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Military Reshuffle
Maduro reaffirmed Padrino López and Hernández Larez in their positions, but dismissed Hernández Dala and González López. The former was replaced with Diosdado’s cousin.
Two stay and two go
Nicolás Maduro made significant changes of the regime’s military and intelligence leadership. He dismissed two of the most powerful men in these bodies over the past decade: Major General Iván Rafael Hernández Dala, who controlled the General Directorate of Military Counterintelligence (DGCIM), and General-in-Chief Gustavo Enrique González López, who led the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service (SEBIN), an institution now controlled by Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello.
Major General Javier Marcano Tábata was appointed to lead DGCIM while Alexis Rodríguez Cabello, cousin of Diosdado, will now lead SEBIN: highlighting the hardliner minister’s rising control and influence within Chavismo after the July 28th elections.
Nevertheless, Maduro reaffirmed Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino and CEOFANB head Domingo Hernández Lárez.
El Cuartico Goes to The New York Times
El Cuartico podcast’s Estefanía León “plays a principal role in a larger Venezuelan comedy boom, whose protagonists work and live mostly outside their country, now free, for the most part, to say what they want”, The New York Times’ Julie Turkewitz writes, “Some nations elevate their novelists or poets to positions of cultural eminence; Venezuela has long viewed its comedians as among its most important societal expositors.”