As you watch this simply jaw-dropping video, try to keep in mind that these National Guardsmen are shooting at people who are shooting back at them with guns that other National Guardsmen smuggled into the prison in the first place:
Staggering.
Update: One reader writes in to say this video isn’t of the latest National Guard action in El Rodeo, but of one several months back. Which, when you think about it, makes it even worse.
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This is the people that is responsible for our security and defense… Sigh.
Venezuela: FUBAR Country.
From SNAFU and TARFU, the situation in 1998…
Now it’s FUBAR and going on FUBB.
Some Venezuelans have chosen to BOHICA. Others say DILLIGAF and FIDO and go on with their lives however they can.
Yet other Venezuelans have said FUBIO and FUBISO to the whole setup, telling the LTC to KMACYOYO.
Because we have come to believe that our country is simply SOL.
…They’re only missing the surfboards and the Wagner Soundtrack…
Challenge accepted!
*wink*
Sounds more like a bunch of giggling high school kids playing video games than soldiers of engaged in a deadly firefight with their fellow countrymen. “It’s my turn! It’s my turn!” I quit counting the word “marico” at 12, though there are many more. Ah, the beautiful revolution. And Chavez? Nowhere. Venezuela disgusts me more and more. What a shame. A terrible, terrible shame.
Rank and file soldiers are… kids with weapons, mostly. There are special forces and picked cadres and motivated small armies and officers. But soldiers are kids of average intelligence with way-above-average weapons, shooting at someone because they were told to. They might be more disciplined than gangbangers, they might not be drunk or high on speed, but… they are kids with weapons. And a basic inclination to use them.
The digital age has made it obvious for all to see. But the fact is older than armies.
That’s why everything not relating to enemy armies is preferably handled using policemen and jail guards. Even policemen with better guns at hand and special training. Even bad cops.
You are right. I buy that. The situation is just awful, but the soldiers are not atypical.
The lack of professionalism is unbelievable. They´re just plating Call of Duty.
That’s precisely the reason any reasonable individual has to feel apprehensive, if not afraid every time they say they have sent the Army in. Anywhere in the world, any Army, at any moment in history. If the Army is coming their way.
The reason we got home and stayed put there when informed that the Army was sent to Caracas on February-March 1989. The reason why ordering Plan Avila was one of the more incriminating acts of Tiburon 1 on April 2002.
The reason why Venezuelan jails should have been handled by specially trained guards, and cops in the worst case. Even bad cops would be better.
The National Guard is one of the 4 branches of the Armed Forces (what Chavez now calls the Armed Force, in soingular. Another discussion…).
They are military, but unlike soldiers from the Army, in compulsory military service, they are not rank and file. National Guardsmen are professional soldiers. They should have professional training and behavior, which you don’t have to expect from Army soldiers. Thus, what we see here is really, really worst!!
Good point.
But that was the old National Guard. The old Guard, bad as it might have been, was a military outfit tasked primarily with internal security. A gendarmerie force, with it’s own structure and mission. Mainly, you saw them as well-armed national police with territorial defence duties , rather than soldiers. They tended to be older and wiser to the ways of the world for better or worse, had a different uniform.
These guys, however… they are the New Bolivarian National Guard with Army uniforms, after Hugo Chavez was done with it.
I don’t know……
Almost 30 years ago I was a track runner and my group had the possibility of using the track at a National Guard school. To me, these guys behave and talk like those back then. Expletives, bad treatment, joking, disrespect, etc. Maybe when Pérez Jiménez they were different.
Do the obscenities sound bad? Well, that is the normal speak I heard everywhere. Not only in poor neighborhoods. Does one of the guys say “marico” a lot? Make a tour through middle class colegios and listen. In fact, the way these NG speak is the way most Venezuelans speak.
We might blame the government if we want, but that behavior, lack of professionalism and way of doing things goes beyond that. I have kept in several posts, that believing or maintaining that this country was a silver cup en vías de desarrollo before Chavez came and screwed it, is a mistake that does not help.
David:
After Perez Jimenez left, and through the 60′s and part of the 70′s, the National Guard for the most part was professional, honorable and ethical. So were Fiscales de Transito and Policemen in General.
It seems to me that during and after CAP I things started going down hill. Easy money everywhere and low salaries contributed to the worsening of standards.
I don’t know about the start of CAP I, but afterwards it was pretty bad. It is not only among these guys. I think on the coast and in the Llanos a lot of guys across social groups can be rather gross.
I remember a guy who was telling a friend’s mother something and he was using the word “marico” like some kind of pause marker…until the mother told him he was called her like that.
Of course, that does not mean that you could expect the GN to be better than your friendly PM officer.
But these guys go all the way to conscripts.
Afghanistan? Iraq? Somalia? Libya? No. Its a Venezuelan prison.
Small correction: this video is not of the recent riots in el Rodeo, I saw it a few months ago. Just shows that this a recurring problem in the hell that Venezuelan jails have become. I think there is a saying that goes something like: “we can see the qualities of a society by how they treat their worst citizens”…
Thank you René. Duly updated.
If this video is not recent, when was shot then?
5000 soldiers unable gain control of a prison quickly and meanwhile causing so many casualties in their effort? Also, families so distressed and angry.
How well could they control s popular uprising of hundreds of thousands?
The difference would be that, unlike the prisoners, the general populace is not as heavily armed & they could use their new Russian tanks.
Somebody sent me another video, this one does seem “contemporary” (although that’s not the point):
This one is EXTREMELY shocking and has been taken down a lot.
Watch under your own responsability.
To Roberto N, Kepler: Yes, CAP I is an important milestone. Other than I was entering my teenage years, with all the changes they bring, it was the explosion of bad government, excesses, the never ending inflation curve, public services deterioration and public sector clogging.
Of course, elegance and education were also lost in those days. But worst than that, we started losing the sense of responsibilities and duties. Is that when the country changed? Possibly….
Loroferoz, I don’t understand the “these guys go all the way to conscripts”