Briefing

Guaidó On Wheels

Chavismo blocked the Francisco de Miranda Av. to stop a rally from the transport sector supporting caretaker President Guaidó. Chavista ministers claim that they’ll die for the revolution. U.S. Southern Command chief Craig Faller speaks to the Armed Forces. Guaidó's serious diplomatic misstep in Costa Rica Yulimar Rojas wins again!

Naky Soto
Photo: @jguaido

Chavismo started this Wednesday 20th shutting down the Francisco de Miranda Avenue near the Transport Ministry (Chacao) to prevent the activity announced on Tuesday by bus drivers in support of caretaker President Juan Guaidó and the entry of humanitarian aid to the country. Nicolás’s loyalists set up a stage and sort of mobile office of the National Land Transport Institute (“Be solvent with your vehicle”) to get documents that are difficult to obtain in normal circumstances.

In view of that, bus drivers rode to the Francia Square in Altamira and from there, President Guaidó announced that this Saturday, February 23rd there will be marches all over the country to military garrisons to peacefully demand the entry of humanitarian aid. Guaidó specified that the aid will enter through San Antonio at the border with Cucuta; through Bolivar State at the border with Roraima (Brazil) and through the Venezuelan coasts in Puerto Cabello (Carabobo) and La Guaira (Vargas), adding that this will be the first step to open a humanitarian channel: “You’re part of the story that we’re building and turning into a reality. The future is ours, freedom is ours,” said Guaidó.

Chavismo is violence

Ignoring the complaints for conditions of the transport sector, regime minister Hipólito Abreu celebrated surrounded by public servants the imposition of his “anti-imperialist stage” and claimed: “Chavistas take over our spaces,” saying that if there’s no peace for them, there won’t be peace for anyone; that they have more than enough people to defend the country (their power) and that those who think that they can be intimidated with some marine at the border (?) are mistaken. He was cynical enough to talk about “Americans who eat only once a day” and express his fatigue for “treacherous dialogues with the oligarchy.” Later, Housing Minister Hildemaro Villarroel claimed: “They won’t invade us here without shooting a single bullet. We’ll die for the revolution,” adding that they’ve been preparing for eight years to face an imperial attack and that if the Armed Forces should fail, “the guerrilla war” would start. Chavismo only offers more violence. To ratify this statement, this Tuesday 19th, Darío Vivas notified that the regime counter-concert will last three days and they’ll set it up at the Las Tiendita bridge, not at the Simón Bolívar bridge.

The ways of repression

Amnesty international offered a balance of the human rights violations that have been committed during 2019, including the 41 murders, more than 900 detainees (most of them with open administrative proceedings) and selective repression on low-income areas perpetrated by the National Police’s Special Forces (FAES). Meanwhile, the board of Mavid Foundation demanded that chavismo cease the persecution and harassment against NGOs that help HIV/AIDS patients, as well as the return of the medicines and supplies stolen from their officers by the Scientific Police (CICPC). As part of Conatel’s administrative process against Globovision after journalist Dereck Blanco mentioned Guaidó as caretaker President, yesterday Blanco was pulled off the air under the pretense of forced vacations.

This Wednesday, there were cyber-attacks against several digital outlets (@elestimulo, @revistaclimax @bienmesabe @UB_Magazine, @konzapata and @alnaviocom) but also the National Guard detained journalist Fabiola Niño in Tachira, erasing the material that she’d recorded with her phone and in Caracas, staffers of the Pérez Carreño Hospital retained Alberto Torres, when he was covering a worker assembly. Once again: informing isn’t a crime. The lawyer of Ferrominera union leader Rubén González reported that judge Heixon Rafael Pulido kept the measure of deprivation of freedom without offering a date for the trial.

The usurper’s delirium

“The economic war affected us, but also bureaucracy, corruption, incompetent administration, the thievery of many people we put at the head of companies (…) This year we have to dominate and restrain hyperinflation and the criminal dollar. We must stabilize the economy,” said Nicolás last night, as if he was training in the office that he’s usurping. To praise the productivity that he was allegedly honoring yesterday and with it, break away from the recession and hyperinflation that mark his disastrous economic policy, he decreed February 28th and March 1st as national holidays. He called his followers to take to the streets on Saturday, February 23rd “to show where the majority is,” but also, with deep cynicism, he claimed that with the CLAP boxes, in one day he surpassed the humanitarian aid that hasn’t entered the country yet; strangely, in that regard he said that there’s “a psychological war to keep people nervous,” or him?

The remaining noise

Contradicting Miguel Morales, second commander of the Operational Zone of Integral Defense (ZODI) in Falcon, who had announced that border activities would continue normally, Delcy Rodríguez announced the air and sea blockade with Aruba, Curaçao and Bonaire, as well as the revision of relations, accusing Curaçao of playing along with a farce (humanitarian aid) and establishing as a point to normalize traffic, the recovery of synderesis (Curaçao’s, of course, chavismo doesn’t even know what that is).

As an example of clarity, Diosdado Cabello cautioned about the “terrible response” that those who attempt to invade Venezuela will face and, as usual, he denied the complex humanitarian emergency. What better show of rectitude than PDVSA accusing Nicolás’s detractors for the fire in their facilities? That’s why minister Manuel Quevedo spoke even of a terrorist attack and urged workers to remain alert.

Movements on the board

Craig Faller, chief of the U.S. Southern Command, asked Venezuelan Armed Force officers to do the right thing and allow the entry of humanitarian aid: “You will be held accountable for your actions. Do the right thing. Save the people in your country,” he said.

Caretaker President Juan Guaidó said that Swiss President Ueli Maurer told him about irregular movements of the nation’s funds in accounts in his country. Guaidó’s team will attempt to freeze them. OAS chief Luis Almagro said that Nicolás’s exit from Venezuela “is irreversible” and added that with the humanitarian aid, “nobody is planning any invasion or anything of the sort,” that the true violence is evidenced in “tortured citizens, extrajudicial executions, the people murdered in protests or raped in prison.” A terrible diplomatic misstep took place this Wednesday: María Faría, Guaidó’s appointed ambassador in Costa Rica, took over embassy in San José. Jorge Arreaza denounced the incident and later, the Costa Rican Foreign Ministry deplored the entry of María Faría and cautioned that they will issue a note of protest.

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The mayor of Cucuta decreed Friday, February 22nd as a civic holiday to hold Cucustock (aka Venezuela Aid Live) and yesterday, Colombian Immigration started reinforcing the border crossings with Venezuela. Paraguayan President Mario Abdo Benítez will travel to Cucuta to cooperate with the delivery of humanitarian aid and to attend Cucustock. Jair Bolsonaro has already prepared the logistics to deliver aid at the border in Roraima and Chilean President Sebastián Piñera wrote that he’ll go to Cucuta “to defend freedom in Venezuela.”

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With a jump of 14.46 meters, Yulimar Rojas won first place in the World Indoor Tour held in Düsseldorf, Germany. Hopefully, the military will surpass that mark with their jump in favor of freedom and humanitarian aid.

Naky Soto

Naky gets called Naibet at home and at the bank. She coordinates training programs for an NGO. She collects moments and turns them into words. She has more stories than freckles.

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