By Luis Manuel Aguana
If anything has been served these
days without electricity courtesy of the regime by action, omission, corruption
and deliberate chaos, it has been to stop reading for a while in electronic
(Twitter, WhatsApp, news sites and articles on the web) forcing me to return to
the traditional method of reading in paper books. And since there's no bad
thing that doesn't come in handy, as the popular saying goes, re-reading the
work of master Manuel Caballero "Romulo Betancourt, politician of the nation",
I found this pearl that I had previously overlooked because we weren't in the
situation we're in:
"But above all there is a lesson that in one way or another has to
impress him (referring to Betancourt), so much so that it is evident: the
Venezuelan people may detest the gomecist regime, but first and foremost they
hate civil war. Along with his Marxist readings, when he arrived in Costa Rica,
he said it many times, Betancourt will dedicate his scarce free time to reading
Francisco González Guinán's very boring and gigantic Contemporary History of
Venezuela. To go through these pages
is to realize why the Venezuelan people prefer tyranny to anarchy, despotism to
war. And the relevance for the history of the country is accentuated by
the 28th movement of the group of young people who rebelled in the street and
not in the camps...". (1) (highlighted
by us)
That quote hit me like a hammer on
the head. And I flew into González
Guinán's Contemporary History of Venezuela - which in my opinion is not boring
at all - and rescued the following quotation that corresponds to the
description of the period of José Tadeo and José Gregorio Monagas in the 19th
century, which can well be applied to all the bloody history of that century,
including the Federal War:
"it was about political upheavals, civil wars, social upheavals, faults,
liberal conquests, institutional reforms, nepotism, and the usurpation of
public power. In its beginning, the exaltation of the passions of the parties
communicated to politics an extraordinary warmth: men forgot their homeland;
the parties fought with fierceness; hatred animated hearts; slander was
introduced with anger into the ranks of adversaries; reprisals were cruel, and
having taken the dais of the legislators as the sad arena of gladiators to
begin the armed struggle, the temple of law was desecrated and opened the dark
palenque of internal wars". (2)
That text is a precise description
of what is happening in Venezuela today. History repeats itself and the
difference is that the war has not yet begun. Too much blood has been shed in
our country, and according to the quote from Betancourt's life described by
Manuel Caballero, that violence was engraved in the genes of Venezuelans to the
point of preferring "tyranny to anarchy, despotism to war," and
hence, according to the historian, to fight tyranny, Betancourt chose a
Leninist party forged for civil struggles rather than going to armed
confrontation. But is this what you would apply today? I would venture to
assert that this assessment is not as applicable as it was at the time. We are
not facing a common tyranny. We are facing an international criminal cartel.
So thinking of political tools to
deal with a situation that is criminal in nature puts things in a different
perspective; and where it definitely requires the use of legitimate state violence,
only in this case this violence is hijacked by criminals.
But there is still a quotation pending
for history and it would seem that we are indeed willing to set ourselves a
tyranny preferring despotism to war. It's hard to say, but so far that's what's
happened. But it has happened because the political factors driving the process
have not dared to establish the conditions for that decision to be faced by the
people themselves. Hence, a timorous political leadership makes the car of
history not advance because she has decided to drive with one foot on the
accelerator and the other on the brake at the same time, due to the most abject
interests that favor the internal politics of the parties opposed to the
welfare of the population.
And in that sense, the Director of
the Inter-American Institute for Democracy, Carlos Sánchez Berzaín, puts his
finger on that wound when he states in a recent article: "Today in Venezuela there are only two entities that do not
recognize Juan Guaidó as President in Charge and they are Maduro's dictatorship
and the National Assembly that is supposed to end the dictatorship. Guaidó is prisoner of the sum of minorities
that make up the opposition majority, which prevents the President from forming
a government because he has imposed in articles 7, 25 and 26 of the Statute
that there will be a transitional government only "once the usurpation of
the Presidency of the Republic of Venezuela by Nicolás Maduro Moros has
ceased". And further down he ends: "Time
is running out in favor of the dictatorship that applies the strategy of
suffocating Guaidó, wearing down its very high popular support and using it as
its greatest political weakness. Such great popular support is used by the
dictatorship so that Guaidó does not have the real backing of the leaders of
the political parties that say they are in opposition, because if he manages to
withdraw the dictatorship and call elections, Guaidó could easily be elected
and would be surpassing three generations of candidates that today are in control
of the National Assembly" (I recommend reading Carlos Sánchez Berzaín,
Transitional Government to end the dictatorship in Venezuela, in Spanish, in http://www.carlossanchezberzain.com/2019/03/11/gobierno-de-transicion-para-terminar-la-dictadura-en-venezuela/).
We have reiterated on several
occasions the unconstitutionality of the aforementioned Statute for the
Transition, which hijacks the constitutional powers of the President in favour
of a coalition of parties. If Guaidó remains a prisoner of that Statute, it
will be difficult for him to have his hands free to do what he has to do to
leave Maduro definitively, since he has already been declared legitimate
President as a fundamental first step, with all the support that the
International Community and Venezuelans have given him.
If the National Assembly itself does
not recognize Juan Guaidó with all the corresponding symbols of power and is
prevented from forming a government immediately, the International Community
will be bound by hands to act in favor of Venezuelans, preventing the
Venezuelan people from deciding between tyranny and anarchy, or between
despotism and war if necessary. That is why the National Assembly refuses to
approve the authorization of Article 187.11 for the international military
custody of Humanitarian Aid. The pettiness and ambition of the political
leadership of the G4 parties is such that their leaders and candidates will
first allow the opportunity to succeed in this new opposition cycle with Juan
Guaidó and the Venezuelans at the head to be lost before giving in to their
ambitions for power. That is
criminal and must be denounced!
Venezuelans
must demand that Guaidó finish being formally recognized by the deputies of the
National Assembly as the Constitutional President in Charge of the Republic, as
our constituents that they are, so that he proceeds to form a government and
immediately summons Venezuelans to close ranks behind his leadership. I am sure
that with this open opportunity, and before the very serious and exceptional
situation of Venezuela, Venezuelans will demonstrate that they have no problem
in deciding against tyranny and despotism, even if we have to fight a war to
get out of anarchy.
Caracas,
March 11, 2018
Email: luismanuel.aguana@gmail.com
Twitter:@laguana
(1) Manuel Caballero, “Rómulo
Betancourt, político de nación, ISBN: 978-980-354-246-7, Pág. 352-353, Caracas-Venezuela,
Editorial Alfa, 2008.
(2) Francisco González Guinán, Historia
Contemporánea de Venezuela, Tomo I, Prólogo, Págs. XIII-XIV, Ediciones de la
Presidencia de la República, 1954.
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