Whatsapp chain messages, articles with false information. Videos, montages, countless tweets, all blaming Maduro’s continuance on the shoulders of 5 – 7 Venezuelan citizens; and no, they are not blaming Juan Guaido and his political gang, but those who criticize him.
It turns out that a group of legislators from the National Assembly, university professors, journalists, media, blame me, and other Venezuelan citizens like Orlando Avendaño, Nitu Perez, among others, for hurting the last opportunity to “liberate Venezuela,” as if we, the ones appalled by the lack of values, are the culprits of the dollars stolen in Cucuta, of the 30th April fiasco, dialogues for appeasement in Norway, Allup family’s business with Chavism, nonsense with CLAP investigations. Meanwhile, the dirty, cowardly, and corrupt take advantage of the country’s situation to enrich themselves while Venezuelans remain broken inside.
The interim president, this group of legislators and political operators, and their (increasingly fewer) followers find it easier to build bridges with Chavism than reach out to the opposition at the right of the political spectrum. Because of course, they identify more with the Chavista model than what citizens like us want for Venezuela. That is why they announce on social media that they agree to form a broad front with Chavistas. The Justice First and Popular Will political parties welcome former PSUV members in their ranks. They go around hugging Luisa Ortega, holding talks and conversations between the interim president and former finance minister Rodrigo Cabezas, while they attack Diego Arria, Maria Corina Machado, Calderon Berti, other political leaders, citizens like us, and anyone who opposes the continuation of the socialist party in Venezuela to provide impunity to the corrupt who destroyed the country.
It is fantastic how they write articles (in English and Spanish to amplify defamation by talking about conspiracies), “reports,” WhatsApp chain messages. They insist on accusing us of “destroying Guaido,” for merely making use of common sense and platforms like Twitter, while they meet PSUV members to exchange commercial contracts, laugh at private dinners, and offer amnesty to Chavism’s most contemptible comrades.
Here, the only one responsible for Guaido’s political death is Guaido himself. The man is old enough; he has, or in theory should have, the capacity to make his own decisions and not to be a puppet of Leopoldo, Henry, Rosales, and company. No one forced Guaido to do transitional business with Padrino and Moreno; no one forced him to send Stalin to Norway to make a deal with the dictatorship; no one forced him to appear alongside Allup after his family’s business with Chavism came to light; no one put a gun to his head to defend corruption. He himself made poor choices and lost his sense of decency to co-opt public posts and political spaces instead of resolutely fighting to regain Venezuela’s freedom. He decided to do it, no one else!
The biggest problem we have in Venezuela, the reason we are in this painful situation, is because, for years and decades, Venezuelans have elected the loudest populist candidates, not the ones most appropriate for the role. The only virtue of Guevara, Guaido, Goicoechea, Stalin, and company is that they protested against Chavez’s decision to terminate the broadcasting license of RCTV in 2007. The fact that they were in Caracas brought them into the political limelight. Since then, they have done absolutely nothing to prepare for and understand how the world and the economy work. They have no knowledge of political theory and basic economic issues. The interim president recently demonstrated this when he was unable to name a political author to influence him in an interview and easily confused the left from the right. And this is not just a slip of the tongue. A couple of months ago, I had a Twitter row with Freddy Guevara. He was telling me that Maduro’s tyranny was right-wing. When I asked him to name me a single right-wing economic measure, he replied that CADIVI was an example of that because many people had been enriched by the measure.
A ver, no me refiero a la corrupción en sí misma, que existe en cualquier espectro, si al diseño de la política que la genera (habiendo corrupción o no). Por ejemplo, cadivi y todo ese sistema de subsidios.
— Freddy Guevara (@FreddyGuevaraC) July 9, 2019
Mr. Guevara, you were vice-president of the National Assembly and could have become the acting president. That is why I am so terrified that you cannot understand such basic notions of economics. I will explain; CADIVI was a vile and vulgar travel subsidy. The purpose of this measure was to restrict access to foreign currency and close off the economy. This is not a right-wing measure by any means. Instead of making these crude remarks and pretending to continue practicing politics, the opposition should read some books. Take advantage of the free time you have at the embassy to read and leave Twitter for a while.
