Caracas Chronicles

“I am not a CIA agent,” this is how Luis Almagro begins his response to Nicolas Maduro’s accusations on the involvement of the Secretary General of the OAS in an international plot to depose him.

Maduro made his statement during, perhaps, the clumsiest press conference he has held until now (?!?!?!?!). Yes, I’m going on a limb with that one. But keep in mind that the government’s intention was to simmer down the hype around the whole authoritarian state of exception sham of the weekend, and in the end he basically said the recall referendum was part of a scheme to oust him, and that he was sort of willing to scratch the AN.

Almagro was quick to respond. First a bitch slap: “You betray your people and your supposed ideology with your rambling tirades, you are a traitor to ethics in politics with your lies and you betray the most sacred principle in politics, which is to subject yourself to the scrutiny of your people.”

And then this:

I hope that no one commits the folly of carrying out a coup d’état against you, but also that you yourself do not do so. It is your duty. You have an obligation to public decency to hold the recall referendum in 2016, because when politics are polarized the decision must go back to the people. That is what the Constitution says. To deny the people that vote, to deny them the possibility of deciding, would make you just another petty dictator, like so many this Hemisphere has had.

This last bit we’re still trying to digest. The Spanish version, however, is so much better. The Secretary General’s unbashful “tuteo” of Maduro makes it sound deeply personal, and irate. You can almost see the stains from Almagro’s foaming mouth:”No soy agente de la CIA. Y tu mentira, aunque repetida mil veces, nunca será verdad.” Damn.

Maduro and the gang are not in a labyrinth. They are clearly between a sword and a boot.