Before getting into the subject, I must previously remind you of part of an old note I wrote in December 2016, as a reaction to a conference given by Father Luis Ugalde, S.J., at the Open Space Foundation:
"There is a reason why they say that history is written by the victors. And that of January 23, 1958 is no exception. That charming story that we have been told since I can remember and that has been built in the collective imagination that some "civilian military" led by Wolfgang Larrazábal allowed the return to democracy in 1958 is not exactly historically accurate.
And the most interesting thing about this is that this is the argument used to justify the possibility of a return to democracy from the hands of other "military civilians" who, in the same detached gesture, would hand over power to civilians for a new 1958, as suggested by Father Luis Ugalde in a recent conference (see in Spanish Luis Ugalde, "Without military support we will not get out of this dictatorship or recover democracy", in https://www.controlciudadano.org/noticias/padre-luis-ugalde-sin-apoyo-militar-no-salimos-de-esta-dictadura-ni-recuperamos-la-democracia/). I am sorry to disagree with Father Ugalde. Many things happened in 1958 that few people know about and that I believe Ugalde knows well, being one of the intellectuals who has best studied our contemporary history.
Without wishing to disparage any historical figure, the role and significance of Larrazábal within the Armed Forces at that time is not unknown to the military, especially to those who played a leading role in the era we are dealing with here. The true military leadership was not precisely in this officer who played a fundamental role in favor of the architecture of power designed by leaders of the stature of Rómulo Betancourt.
The real leadership of the Armed Forces was in officers like Hugo Enrique Trejo, whose failed movement of January 1, 1958, broke the power of the dictatorship, and who were imprisoned on January 23. It would be necessary to investigate why these officers remained imprisoned after the return of democracy, and who later proved to be uncomfortable for the new political leadership that took over the reins of the country.
In the opinion of some officers who were eyewitnesses to that story, Betancourt and those who accompanied him would never have been able to politically negotiate a transition to democracy with the then real leadership of the Armed Forces, who were subdued in the dungeons of the dictatorship, and who were conveniently left in that condition until power had been secured" (ver nota completa en Larrazabal II y cuando entran los militares, en https://ticsddhh.blogspot.com/2016/12/larrazabal-ii-y-cuando-entran-los_14.html).
After this reminder that aims to ground the significance of a new anniversary date of the events of January 23, 1958, I would like to set it with what is happening now in Venezuela, because to some extent history stubbornly tends to repeat itself but with different actors.
The figures indicate that most of the prisoners that the regime keeps in the dungeons of the security forces are military. According to the figure of just one month ago, according to the NGO Foro Penal, as of December 19, 2022, there are a total of 274 political prisoners in Venezuela, of which 151 are military. That is, a little more than 55% of the persecutions carried out by the regime to protect itself from an eventual displacement, are carried out in the barracks (see Balance of #PoliticalPrisons in Venezuela as of 12/19/2022 by @ForoPenal, in https://twitter.com/ForoPenal/status/1605975715630813184).
And this is only logical. They have long known that their stability depends on the weapons seized from Venezuelans. And this was also the case with tyrannies in the past, where the main military leaders of a possible uprising were subjected to the worst imprisonment and humiliation. According to where they think the leadership of the military can move, there they put their greatest outrage.
It happened during the times of Gómez and Pérez Jiménez. In this era, the cruelty has been against military men such as Captain Juan Carlos Caiguaripano, Captain Luis de la Sotta, General Raúl Isaías Baduel (with the tragic result known to all and which is still pending a thorough investigation), and more recently with Colonel Igbert Marin Chaparro, who is denied the minimum human conditions for his confinement, and is currently on hunger strike.
Now, in the midst of this horror that has been committed with the military, we see with disbelief that the former Minister of Internal Relations Major General (Ex) Miguel Rodríguez Torres, creator of the Tomb, responsible for the deaths of the Jorge Redman students and Bassil Da Costa in 2014, was released from his 5-year confinement in the DGCIM a few hours ago and sent to Spain, led by former Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. Things have to be very serious inside the barracks for the regime to believe it dangerous to keep that senior officer imprisoned in Venezuela, without daring to give him the same treatment they gave General Baduel.
In no way do I think that this release is a gracious concession to the former minister of the regime, so that they would consider that it was more important for them to have him far away from Venezuela. These are the cracks in the tyranny. The hunger strike of Col. Marín Chaparro, first of his promotion and former commander of the first military unit of the country, the Ayala Battalion of Fuerte Tiuna, makes that officer more preferable for the tyranny to be dead than alive.
That is a consideration that I wish Commander Marin Chaparro himself would take into account before he meets the same fate as Franklin Brito. This tyranny does not care about a hunger strike, on the contrary, it is an escape for them, even if they are later responsible for its consequences. What truly terrifies them is to have an officer with these credentials be an example for others to follow in the barracks.
And that is what this whole issue is about: where is the leadership of the Armed Forces? The regime trying to prevent at all costs that the real leadership moves to the military dissidence, as it was once embodied in Hugo Enrique Trejo on January 1, 1958, and, on the other hand, an unsustainable country situation for all, and especially for them, which will necessarily sooner rather than later force them to intervene. Thank God, leadership is not something that anyone, least of all the regime, determines.
But history is stubborn and unpredictable. The evil is already done. The very bases of the whole Venezuelan society, including the military who are not part of the looting, do not want them. The last stage is for one of them to assume the leadership of the support of the regime in order to change it. And there will be no High Command there and they know it.
However, as I indicated in that 2016 note, if an unexpected movement occurs and the military dissidence to the regime takes control, they will enter with an agenda that nobody will know until they say so. That can be either to make elections in 1, 2 or 10 years, to make a Constituent or to stay forever in power if they feel like it. Nobody will know until that happens. There are no guarantees of anything. In that completely uncontrolled scenario, I prefer a criminal of crimes against humanity to be in Spain and not here at that moment, taking control of the situation. There can always be someone worse than the one we already have. Notice that we had Maduro after Chavez....
January 23, 1958 should be commemorated as the day of a transition to democracy, not the day we came out of a tyranny. To have reached a democracy after 23E was the work of statesmen that we really do not have now. I have no doubt on this day of the inevitability of the end of the regime. My doubt lies in what is to come. If we are all clear about this, we must work so that whatever happens the day after this transition, however it comes, does not catch us unprepared and without knowing what to do.
The best message of January 23rd to Venezuelans is not for the military to put an end to an unviable and narco-criminal tyranny, in strict adherence to the Constitutional order, but for those who come after them to have a minimum of ethical, moral and intellectual stature to establish with the true leadership of the Armed Forces a safe route that will lead us to a process of recovery of the system of liberties. May God help us...
Caracas, January 23, 2023
Blog:
TIC’s & Derechos Humanos, https://ticsddhh.blogspot.com/
Email: luismanuel.aguana@gmail.com
Twitter:@laguana
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