Caracas Chronicles

El País has published its report on the latest batch of Wikileaks, a significant bunch dealing with Venezuela. From a cursory read of the contents of the cables, the thing is just one big snooze.

Let’s see. According to the super secret Wikileaks documents that the world is abuzz about:

– Cuban intelligence services have direct access to Hugo Chávez.

– Cubans exercise control over immigration and documentation offices.

– Chávez trusts the Cubans more than he trusts his own Armed Forces.

– The image of the United States in Venezuela has suffered in the last 11 years.

– Venezuelan intelligence services infiltrate the opposition and do their best to divide them.

– Chávez only trusts in Adán Chávez, a communist, and in Fidel Castro.

– Chávez and the Cubans have tapped US Embassy communications.

– There are about 40,000 Cuban agents in Venezuela, although the Embassy can’t independently confirm these numbers.

Are you still awake?

Forgive me for stating the obvious, but we have heard all of this before in countless Nelson Bocaranda gossip columns. The El País story drably confirms what we all know.

Perhaps Hillary Clinton should resign – for allowing her Embassy to be staffed by people who know just about as much as the rest of us.

If anything, the Wikileaks content on Venezuela is interesting in what it does not contain. There are no known acknowledgments of US financing of Venezuelan political parties, no established links between the Embassy and opposition politicians, and no smoking gun regarding the much-touted but never-proven US involvement in the April 2002 coup against Chávez.

The Wikileaks Chávez chapter – at least what we have read so far – is all bark and no bite, all buildup and no payoff, all tease and no climax. It’s kind of a waste of time.