Zelaya and her party “Libre” have the same “state-socialist” propaganda than the rest of the Alba countries (Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia and Ecuador), but more than a decade of false socialism in those countries proved that the model doesn’t work. It is not the same progressive ideology or real socialism from other countries with a mixture of market approaches with social policies. It is just pure electoral populism. Like Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales, and Rafael Correa, Xiomara’s first political action if she wins the presidency will be the Constitutional Assembly to reform the constitution under the excuse of promoting social changes. However, the truth is that, as their elected authoritarians friends, Mrs. Zelaya only want to change the constitution to allow her husband to run for the presidency, control power and weaken the institutions. The results will be the same: elected autocrats in Honduras. It is not true that “Libre” is a socialist party: it is just Zelaya’s party, a structure made for him. Libre is just a guarantee of the quick implementation of the same elected populist model.

The tragedy in this bizarre comedy is that Xiomara has been heading all the electoral polls this year with a solid 19% of the preferences, ahead of Jose Orlando Hernandez (National Party) by 3 perceptual points, Salvador Nasralla (anti-corruption party) by more than 5 points, and Mr. Mauricio Villeda (Liberal Party), by more than 13 points.

Only an alliance among the rest of the parties will prevent Xiomara from winning the election, but that is not an easy task. The political division in Honduras and political ambitions will prevent the rest of the candidates from creating an alliance. If Mr. Villeda and Mr. Hernandez create a single electoral option that alternative will not guarantee their triumph, but it will be the only viable alternative to prevent Mrs. Zelaya from winning. The alliance among democratic leaders, effective actions to reduce violence and crime in the following months and a national credible pact to improve the country situation will be a plus to prevent the upcoming crisis.

Honduras has the people, the land, and the posibilities to end the misery and develop a great nation. Honduras need good leadership to fight against corruption and develop good policies to attract bussiness and bring jobs to the more than 60 percent of its population who live in poverty. It needs a better education system, independent and efficient institutions, and good policies/strategies/actions to fight against crime and insecurity. It needs to develop a culture of democracy, human rights, and rule of law. Honduras needs a political change to begin to change the path of misery, and electing the wife of the same well-known autoritarian will not guarantee that change.

For the U.S. it will be another anti-U.S. country in the region and more instability as well as the increase of drug-trafficking from Honduras. For Venezuela and its illegal president, Mr. Nicolas Maduro, Mrs. Zelaya triumph will be his first international victory. For the Americas: another failed country in the hands of elected authoritarians. For Honduras, more misery and less freedom: a Chronicle of a Death Foretold.

https://www.thenation.com/article/our-gang-venezuela/

david corn

In the weeks before the April 12-13 coup in Venezuela, Asociacion Civil Consorcio Justicia, a legal rights outfit, was planning an April 10 conference to promote democracy in that country. At the time, Venezuela was undergoing severe political strife. Business groups and labor unions were bitterly squaring off against President Hugo Chavez, a democratically elected strongman/populist. Using an $84,000 grant from the Washington-basedNational Endowment for Democracy,a quasi-governmental foundation funded by Congress, Consorcio Justicia was supposed to bring together political parties, unions, business associations, religious groups and academicians to discuss “protecting fundamental political rights,” as an NED document put it. In a proposed agenda Consorcio Justicia listed as one of the main speakers Pedro Carmona, president of Fedecamaras, a leading Venezuelan business group. But when the coup came, Carmona was handpicked by the plotters to head a government established in violation of the Constitution. Then he signed a decree suspending the National Assembly and the Supreme Court. Carmona, it turns out, was hardly interested in safeguarding “fundamental political rights.”

