The participation of the United States and Russia in the Venezuelan crisis has caused some analysts, such as Andrei Serbin of the Regional Coordination of Economic and Social Research (CRIES), to argue that the conflict has been transformed into a “geopolitical dispute”, to which China’s intervention has been added.
Covid-19 and militarism
Venezuela has a militaristic tradition that predates the Bolivarian revolution, which was deepened by the electoral victory of Hugo Chavez in late 1998. At the beginning of the democratic period, in 1958, the main parties – excluding the Communist Party – signed an alternative agreement known as the “Punto Fijo Pact” which, among other objectives, sought to “return the military to the barracks”, subordinating them to the civilian authorities. And although they maintained an important role in the following decades, their open political belligerence began in 1999, when the new Constitution gave them the right to vote. The first social policy implemented by Chavism, “Plan Bolívar 2000”, was implemented by the Venezuelan army. Active, or retired, military personnel began to run ministries, governorships and mayoralties. Military logic, and not the logic of grassroots movements, was what organized the Bolivarian movement from the State, with vertical structures, names and a narrative based on the imaginary of the Armed Forces.
In 2013, expectations that a civilian president, Nicolas Maduro, would stop the militaristic trend quickly evaporated. One of his first decisions was to allow the participation of the military in public security tasks. In 2015, the so-called “People’s Liberation Operations” (PLO) began, a joint effort between the military and police forces in working class neighbourhoods, which in its first five months resulted in 245 victims of violations of the right to life, according to the Public Prosecutor’s Office. In 2017, the PLOs were replaced by a new police force, the Special Action Forces (FAES), created to act in highly deadly operations (kidnappings and anti-terrorist operations), but which in practice became the leading player in citizen security operations similar to the PLO.
The grave human rights situation in Venezuela has been reflected in the latest country report of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the results of which were released by Michelle Bachelet. On the FAES she states: “Thousands of people have been killed in alleged clashes with state forces in recent years. There are reasonable grounds to believe that many of these deaths constitute extrajudicial executions perpetrated by the security forces, particularly the FAES”, including in its recommendations: “Dissolve the FAES and establish an impartial and independent national mechanism to investigate extrajudicial executions.” In a September 2019 update on the situation in the country, Bachelet referred to the use of military courts against civilians when she rejected the five-year sentence against trade unionist Rubén González: “The application of military justice to try civilians constitutes a violation of the right to a fair trial, including the right to be tried by an independent and impartial court.”
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Rafael Uzcategui | Radio Free (2020-07-01T00:00:00+00:00) Venezuela, imperialism and militarization. Retrieved from https://www.radiofree.org/2020/07/01/venezuela-imperialism-and-militarization/
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