Caracas Chronicles

MARIO SILVA: On [April] 12th [Nicolas Maduro] tells me: Call me when you can, without saying it live on air.

I call him. You know what he tells me?

Hold on, this is what he told me, and he sends me a photo. That his face just appeared in the Comandante’s [Chavez] portrait in the Cuartel de la Montaña, and that there’s even a video of that…

His face had appeared in the hands of the Comandante, and they have it on video and everything. There you got it, the picture.

CUBAN SECRET AGENT PALACIOS: Yes…

SILVA:  There it is. I’m sending it. (shows the picture)

I never saw the video. There it is. His face was in the Comandante’s hands, and they say they have it on video and everything.

Now, as the good atheist that I am, I can tell you, that perhaps is only a theme that they want it to put at the last minute, that the Comandante appereared to him.

But I leave the nonsense, I called Jorge Rodríguez and I told him: Jorge, this is happening at the Cuartel de la Montaña, and Jorge tells me: Be careful of what you say Mario, because this would be (he makes a sound with his hands) the campaign would collapse in two days completely by saying that Nicolás is crazy.

I understand that pretty quickly and I tell him: Look Nicolás, Jorge called me to give me some indications regarding Capriles’s lie, and I mentioned the video. And he told me that I should be very careful with the interpretation that the media can spin to this. However, even if I share Jorge’s concern for the evil purpose those media outlets always have, I was impressed by such event.

I’m not gonna tell him I don’t believe in that crap. Right? But if he tells me that happened in front of Casa Militar [Presidential Guard], in front of [Aragua Governor] Tarek El Aissami. I don’t know…

However, I think, here in my pretty evil and Machiavellian head, I think Diosdado Cabello is promoting this thing, knowing that if that comes to light…

PALACIOS: It would be a boom.

SILVA:  It was a boom. It would be a punch. They would say Nicolás is crazy, like that [Diógenes] Escalante guy, that was here… and Nicolás would lose.

That’s over. Dead. Never spoken again.

PALACIOS: And that photo really…

SILVA:  I don’t know. I never got the video. What I got was that picture from Tarek El Aissami.

PALACIOS: That picture can be…

SILVA:  Yes, it can be downloaded. Yes, I can sent by e-mail, no problem. That was… The only proof I have… because they were supposed to send me the video and they never did. They stop it, whatever, think about that.

But…

PALACIOS: Tarek sent you that photo…

SILVA:  Tarek El Aissami mailed me that photo. “Impressive”, he writes. “Fuck”. “Chávez is watching us”, and stuff like that.

Well fuck…

I just… I, as a good Marxist, I keep it quiet and never said anything.