The Teenagers' Rebellion

Keynote Address by Roberto Giusti in the Oklahoma State Capitol (USA) in the commemoration of the Independence of Venezuela, July 5th 1811.

The commemoration of the countries’ beginning represent a healthy democracy ritual. It allows us to revive the history, to pay tribute to those who gave their lives for the sake of people freedom, and to strengthen the democratic principles on which to settle the life in society. We celebrated all of these yesterday, July 4th, when reaching the 231st year of the independence of the United States. This is the pioneer country, with its thirteen colonies, of what would later be known as "the age of revolutions."

The story sets that the following day, but 35 years later, on July 5th, 1811, the seven United Provinces of Venezuela decreed the breaking of any type of subjection to the Spanish Empire. Thus ended 300 years of cruel dominance. The country was ready to accomplish on the battlefield, what the constitutional congress had proclaimed in the Venezuela Declaration of Independence.

The Venezuelan Creoles, pioneers of the rebellion that would continue along Latin America, were inspired by the ideas of the Enlightenment, tracked in the footsteps of the French Revolution and the creation of the United States, whose novelty Constitution consecrated citizens’ equality before the law, separation of political power, and respect for human rights.

The first Venezuelan constitution was based on those notions, and even when Simon Bolívar himself disagreed with what he called a "magnificent federal system", impossible to apply in our country in his opinion, he mentioned with fascination the influence of the United States’ Magna Carta over Venezuelan legislators.

However, before discussing about the different theories on government models, must be say between centralism and decentralization, Bolivar had to face a formidable obstacle: the independence war. This war would extend from Venezuela to Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru, under the drive of that extraordinary human being, leader of multitudes, wise orator, consummate military strategist and restless traveler that was Simon Bolívar.

The Bolivar’s army was formed by poorly dressed and worse poorly armed men, called “montonera” in informal language at that time. With this army, initially composed of Venezuelan lancers from the burning Venezuelan plain, Bolivar took a chance on a long and amazing path through the remoteness of intricate and freezing geography of the Andean moors, the swamps of the Colombian jungles and the desolation of the Bolivian plateau, to spread the seeds of emancipation and displace the Spanish occupant.

It was almost three lustrums since an intense conflagration in which the Crown sent army after army from the distant Spain peninsula, willing to stop, with blood and fire, the general insurgence of the continent. Finally, in 1823, in the battle of Ayacucho, the definitive freedom of Latin America would be accomplished, but paying a high cost in lives. Venezuela had the worst part, 200 thousand dead and the physical destruction of nearly the whole country.

Today, unfortunately, we cannot be restricted to remember that date with the languid nostalgia for irreversible historical facts because Venezuela is experiencing a systemic crisis. This crisis has regressed Venezuela to more than two hundred years and has placed the country before the time of its freedom proclamation. We are faced a physical destroyed country, a country subjected to a barbaric dictatorship, a country crossed by violence, a country sunken in misery, hunger, corruption and drug trafficking. And a country hit by the ruling class savagery that put people in a worse situation than the existing at the end of the independence war.

The wrongly named socialism of the twenty-first century, a movement born in the barracks and protagonist of two coups d’états, demolished the bases of a democratic system in less than two decades. This democratic system, even with its weaknesses, fostered a peaceful coexistence among equal but dissimilar citizens. The electoral democratic system respected the alternation, the democratic constitution guaranteed the freedom, the human rights and the separation of powers, as well as a presidential institution controlled by a heterogeneous parliament representing the most diverse tendencies and beliefs.

These mentioned achievements, which were considered irreversible, began to crack after the 1992 Venezuelan coup d’état led by Hugo Chavez. In the name of redemption of oppressed poor people, Hugo Chavez turned Venezuela into a gigantic prison, from which more than a million people have fled to this day.

Far from redeeming the oppressed poor people, the Chávez and Maduro governments destroyed the middle class and made the poor even poorer. Venezuelans are dying of starvation and prevented diseases because of the supply scarcity. Venezuelans are losing their life in endless lines in front of empty supermarkets and pharmacy stores.

This situation is happening after having wasted more than nine hundred thousand billion dollars, in terms of oil revenue, over the last eighteen years. During this time, the Chávez and Maduro governments destroyed the productive apparatus forcing nine thousand business closures, and the nationalization, if not just spoliation, of almost 15 million acres. Previously in this land were produced variety of food, but today exist only devastation and abandonment.

The questions seem obvious at this point: how, when and why did the rampant decline of one of the richest countries of the Latin American continent start? In the continent where the Venezuela democracy was the exception and the rule was the existence of military dictatorships.

