Caracas Chronicles

Photo: Perú21 retrieved

Why not?

“Saludos revolucionarios,” a book written by  journalist Sophie Bonnet has just been released in France. Bonnet dedicated months to recording her conversations with Venezuelan international terrorist Carlos Ilich Ramírez Sánchez (Michelena, Táchira State, October 12, 1949). In this publication, the infamous Jackal brags about his crimes and claims that he’s murdered 83 people with his “own hands” and over 2,000 with his troops (by the way, there’s more than a couple investigators who say that The Jackal’s various accounts of his exploits throughout the years are considerably exaggerated).

He also boasted that he’ll leave prison and come back to Venezuela “to take power”.

In truth, it seems that the Tachirense, known all over the world for his crimes, is no more than a bungler and that his death toll is exactly that which justice has indicted him for. Nevertheless, he also boasted that he’ll leave prison and come back to Venezuela “to take power”.

The Jackal faces an obstacle regarding this project. He’ll hardly slip away from the three life sentences he’s paying in France: the first, as mentioned in EFE’s article about Bonnet’s book, for assassinating two French secret agents and an informer in 1975; the second, for four attacks in France, in 1982 and 1983, where 11 people died and around 200 were injured; and the third, for an attack on a commercial gallery in Paris in 1974, which left two people dead and 30 injured.

Were it not for this, The Jackal would have few problems to get to Miraflores and hang his portrait beside Simón Bolívar’s, Hugo Chávez’s and Nicolás Maduro’s. A genuine poker of kings. He has everything. For starters, he announced that as soon as he came back to Venezuela, he’d kill “over a thousand people with citizens’ help”. Apparently, he’s already made his to-do list to make everything “return to its rightful place”. Words of a great and complex strategist, no doubt.

The Jackal would have few problems to get to Miraflores and hang his portrait beside Simón Bolívar’s, Hugo Chávez’s and Nicolás Maduro’s.

One of the promises that earned Chávez great sympathy from the people was that as soon as he’d reach the Presidency of the Republic, he’d focus on “frying the heads of adecos in boiling oil”. Of course, Venezuela used to produce oil back then, but importing a few tons of oil  with money stolen from, say, dialysis treatments or supplies for identity documents, is nothing compared to the enthusiastic support for the government’s policy of murdering adversaries. You can sneak a peek on social media and you’ll confirm that each sector from the diverse Venezuelan public sphere has a list of citizens they’d gladly kill. Debating, settle differences? Why would we do that? That’s for collaborationists and traitors. We gotta start killing some people here, with lists, by the thousands. No hesitation. And The Jackal has properly interpreted what our national soul is made of.

On the same note, the journalist who interviewed him for months says that Ramírez Sánchez “never questions himself”. Naturally, he doesn’t feel guilty for his red ledger, much less for the money he took from the ransom of the OPEC ministers kidnapped in Vienna in December, 1975. He’s aiming to be another thieving president who refuses to be held accountable and who also profits from the disgrace of others! Well then, a statesman.

But that’s not all. When the journalist mentioned the deaths of innocents whose bodies were blown to pieces just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time when he triggered a bomb, The Jackal said that he only felt spite for those people. Here’s another attribute of the new rulers: blaming the victims of their atrocities while laughing at them; killing them twice, first with the muzzle and then with a discrediting discourse. Good for him. He’ll have millions of votes and the support of vast sectors of the civilized world.

Here’s another attribute of the new rulers: blaming the victims of their atrocities while laughing at them; killing them twice.

Remember, for instance, that when Chávez sent his forces to repress the protests in February, 2004, when the National Guard killed citizens in cold blood (that time when the GN beat Elinor Montes down to the ground), The Jackal himself said, on March 7, in a phone interview from prison, that “there are no innocent victims.”

Meanwhile, José Vicente Rangel said that many of the fallen had been murdered by the opposition itself; and the French newspaper Le Figaro published, on March 4, an article titled “L’opposition veut pousser Chavez à la répression” (The opposition forces Chávez toward repression), written by their special envoy in Caracas, Lamia Oualalou.

As mentioned above: The Jackal, considered a hero of the Arabic cause in Libya, Argel, Iran, Syria and Palestine, has everything it takes to become president of Venezuela. And if we study his aspirations under the light of the socialist theory, Islam is “the main force of society’s active transformation and of the fight against imperialism,” we’re done.