Fortunately for NED, the conference was part of a series that never happened. The program was canceled as Venezuela was hit by national strikes that would lead to the massive business-and-labor demonstration against Chavez on April 11, in which at least eighteen people were killed by unidentified gunmen. The murders provided Chavez’s military foes cause, or cover, to move against him early the next morning. (A recent Human Rights Watch report concluded, “Both sides bear responsibility for the shootings.”) But imagine if the NED-backed conference had occurred and Carmona had appeared there–days before becoming a front man for the coup-makers. That was a close call for NED. Instead, the episode may be no more than a mild what-if embarrassment for NED, which is supposed to finance pro-democracy activism around the world. It shows, though, how democracy-promotion can slip, perhaps unintentionally, toward supporting the opposite–especially in a highly polarized political environment like the one in Venezuela.

Created by President Ronald Reagan and Congress in 1983, NED was designed to run a parallel foreign policy for the United States, backing and assisting entities that Washington might not be able to officially endorse–say, an opposition party challenging a government with which the United States maintained diplomatic relations. In a way, NED took public some of the covert political activity the CIA had previously mounted. The endowment–which devotes much of its budget to funding the foreign policy arms of the Democratic and Republican parties, the Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO (its core grantees)–has been involved in both questionable and praiseworthy projects. It awarded a large grant to a student group linked to an outlawed extreme-right paramilitary outfit in France, helped finance the development of conservative parties in countries where democracy was doing just fine and played a heavy-handed role in Nicaragua’s 1990 elections. In the late 1980s it aided the pro-democracy opposition in Chile and antiapartheid organizations in South Africa. But even if its programs have indeed enhanced democracy on occasion, NED overall has long been problematic, as it has handed taxpayer dollars to private groups (such as the two major parties) to finance their overseas initiatives and has conducted controversial programs that could be viewed abroad as actions of the US government. What might the reaction be here, if the British government funded an effort to improve the Democratic Party’s get-out-the-vote operation in Florida?

Which brings us back to Venezuela–where the US Embassy was compelled after the coup to declare as a “myth” the notion that “the US government, through organizations such as the National Endowment for Democracy, financed coup efforts.” For months before the coup, Americans–including US government officials and officials of NED and its core grantees–were in contact with Venezuelans and political parties that became involved or possibly involved with the coup. This has provided Latin Americans cause to wonder if the United States is continuing its tradition of underhandedly meddling in the affairs of its neighbors to the south. And these contacts have prompted some, though not much, official probing in Washington. The issue is not only whether the United States in advance OK’d this particular coup (of which there is little evidence) or tried to help it once it occurred (of which there is more evidence). But did discussions between Americans and Chavez foes–such as those involving NED–encourage or embolden the coup-makers and their supporters? Give them reason to believe the United States would not protest should they move against Chavez in an unconstitutional manner? Much of the two-day coup remains shrouded in confusion. (It came and went so quickly: Carmona fled office the day after he seized power, once several military units announced they opposed the military coup, whereupon Chavez was returned to his office.) But enough questions linger about US actions in Venezuela to warrant a good look.

Consider some NED activities there. When Consorcio Justicia began to assemble the pro-democracy conferences, it approached the two main opponents of Chavez–Carmona and his Fedecamaras, as well as the Confederation of Venezuelan Workers (CTV), the leading anti-Chavez labor union–according to documents obtained from NED under a Freedom of Information Act request. Christopher Sabatini, NED’s senior program officer for Latin America, says, “The idea was that the conferences (which were to include Chavistas) would be able to define a consensus-based policy agenda” for the entire country. But certainly NED’s core grantees were trying to beef up Venezuelan organizations challenging Chavez. The AFL-CIO, for example, was working (seemingly laudably) to bolster and democratize the CTV, which Chavez had been trying to intimidate and infiltrate. The International Republican Institute was training several parties that opposed Chavez. At one session, Mike Collins, a former GOP press secretary, taught party leaders how to mount photo-ops; at another he suggested to Caracas Mayor Alfredo Peña, a prominent Chavez foe, how he “could soften his aggressive image in order to appeal to a wider range of voters,” according to an IRI report. (Human Rights Watch found that at least two members of the police force controlled by Peña–now Chavez’s primary rival–fired weapons during the April 11 melee.) The question, then, is, since it was not explicit US policy to call for Chavez’s ouster–though his departure from office was desired by the Bush Administration, which detested his oil sales to Cuba and close ties to Iraq, Iran and Libya–should US taxpayer dollars have gone to groups working to unseat Chavez, even through legitimate means?

