Phil Brennan, NewsMax.com
Thursday, March 18, 2004

Under President Hugo Chavez, Venezuela is on the verge of becoming a satellite of dictator Fidel Castro’s communist Cuba.

Chavez is blocking a popular movement to remove him through a referendum, and his actions have caused violence in the streets. The nation could be on the way to a bloody revolution. In part three of this series, NewsMax.com examines Chavez and the threat this Castro stooge represents to the peace and stability of Latin America. Venezuela is in chaos, with rioting in the streets as Chavez defies citizens’ demands that a referendum leading to his ouster be held.

His ambassador to the United Nations has resigned to protest Chavez’s abuses of human rights and threats to freedom, even as the U.N., following its usual practice of ignoring atrocities of the left, continues to ignore the regime’s tyranny.

In his resignation Milos Alcalay, a career diplomat who has represented Venezuela for 30 years, stated: “Sadly, Venezuela now is operating devoid of these fundamental principles, which I still remain intensely committed to. Therefore, it is with a heavy heart today that I am resigning from my position. “We’ve seen army and police repression, unacceptable loss of life, disappearance of political leaders and there have been allegations of torture,” Alcalay noted. “A peaceful demonstration of citizens is no longer feasible in Venezuela and brutal repression must stop.

“I cannot remain indifferent before the sad events in my country, the loss of many lives and the outcry of the Venezuelan people whose political and civil rights are under threat,” he said.

Chavez has made no effort to disguise his affinity for Castro’s communist revolution. He once said, “I am the second Fidel.”

He has imported thousands of Cuban doctors, education administrators and athletic trainers to revamp the Venezuela’s government services. Venezuela’s federations of doctors and athletic trainers protested that Cubans were being given jobs despite Venezuela’s high unemployment.

A Sea Patrolled by Two Sharks

In an article March 26, 2002, headlined “Castro Wannabe Chavez Wrecks Venezuela,” NewsMax.com reported that Chavez described his closeness to Castro’s dictatorship by saying that Cuba and Venezuela were “swimming together toward the same sea of happiness.”

Would that be the same sea in which Cuban escapees risk their lives to swim for freedom in Florida?

Venezuelan Assemblywoman Liliana Hernandez has accused the president of importing Cuban secret police to run DISIP, Venezuela’s political police. As NewsMax.com reported when Chavez was still a candidate, thousands of Cubans were sent to Venezuela to help rig the election in his favor.

Castro and Chavez held a meeting in Venezuela that the latter described as an encounter between “two men in complete harmony and agreement on how to run their nations, as well as on the state of the world.”

Chavez noted that this was the fifth time he had hosted Castro in Venezuela since taking office in February 1999. “Fidel told me once again that the global situation is untenable as it stands today. He is convinced, as am I, that either the system changes or the world will end,” said Chavez. “…Fidel told me that what we are achieving has no precedent in the world.”

The presidents discussed an initiative to bring more than 10,000 Cuban doctors to poor Venezuelan communities and a literacy campaign inspired by Cuban methods, which critics say are part of a plan to move Venezuela toward a Castro-inspired dictatorship.

Castro issued a warning to the United States during a televised eight-hour speech to legislators in reference to statements made recently by White House special envoy Otto Reich that Cuban agents were operating in Venezuela under the guise of volunteer workers. The dictator said that according to Reich, “many people from Venezuela have received reports that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of military-like personnel from Cuba in Venezuela. But in reality the Cuban workers in Venezuela were 10,169 young volunteer doctors.”

Castro warned the United States. “I hope they don’t err with the Venezuelans. Right now, any foreign intervention in Venezuela … would ignite a powder keg in all of South America, right down to Patagonia. You can’t govern this hemisphere of hundreds of millions of people with a rifle and bayonet on every block, in every factory, in every school and on each street.”

In a reference to the U.S. intervention in Iraq, Castro said it was necessary “to remind them that the experiences they are living now would be multiplied by 100” in South America.

