The news, or better yet reports about what happens in Venezuela is so fast paced that it can be believed or think that it’s fortuitous, that behind the news and the stupor that it causes, there is something new we had not seen, and that terrorizes us.
Just recently, during the 72 hours that began on the morning of April 30th to the 2nd of May, the country recapped what they lived the last 6 years, but in a terrorized version of what we could say was a day full of horror, only that we went from 24 hours to 72 hours in something like a full day of cruelty with an additional bonus of perversity.
In some of the WhatsApp groups I’m in, a scandalized member stated with emphasis that everything was horrible, something that cannot be denied, but closed with a “never before seen”, maybe an error born of that calculated and programmatic process of making us want to forget what has happened in years past.
The wickedness has been so effectively applied by the tyranny that the events of April 2013 were invisibilized by the cruelty of 2014 and thus, successively up to today.
It does not matter when this article is read; the dictatorship will always outdo itself as long as it is in power and the military is on its side.
The very capacity to outdo itself and apply repressive methods, conditions us to continue to be horrified and create collective states of alarm and indignation, which is why, in that earlier chat, I clarified that nothing new or different about the process of repression has been seen up to now; of course there were those who, up until now, maybe like you might say to me right now: “we’ve never seen anything like this, they exceeded themselves, etc”.
But no. Everything that was seen, registered and narrated in the web and the news, in fact happened during those 72 hours, is happening now and worst of all , it will continue to happen until we can regain democracy and the rule of law.
During the 72 hours of the attack, the whole country rode that roller coaster that we have lived in since the father and creator of this nightmare show decided to stage a coup d’état to a government who despite the errors it may have committed, was elected to power via the vote of its citizens.
Born from violence, and it seems that by violence they will die.
The state of Lara was not outside of the whirlpool of emotions that arose from seeing the principal political leader of the opposition commanding what from his own words were the day of “the end of usurpation” and by his side the “freed” political prisoner, walking on that asphalt of which he had been separated from 5 years before.
With everyone betting on success, not only had the beginning of the end arrived, but the end of the nightmare.
They were a few wonderfully distressing hours and they would be only that, a few hours, because reality once again slapped us in the face.
He once again presented himself dressed in the same olive-green color, the same black boots; black like the souls of those who wore them, terror presented itself with that peculiar aroma of tear gas that many of us, and maybe not as many as it should, have learned to withstand to extremes.
During those 72 hours of terror condensed on the streets of Barquisimeto and Venezuela we once again witnessed the tyrant’s magic formula; repression, arbitrary detentions, selective tortures, false positives, attacks from collective paramilitaries, tear gas, violence and death.
The news of the capture of seven member of the collective paramilitaries that traveled in an official vehicle on behalf of some officials of the Lara State police and the eventual release by orders of superiors that provoked the release of a video where the detainees declared that they were in fact members of the collective paramilitary group, that they were in fact armed, and that they did in fact receive orders to go out on the streets and assassinate and sow terror.
That they were headed out to once again place the whole state of Lara under attack.
Nevertheless, and immediately after the scandal spread through all possible meanss, except television channels, because self-censorship was stronger than the will to inform, it was learned that a boy had been attacked by an officer of the National Guard, causing lesions in his spleen and other vital organs as per details offered by a doctor; it was said that his mother was detained in some military detachment, most assuredly being tortured.
The “report” narrated with much veracity how the child had attempted to defend his mother who was being detained and in that act, had been beaten by a soldier.
Of course, the news eclipsed, on media terms, the abnormal situation of the paramilitary collectives being freed, and the professional opinion-givers began to question the presence of children in protests or what these uniformed minions deserved for that action.
Nevertheless, the search was on for that one detail; confirm the veracity of the story.
The picture that accompanied the news story was of a doctor in an operating room performing an operation on a boy. After several queries and crossing the available data, it was determined that at least that news story, was not real. The boy did not exist.
With the same speed that the doctor’s well justified terror, coupled with the information made public, caused the news to spread, it was proven to be false. The very incredulous would call it FAKE NEWS.
Publishing something like that was a great risk for the doctor, for the medical center whose exact name was disclosed and to all of those that passed through it.
The information was false; false like the news story because those involved were not compromised by the facts, but the news in itself was not false.
It tends to happen more than we think; the national guards jail mothers without a thought to the presence of their minor children. Yes, it’s true that the minions not only beat children but shoot and kill them. An example of this is Kluivert Roa in San Cristobal in 2015, murdered by a national police officer.
Yes, it is true that when they wound a protester, medical centers are besieged, doctors are detained and some as macabre not dressed in military uniform but wearing doctor’s robes order staff to not provide medical attention to the wounded like for example, Linda Amaro, director of the Social Security hospital Pastor Oropeza to the west of Barquisimeto.
Yes, it’s true that the National Bolivarian Intelligence Service (SEBIN) and the General Director of Military Counterintelligence (DGCIM) visit family to threaten them, that they pressure doctors to turn over projectiles. Yes, it’s all true.
In this instance the boy did not exist but undoubtedly, that case exists with different names and dates, the evil of the national guard is real. And don’t ever forget it.
Andres Colmenarez, founder of @funpaz2013, columnist and activist of the Human Rights in exile.