Moreover, NED and its grantees helped organizations that may have been represented in the coup government. When Carmona unveiled his Cabinet on the morning of April 12–hours after he was placed in power by the military at 5 am–his junta included a leading official from COPEI, the Christian Democrat party, and one from Primero Justicia, a new party. IRI had provided assistance to both. Carmona also named a member of the CTV board as minister of planning, even though he was not a recognized leader of the union. And when Carmona assumed power in the presidential palace, a leading CTV figure was supposedly nearby–though his whereabouts and his role have been subjects of debate. The CTV did denounce Carmona–but not until Carmona, on the afternoon of April 12, announced his decree to shutter the National Assembly and the Supreme Court. It’s not easy to determine whether Carmona’s Cabinet appointees were acting on behalf of their parties or freelancing. And as one current Venezuelan official says, “The appointees were never sworn in as ministers, so they can claim they did not approve of Carmona’s decree.”

On April 12 Carmona also said he was establishing an advisory council for his government. But he did not name the several dozen members of this group. After the coup, the Chavez government maintained that it found a list of council members. The roster supposedly included leading officials of COPEI, Primero Justicia and the CTV, including CTV head Carlos Ortega–all of whom had been in touch with and/or received assistance from NED or its core grantees. This document, if accurate, raises the prospect that recipients of NED assistance, when the crunch arrived, were more interested in overthrowing Chavez than adhering to the democratic process.

Asked whether it might be troubling if political figures who worked with NED and its grantees had agreed to assist the coup, NED’s Sabatini said, “It’s important to remember that these are independent groups, reacting–on their own–to their very difficult political environment. The NED’s programs with the groups…were very specific programs of technical assistance and training…. It’s also important to remember that these groups (when they were named to the Cabinet or to the advisory council) were acting under the belief that Chavez had resigned–as had been announced on TV.” But according to postcoup news reports, Chavez actually refused to submit his resignation. And, as Venezuelan human rights outfits argued while the coup was in progress, Carmona’s military-installed government was unconstitutional, whether or not Chavez had resigned.

At least two key NED partners did cheer the coup (as did the Bush Administration initially). On April 12 George Folsom, the IRI president, issued a statement supporting the action: “Last night, led by every sector of civil society, the Venezuelan people rose up to defend democracy in their country.” Three days later, after the coup was reversed, NED president Carl Gershman sent Folsom a letter of rebuke, noting that by welcoming Chavez’s “removal through unconstitutional means,” Folsom had “unnecessarily interjected IRI into the sensitive politics of Venezuela.” Folsom’s statement, Gershman added, “will only make it more difficult for the IRI to work in Venezuela and the region as a whole.” Gershman, though, didn’t threaten to withdraw support from IRI. And on the night of April 12–after Carmona suspended the assembly–Mercedes de Freitas, a director of the Fundacion Momento de la Gente, a legislative monitoring project subsidized by NED, e-mailed the endowment defending the military and Carmona, claiming the takeover was not a military coup.

Not all NED allies were rooting for Carmona. On April 13Carlos Ponce, executive director of Consorcio Justicia, e-mailed NED that the coup was illegal and that the decision to eliminate the legislature was “terrible.” Yet several weeks earlier Ponce had almost jumped into bed with coup supporters. While developing NED’s pro-democracy conferences, he solicited the participation of the Frente Institucional Militar de Venezuela, an organization of former military officials. That prompted a swift reply from Washington. “This is a group that has proposed a military coup!” Sabatini exclaimed in an e-mail. He noted that NED “will NOT–I repeat–will NOT support anything that involves the FIM.” Ponce subsequently said that he was unaware of FIM’s position (noting that its participation had been suggested by Carmona), and he quickly booted the organization from the conference. Another potential embarrassment was averted.

