María Corina Machado says that Maduro has the support only of Venezuela’s high military command, “very reduced”
14ymedio, Madrid, August 8, 2024 — The Cuban ruling press remains committed to supporting the position of Nicolás Maduro’s regime regarding the result of the elections in Venezuela, criticized by a large part of the international community, including the moderate left. A note published on Tuesday by the State newspaper Granma calls, indirectly, for the Venezuelan president to stay in power, remembering Fidel Castro’s reaction after the coup d’état against Hugo Chávez in 2002. “Don’t resign! Don’t give up!” Castro told Chávez in the early morning of April 12 of that year, when he was able to contact him “after hours of unsuccessful attempts.”
Granma alludes to this alleged conversation, citing Chávez’s own story: “’Don’t go immolate yourself,’ he told me. ’Save your people and save yourself as much as you can; this doesn’t end here.’ And in the end he told me: ‘Here your people are waiting for you, here I am waiting for you. Save yourself, save yourself. I’ll wait for you here.’”
At that time, not mentioned by Granma, it was two years since the signing of the first bilateral agreement between the two countries, which guaranteed Cuba a constant supply of oil, vital for leaving the Special Period behind. This opened the door to the incursion of Cubans into the Government of Venezuela. In fact, after the failed 2002 coup d’état, according to the authors of “The Consented Invasion” (Debate, 2019), Chávez “decided to entrust the Cubans with intelligence tasks to shield him against future military conspiracies.”
Granma puts “the sanctimonious Latin American progressives and the media of the right” in the same bag
Granma argues that the then Venezuelan president “represented that ’bad example’ that the far right and the empire attack in the region,” and that “Fidel’s constant support and infallible advice in those dark times allowed Chávez to reset and prevent the formula they had tested against Allende from being fruitful in Venezuela.”
Nicolás Maduro placed the current Chilean president, Gabriel Boric, with those who overthrew Salvador Allende* and referred to him as a “pinochetista and coup leader.” Shortly before, Boric had declared at a press conference that he had no doubt that the Maduro regime “has attempted to commit fraud.”
Far from approaching Boric’s leftist position and following the line of Caracas, another note from Granma puts “the sanctimonious Latin American progressives and the media of the right” in the same bag. Because their focus is on the presidential elections of Venezuela, they are ignoring “the genocide in Gaza, the catastrophic collapse of Ukraine, the danger of a Third World War and the climate catastrophe.”
Another leftist, the special adviser to the Brazilian Presidency for international relations, Celso Amori