Venezuela: A Collective Victory for a Collective Future
By Chris Gilbert
February 25, 2019 "Information Clearing House" -It was George W. Bush who invented the term: misunderestimating. And it’s what imperialism continually does with Venezuela.
I recall an Aló Presidente program in which Chávez was talking about the 2002 coup attempt. He said that the US thought it could easily replace him. “As simply as this,” he said and demonstrated by moving a glass of water across the table where he was seated.
Replacing Chávez wasn’t easy at all, as everybody knows. Pedro Carmona, the usurper, was quickly forgotten, whereas Chávez lasted another decade, and his movement is still in power today.
Something very similar may have happened on Saturday, as Maduro resisted a concerted international effort to bring him down.
What makes it so hard to replace Chávez and now Maduro? Certainly it’s not merely a question of leadership, since Maduro’s is middling at best. So, it must be something else: some quality or substance that generally goes unperceived on the political radar.
On Saturday, the opposition thought they could incite the Venezuelan army to rebel. They staged “desertions” to encourage the process. (I use the word “staged” advisedly. In the videos of the three National Guardsmen who crossed the bridge in Tachira and “surrendered themselves" to Colombian immigration, you can hear them saying very clearly “Somos nosotros!” ie. “It’s us!”.)
Trump and Marco Rubio view this is an example that should inspire other soldiers to rebel, but Venezuelans see it as something completely different. They view the deserting soldiers as traitors, to say nothing of being simply ridiculous.
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