But NED was only a part of the picture. For months before the coup, according to several US media reports, US officials in Venezuela had assorted conversations with Chavez foes, and these interactions, purposefully or not, may have led the plotters to believe the Bush Administration would look favorably on anyone who made Chavez go away. Newsday noted that long before the coup, business, union and civic leaders were meeting to plan opposition to Chavez, and at one such meeting–attended by Carmona and held at the US Embassy–a coup was proposed. US officials, according to the newspaper, say they immediately killed the idea. But the officials continued to interact with these Chavez opponents. The newspaper quoted one Venezuelan source familiar with these discussions as saying, “All the United States really cared about was that it was done neatly, with a resignation letter or something to show for it.” And the Los Angeles Times reported that a “Venezuelan leader who visited Washington for an official meeting said he concluded after talks with US officials that the Americans would not necessarily punish the leaders of a government that overthrew Chavez.” A Western diplomat told the Washington Post, “I don’t think the US provided any active or material support for [the coup]. But the people involved may have seen all of these meetings and visits, added them all up, and come up with an idea that they were on the same team.” Last November then-US ambassador Donna Hrinak instructed the US military attaché in Venezuela to cut off contacts with dissident military officers. But Vice Adm. Carlos Molina, one of the leading military opponents of Chavez, said he had met with a US official several weeks before the coup.

After the coup failed, Chavez officials found inside the presidential palace documents left behind by the coup-makers. One was a note apparently written by Luis Herrera Marcano, chargé d’affaires in the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington. He was reporting on a conversation he had had with State Department official Phillip Chicola while the coup was under way. According to a copy published by Proceso, a Mexican newsmagazine, Chicola said, “Given that the United States signed and fully supports the Inter-American Democratic Charter, which condemns any violation of constitutional rule, it is necessary that the transition currently under way in Venezuela, which [the United States] understands and sympathizes with, conserve constitutional structures.”

On the morning of April 12, according to the New York Times, Otto Reich, the Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, told a gathering of Latin American and Caribbean ambassadors that they had to support the new government. The next day Reich spoke twice to Venezuelan media magnate Gustavo Cisneros, according to a Cisneros spokeswoman. Cisneros’s role in the coup–if he had one–has been a topic of speculation in Venezuela, for on the night of April 11 Carmona met with other opposition leaders at a TV station owned by Cisneros. (Cisneros denies he was a force behind the coup.) Cisneros’s spokeswoman maintains that Reich called on April 13 “as a friend” because Chavez supporters were protesting at media outlets in Caracas. And on the morning of April 13, US ambassador to Venezuela Charles Shapiro met with Carmona. According to Carmona, Shapiro expressed concern regarding Carmona’s dissolution of the legislature and urged Carmona to be less antidemocratic. If Carmona is to be believed, Shapiro did not oppose the unconstitutional means by which Carmona seized power.

The Bush Administration claims that all the contacts before and during the coup were kosher. The US Embassy in Venezuela released a statement maintaining that “of course” US officials met with opposition figures, for “that is an Embassy’s job.” But it insisted that “officials in Washington and in Caracas consistently and repeatedly emphasized the United States’ opposition to any extra-constitutional alteration of power.” The embassy denied that US military officials were involved in coup activities. It noted that Secretary of State Colin Powell declared, “We condemn the blows to constitutional order.” But Powell said that on April 19–six days after the coup collapsed.

There has been no thorough public exploration in Washington of the precoup contacts or the efforts of Bush officials to nudge the coup in a direction that would permit the Administration to openly support the takeover. At the request of Senator Christopher Dodd, who chairs the Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Latin America, the Inspector General of the State Department has been examining Bush Administration actions before and during the coup. Dodd asked the IG to review cables, e-mails and other records to determine what US officials told Chavez’s foes and to examine NED programs. The report is due at the end of July, and Dodd expects to hold hearings afterward. On April 23 the New York Times reported that the Pentagon was reviewing its actions during the coup to insure that no military officials had encouraged the plotters. But Lieut. Comdr. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, says no formal review was initiated: “It was just a matter of getting the facts together. There were questions why people from the US defense attaché were on a Venezuelan military base while this thing was going on. It was nothing out of the ordinary.”

