By Luis Manuel Aguana
In a scene of the extraordinary film production "The Patriot",
when it was debated in an assembly in Charleston, South Carolina, to go to war
or not with the British to make the United States independent, Benjamin Martin,
the personage carried out by Mel Gibson, was against going to the war with the
English. He said clearly: "This war
will not be fought on the borders or in the isolated fields, the battle will
come to us. The children will see it as it is up close and many of them will
die ... ". The participation of the citizens in that war ended up
being imposed and Martin had to get in full, losing two of his children in it,
not because he was looking for it but because the war found him. He did not
want the war but he could not do anything to avoid it.
The so-called "Junquito Massacre" where
former CICPC Inspector Oscar Perez and his group of armed resistance against
the regime of Nicolas Maduro lost their lives to the regime's security forces
and an armed group of the parish "23 de Enero", has triggered an
unexpected chain reaction by the regime, but also exacerbation towards a
violent exit from this nightmare that has been going on for almost 20 years.
Many
Venezuelans already believe that there are no alternative solutions to violence
to end this serious state of affairs in Venezuela. The creation of an opinion matrix
that points to the multiplication of groups similar to those organized by Oscar
Pérez goes precisely in the sense of a violent "solution" to the
conflict presented to us before a regime that seeks to subjugate the Venezuelan
people through the use of force. It is clear that the regime has no choice but
to massacre the opponents in order to impose itself and keep us all in a state
of panic because they unconstitutionally use power. That's what a dictatorship is all about.
However,
some Venezuelans do not allow themselves to be led by this threat to argue that
the solution to this conflict cannot and should not follow the path that the
regime tries to impose, which is none other than the violence unleashed. In the
field of violence, they will always have the advantage because they illegally
dispose of state violence at will, which by its very nature must be unlimited
because the final care of citizens must rest on it. But with institutional
violence in the hands of an outlaw regime, the result is what we saw on January
15 in El Junquito.
Why do you
think that the conflicts in the world are being resolved from the political
arena? Because apart from the sequel of death that comes from not doing so, the
violent solution is not lasting. There is always someone unhappy when the
imposition is by reason of force and not by force of reason. And that is why
the general convention is that those who hold institutional arms worldwide must
be subordinate to civilian power and not the other way around. That is the great conquest of
civilization.
But when,
as in our case, things are turned upside down and out of control, with
institutional violence being left in the hands of those who behave criminally,
one of the most common natural reactions of people is to solve the problem with
more violence, when precisely going down that road is to try to put out a fire
with gasoline.
However, we
still have the problem. How can we solve it without resorting to violence? Is a
constitutional, democratic, peaceful and electoral solution to the problem
possible? The regime holds the institution of voting hostage, which is the
fundamental instrument for resolving conflicts in a democracy. Without a vote
administered by an independent entity and not controlled by the government, it
denaturalizes its purpose and instead of being an instrument for conflict
resolution, it becomes the most useful element of authoritarianism to
legitimize the institutional kidnapping of the country.
Regrettably,
the degree of moral and institutional degradation to which the official
opposition has reached means that the regime plays with them to the permanent
electoral exercise at its whim, bringing them to that terrain at its discretion
and under its conditions. Venezuelans once again witnessed an illegal call for
a presidential election with conditions in which the government has every
chance to win again, thus prolonging the suffering of a people who do not see
how to "get out" of this misgovernment without making use of
violence.
The
Venezuelan political leadership has been unable to produce a statehood solution
capable of driving the outraged population out of this tragedy, once again
subrogating itself to the designs of a dictatorship that uses the vote to bolt
itself to power. They are the first to speak of primaries and pre-candidates to
"compete" in an arranged election, under the auspices of an
unconstitutional National Constituent Assembly. What can you get out of there?
Clearly more hunger and frustration for Venezuelans.
What can we
Venezuelans do? Going to vote for that chanted fraud? To go to that electoral
carnival that has covered up a massacre that Venezuelans still don't overcome?
It is time to listen to other solutions emerging from the most respected
institutions in society and which are already making themselves known.
From the
Exhortation of the Venezuelan Bishops in the Venezuelan Episcopal Conference on
the occasion of the celebration of their CIX Plenary Ordinary Assembly held on
January 12 (http://www.cev.org.ve/index.php/noticias/273-exhortacion-de-la-cev-en-ocasion-de-celebrar-su-cix-asamblea-ordinaria-plenaria-dios-consolara-a-su-pueblo-isaias-49-13),
we extract this point of extraordinary importance in this dark hour where
Venezuelans do not know what to do:
“6. The increasingly serious difficulties of
understanding between the government and the political opposition, in the
absence of a common point of support that is respected in reality, such as the
current Constitution, require the people to assume their vocation of being
social subjects with their capacities to carry out initiatives such as, for
example, that civil society carry out a consultation to indicate the direction
that they want to give to the nation as contemplated in our Magna Carta (Cfr.
Art. 71). If this right were to be denied or if initiatives to realize it were
hindered, only two possibilities would remain: definitive loss of freedom, with
all its consequences, or actions of resistance and rebellion against usurping
power. It is the organized people who have the last word. Together with the
majority of Venezuelans, we hope that political leadership and civil society
will present a credible and feasible country project.”
The
Venezuelan Catholic Church has already indicated a possible course. Why don't
we go through it? It remains for us in civil society to implement this
solution, assuming our responsibility as a social subject with the capacity to
crystallize this initiative. We already did it once on 16J-2017. We must now
substantially improve that experience, but this time by ensuring its effective
implementation. How to do this is perfectly possible, but we must work
intelligently for it.
That is
what is called a political solution to the problem, and that is what
the international community has been waiting for a long time for us to be able
to channel the aid they want to give us fervently. From outside friendly
governments will not send us weapons to resolve this conflict. And those who
bet on a violent way out will bitterly prolong the suffering of the population.
We must hurry, let's not expect the war to find us because we did nothing to
prevent it...
Caracas,
January 24, 2018
Email: luismanuel.aguana@gmail.com
Twitter:@laguana
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