A deeply retrospection exercise would lead to the nefarious coup d’état of February 4, 1992 lead by Chavez. But let's start from 2014, after Chávez's death, when the oil prices drop exposed the political and economic weakness of the government. This government lost popular support in the face of populist policies interruption that bought wills and guaranteed loyalties, and the closure of imports that supplied products previously made in Venezuela. It was discovered that the passionate enthusiasm Chavez incited in the crowds disappeared quickly when he died. Even worse, it was discovered that ideological conviction faded into popular protest when the threat of famine appeared, and without populist policies that promoted the massive distribution of goods and money.

The collapse of Maduro popularity, Chavez successor, made him to play strong with the support of the Chavez related military forces. Maduro ordered the Supreme Court to suppress the functions of the National Assembly, and granted them to itself. A deliberated coup d'etat was consummated in this way. This coup d'etat was progressively planned, drop by drop, from the very beginning of the wrongly called "revolutionary process". However, it was at this time when Chavismo –Chavez followers- took off his mask and the sad truth was revealed: the firepower is the only support that holds in power to Nicolás Maduro, Diosdado Cabello and other related Chavez people. It means, the Armed Forces are their only support. It means, the most brutal and savage repression is their only support.

Maduro did not count on the massive and immediate reaction of Venezuelan people, who joined as a whole took the streets to reject the coup d’état. Within a matter of hours, Maduro realized it was an error and he had to cancel the order. But the amendment was late and wrongly done because on April 1st the whole country was disturbed in a long and massive peaceful protest that was set to stay until today. However, the cost is excessive because the protests have been suppressed with such fury and brutality that during 96 days of popular rebellion about 100 young Venezuelans have been killed by the troops of the Bolivarian National Guard and by related paramilitary groups, which are armed by Maduro to sow terror among the protesters.

This blood massacre, this continuous butchery of adolescents, this crime against humanity caused by the pathological attachment to power of Maduro, who says to prefer weapons instead of votes, has not managed to stop the courage of protesters. These protesters are defying fatal bullets and tear gas bombs while holding firm their ideas to overcome the crisis: call for general elections immediately, release the 400 political prisoners (some of them are being torture), and create a humanitarian aid program for solving the lack of food and medicines.

Therefore, the current Venezuelan situation is not restricted to “an incipient war” as some analysts have suggested, because having a war implies at least two armed groups and in Venezuela there is only one formed by the military, the police, and the Chavez related paramilitaries. The passive resistance is used on the side of people who fight for the democracy reinstatement. There is not a single victim on the side of the government because young people are advancing with exposed chest and unarmed. However, the sacrifice is indescribable and many of the half-thousand young prisoners have been subjected to the most degrading tortures. Atrocities such as sexual violence, pepper spray, and the placement of hoods to teenagers with tied hands have been denounced by NGOs like the Venezuelan Penal Forum and Cofavic.

It is seen that the fight is horrible but Venezuelans know that this is a point of no return because the vast majority stopped believing in the message of hatred that separated Venezuelans in two irreconcilable sides. Today, the two sides have jointed in the rejection of an oligarchy that addressed hate, class struggle, and disapproval of the West values and the basic coexistence norms. The wrongly called revolutionary process has failed in its task of indoctrinating the young and the children on an inversion of values. This indoctrination process considers delinquents as social avenging, and proprietors as thieves who must be despoil of their property. Thus, robbery is not a crime but a revolutionary expropriation.

The consequences of such indoctrination have been terrible. This license to steal or kill with full impunity has created an uncontainable criminal wave. I will only refer to an indicator citing the Venezuelan Observatory of Violence which claims that there are 27,875 violent deaths in Venezuela each year, which is equivalent to 76 murders every day and more than three murders every hour.

That is the country that young Venezuelans, some of them under 20 years old, have been trying to get out of the darkness and have fallen battling. This venerable generation was born in the Chavez era and therefore never lived in democracy, but unlike their predecessors they understood that the time had come to fight. Contrary to Venezuelans in 1811, the current generation is using the passive resistance or nonviolence resistance, in the best tradition of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela and so many more.

Facing this situation, Maduro tries to impose a Constituent Assembly following the Castro's Cuba style and thus consolidate their old dream of a society subjected to the totalitarianism’s arbitrariness. The answer of the Venezuelan population has been a categorical “No”, instead the immense Venezuelan majority will follow those brave children, those new liberators, whose July 5th has been the 1st of April. The new liberators are sure that the fight will only stop the day in which the democracy reinstatement and the Venezuelan freedom take place by the power of voting.