One matter that warrants scrutiny is a Washington Post report that two military officials who publicly challenged Chavez in the weeks before the coup–Vice Admiral Molina and Col. Pedro Soto–each received $100,000 from a Miami bank. The newspaper cited an unnamed diplomat in Venezuela as its source for this curious allegation. Who in the United States might have been secretly subsidizing Chavez’s foes? Any official body that wants to investigate could start by subpoenaing Soto. In April he fled Venezuela for the United States, and in June he asked the Immigration and Naturalization Service in Miami for political asylum, claiming that he feared for his life.

Postcoup Venezuela is a jittery place of deepening division, marked by rising gun sales, political violence, constant rumors of another coup and talk of assassination. Former President Jimmy Carter failed to broker talks between Chavez and his foes; on July 11 an estimated 600,000 people demonstrated against Chavez. For the time being, Consorcio Justicia has given up on holding a large pro-democracy conference. “It’s a nasty environment,” executive director Ponce says. “We have a radical opposition and a radical government. We are unable to find ways to negotiate.” So his group is now using NED money for smaller projects. The failed coup has changed his perspective. Has it affected the policies and plans of the Bush Administration, NED or NED’s grantees? If a Congressional hearing regarding Venezuela’s cloudy coup ever convenes, that is one of many questions that ought to be asked.

fox cheerleader venez

https://www.foxnews.com/world/drug-trafficking-maduro-venezuela

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Drug trafficking keeping Maduro in power in Venezuela, analysts say

Hollie McKay [who?]

By Hollie McKay | Fox News

Pence says Venezuela ambassador 'shouldn't be here' while addressing the UN Security CouncilVideo

Pence says Venezuela ambassador 'shouldn't be here' while addressing the UN Security Council]

It has been more than three months since the U.S. accelerated its onslaught of economic sanctions on Venezuela, coupled with the back of a new interim President – heightening official expectation that the Nicolas Maduro-led regime would crumble.

Only the socialist dictatorship has failed to fall. While there an array of factors to blame, analysts are pointing to illicit trafficking rings as a fundamental Maduro lifeline.

“The Venezuelan military forces has become a narco-criminal, armed organization. Most of the top and mid-commanders are deeply involved in corruption, drug operations, and serious human rights abuses,” Johan Obdola, president of Latin America-focused global intelligence and security firm IOSI, told Fox News,}: noting that cartel-led, massive drug operations continue to spawn the country keeping the top echelon well-fed and financed. “Small pro-regime policing agencies and military units across the nation conduct these criminal operations centered on drug trafficking, kidnapping, and robbery to survive the crisis.”

Kevin Ivers, Vice President and Latin America expert at public policy firm DCI Group, pointed out that years ago, the elite of the Venezuelan military was put in charge of the core elements of the domestic economy, such as the importation and distribution of food and consumer goods.

[In this Feb. 14, 2019 file photo, Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro speaks during an interview at Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas, Venezuela. (???????AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos, File)

“This has encouraged corruption and profiteering that has made key elements of the military part of what can be called the regime’s ‘mafia,’ and this has extended beyond consumer goods to drug trafficking,” he explained. “Maduro has also spent years systematically splintering the military into factions and playing them off each other to make it difficult for them to unite against him.”

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Emanuele Ottolenghi, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, concurred that many in the upper echelons receive a cut from the regime’s illicit trafficking network – from drugs to food and medicine racketeering.

“There aren’t enough incentives(for military leaders) to leave and disincentives to stay to tip the balance, especially at the top,” he noted.

Indeed, military defections – once considered key to Maduro’s expulsion – have dipped from 80 to 100 per day earlier this year to just two or three, according to the Washington Post. And of those, very few have come from the highest ranks and thus failed to generate a game-changing ripple effect.