‘The Second Fidel’ Indeed

Having wrecked the oil-rich nation’s economy, Chavez is under siege with demands he resign, but he refuses to accept demands for his ouster.

Opposition leaders say that more than 3.6 million people signed a petition demanding a recall referendum, far more than the 2.4 million needed to trigger a vote, which could take place next year. The next scheduled elections are in 2006. National Elections Council, however, turned thumbs down on referendum claiming that only 1,830,000 of the signatures were valid but that more than a million others might be valid, if personally validated by the signatories, an obvious impossibility.

The decision has led to serious unrest. Protests last week left at least six dead and dozens wounded. Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has said it is concerned about the serious acts of violence and criticized “the use of undue force on the part of the National Guard, Venezuela’s intelligence services and police.”

The regime is “disrespecting millions of Venezuelans,” Enrique Mendoza, the opposition governor of central Miranda state, told AP. “Don’t do any more tricks to avoid a process that the majority of Venezuelans want,” he told the regime.

Venezuela’s new defense minister vowed to crush any attempts to rebel against Chavez, as residents in Caracas banged pots to demand a referendum on his rule.

“I won’t allow coup plotters and terrorists to threaten the country’s democratic and constitutional life,” Gen. Jorge Garcia Carneiro said after Chavez swore him in as defense minister. “They would face a severe and effective response from the national armed forces.”

The nation’s Supreme Court ruled this week that the regime must accept the signatures, but the regime is resisting the rule of law. Venezuelan and foreign intellectuals have denounced Chavez as the greatest political threat generating turmoil in Latin America and exhorted the world to watch over freedom in Venezuela. International Foundation for Freedom warned, “The international community must express itself clearly in favor of the implementation on the agreed date of the recall referendum and declare its opposition to the stratagems devised to prevent it.” A report from the army’s Special Patrol and Reconnaissance Unit revealed that, during July 2003, orders were issued from superiors to abort an operation in the state of Zulia intended to evict Colombian FARC terrorists from Venezuela. He emphasized that, since 2000, no operations had been conducted in that border zone. In other words, three years have elapsed without any large-scale actions to expel FARC’s forces.

Moreover, Washington has received thousands of reports over the past four years that leftist Colombian terrorists have established camps, obtained weapons and false identity documents within Venezuela. Additionally it is widely reported and believed that hundred Cuban security advisers are active in the Venezuelan armed forces’ Directorate of Military Intelligence and the country’s secret political police, DISIP.

Despite media reports this year that Venezuelan identification documents might have been issued to Arab radicals, Chavez appointed as the No. 2 official in the nation’s passport office a Venezuelan of Syrian ancestry, whose father and uncle served as officers in the Venezuelan branch of Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath party, and in the former Baghdad branch.

Cuba’s dictatorship-backed Granma newspaper recently ran a story that showed how close Chavez’s Venezuela has come to becoming a Cuban satellite.

“In the case of the documents that unite Caracas and Havana, there is a wide range of cooperation including public health and sports, covering 3,000 Cuban trainers,” Granma revealed. “The Links have promoted bilateral exchanges, through which governors, politicians, youth delegates and trade unionists, among others, have visited our country, and ours have visited theirs.”

In addition, swarms of Cuban medical personnel have arrived in Venezuela and all but taken over the nation’s medical care services.

Granma, ranting against the anti-communist movement in Venezuela, attacked those who chanted “Death to Communism” and claimed that this “was the worn-out, hysterical cry, despite the fact that thousands of Venezuelans are benefiting from the care provided by Cuban medical personnel in Venezuela.”

“Cuba and Venezuela are united by strong ties and joined by history,” the story concluded. “Those who wish to break those ties have already wracked their brains trying to destroy the Cuban Revolution. Those who choose the path of counterrevolution opt for hate; in contrast, Cubans and Venezuelans have the antidote of solidarity ….”

Next: The final dominoes fall

Note: Report Gives CIA-Style Analysis for Latin America

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