I have the following message for those who make up nonsense conspiracies to cover up for the mistakes of Guaido’s team or blame the citizens: Investigate whatever you like, search, look under the rocks. Go to my hometown of San Cristobal. Ask the people who know me, and even those who don’t, about my ideals since I was young. Go to the Catholic University of Tachira and ask my professors. The only fights I had in university were with the Chavista professors who always tried to indoctrinate my classmates with ideas of Chavez and socialism. One of them had me rework his class because of that; I didn’t care.
If you still have doubts and need more conspiracy material, I will tell you that at age 16, motivated by my contempt for Chavism, I began to write my first novel because I felt it was the best way to explain to Venezuelans and the world why my country had gone bankrupt thanks to socialism. That long novel, I had to start over a couple of years later, and it was finally published when I was 21. Its name is Las Tierras de Contacote; the final publication is 667 pages. The novel is not a masterpiece, it is not worthy of the Nobel Prize for Literature, but it was the creation of a 17-18-year-old boy, who understood that what had ruined his country was laziness, handouts, and socialism, and he invented a 200-year story in a fictitious country to explain with apples and oranges what had happened in Venezuela.
Unlike many people, especially the majority of the members of the National Assembly today and the interim president himself, it has always been clear to me since my teen years that socialism was responsible for the destruction of Venezuela; it has always been the main enemy for me, and I have dedicated the past few years to overthrow that absurd and populist myth that seeks only to establish a political oligarchy while starving the rest of the citizens. That is why I have studied, read, written, traveled thanks to my works and books, prepared myself, unlike those whose only merit is to shout loudly, belong to a political party, chant political slogans, go to rallies, negotiate political spaces, “add and not subtract,” and play the game of supposed democracy in Venezuela. Perhaps that is why the legislators despise me, and the Venezuelans mentioned above. Still, they cannot confront a Chavista because they run out to embrace them and offer them cohabitation deals.
But I don’t care. I receive with gratitude this contempt from those who have only solidified the power of Chavism. Fortunately, Venezuelans continue to open their eyes, and you are more and more despised. And no, this has nothing to do with me. I would like to have the power to remove and appoint officials, believe me, none of you would be there after what you have done. The only reason why people are rejecting you today and why a large part of the country abhors you is because you have made a pact with Chavism, because you have played with the needs of Venezuelans, and because you have made corruption as commonplace as it is under the dictatorship. People won’t forgive you.
Eleven months have passed since Guaido’s swearing-in. The re-election of the head of the National Assembly is not far away. This year, Venezuela has gone through internal warfare, and the interim government has wasted the best opportunity it had to free the country. Finally, Guaido has realized that the use of force is necessary. Guaido and his advisors believed that they could deceive Venezuelans forever, and they are finally confronting reality. Now they are clutching at straws after squandering away the whole of 2019.
Well, I want to tell the political leaders that the use of force is not something that they can demand at a whim. It needs to be built and negotiated over time. You were the very people who rejected this option. You were responsible for presenting the narrative in Washington and convincing them that a military coalition wasn’t needed to oust Maduro. You chose to form a pact with Padrino and Moreno and put together a government that was cohabitating with Chavism. Please don’t play the victims now.
Now that you have ruined everything, do you need the military coalition? Well, guess what? You agree with the “radical sect.” After so many attacks and blasphemies, Guaido himself agrees, the use of force was always necessary; there is no other way to oust the criminals of Miraflores. However, it is more than clear that his words are cheap demagoguery. If you, interim president, had been really interested in doing something to get Maduro out, you would have done it in February, not a few days before the end of 2019, when you are already a push away from being thrown into the political cemetery once and for all.
I did not decree the political death of Guaido and his acolytes; you decreed it yourselves with your lies and betrayals. We, the honest Venezuelans, those who really want a different Venezuela, must trace new forms of struggle against the dictatorship of Maduro and the whole rotten socialist system. And if necessary, we will run over anyone who is a wall of contention protecting Chavism.