“There were no key defections, roughly 500 members of the military without any real commanders. In a 110,000 military it had no impact,” explained Carlos Ponce, a senior fellow, and director of Latin America Programs at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. “There was no real analysis of the military structure and the breaking points.”

Ponce said that former leader Hugo Chavez intentionally dismembered the lines of command to avoid a coup d’état while he was in power. He also pointed out that those who did make the leap have been paying the price.

“The commanders and high-ranking officials allegedly caught in anti-Maduro meetings have been tortured and their families isolated from any social or food program,” Ponce noted. “So there is a disincentive for anyone who showed discontent with the regime – jail or torture and abandonment to their families.”

Maduro’s reign is also being held together by external players. The U.S estimates that more than 20,000 Cuban agents alone are now planted within the Venezuelan military and law enforcement, presiding over internal operations and the movements of the top brass.

“Maduro relies heavily on foreigners to prop up his regime – Cuba, Russia, and Iran. They have a vested economic and political interest in ensuring he succeeds. Economically, to ensure that it is they that control the largest proven oil reserves in the world,” said John Wood, analyst and author of 'Russia, the Asymmetric Threat to the United States.' “Politically, to render the U.S. visibly impotent in its own backyard and thereby lay the groundwork forbuilding a viable military threat to the USA in its own hemisphere.”

[Eight-year-old Franyelis feeds her baby brother Joneiber as their mother Francibel Contreras holds a bowl of scrambled eggs and rice, at a soup kitchen in the Petare slum, Caracas, Venezuela. Contreras brings her three malnourished children to the soup kitchen in the dangerous hillside slum where they scoop in spoonfuls of food in what could be their only meal of the day. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

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Obdola also underscored that the Cubans have “established an intense regional intelligence and surveillance operation” in bordering areas and in countries that support regime change in Venezuela.

“This operation is intense and mostly in Colombia, Brazil and other nearby nations where a very unique gathering of spies, intelligence and even terrorist operations are very active,” he said.

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But the U.S., which has vowed to refurbish the rule of law and bring about new leadership in Venezuela, is yet to dramatically change its strategy.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said last week that “all options” are on the table when it comes to Venezuela, insisting that the strategy is “not just an American strategy” but the “Venezuelan’s people’s strategy.”

“Sometimes people think Maduro is winning, and yet he’s handed over all his power to the Cubans, to the Russians,” Pompeo told theVoice of AmericaSpanish. “This is weakness from Maduro. And so this weakness will ultimately lead to his departure, and democracy and prosperity will be restored in Venezuela.”

He has also taken aim at China’s role in standing by Maduro financially, mandating that their role is prolonging the protracted crisis in Venezuela.

[People cross the Tachira River into Colombia near the Simon Bolivar International bridge, which Venezuelan authorities only open to students and the sick, in Cucuta, Colombia, Tuesday, March 12, 2019, on the border with Venezuela. People crossing the river are using makeshift bridges as the water level grows with the approaching rainy season. (AP Photo/Schneyder Mendoza)

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Once awash will oil wealth and deemed the richest country in Latin America, Venezuela has been beleaguered by an economic crisis since 2015 which has since spiraled into a grave humanitarian catastrophe and prompted the exodus of almost four million into now overburdened neighboring nations. Maduro has consistently blamed the U.S. for purporting to wage "economic war," but has largely denied that there are mass problems.

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On the ground in the poverty-plagued Venezuela, it’s a mix of exasperation and desperation with the vast majority continuing to push for change and turn to the U.S. for support as time rolls on.

“There is more room for applying sanctions,” Ivers added. “Anything that cuts off the regime’s ability to generate cash, that disrupts its flow ofcontrabandgoods and drug trafficking finances, and increases the pressure of possible prosecution of senior military and regime figures for crimes against humanity or other criminal acts, will bring the regime closer to the negotiating table to seek an end to the conflict.”

Hollie McKay has a been a Fox News Digital staff reporter since 2007. She has extensively reported from war zones including Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Burma, and Latin America investigates global conflicts, war crimes and terrorism around the world. Follow her on Twitter.