Military intervention threat firms the tension between the US and Venezuela

A few weeks after the renewal of the American oil company Chevron to operate in Venezuela, and having agreed to an exchange of political prisoners, the tension between Washington and Caracas has climbed vertiginously. Even with a military component that has few bilateral precedents.

After promoting the distension between the two countries, Donald Trump’s government turned to walk in the opposite direction. On August 7, the White House raised up to 50 million dollars the reward for information that can lead to the capture of Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, which he accuses of leading the Los Soles poster. This week, the deployment began in the maritime limits of Venezuela of three destroyers, 4,000 marines, combat planes and submarines as part of an operation against drug trafficking.

White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said that the United States is determined to use “all its power” to stop drug trafficking from Venezuela. “The regime of Nicolás Maduro is not the legitimate government of Venezuela. For this administration, Maduro is a drug trafficker, a fugitive leader of this poster,” Leavitt said.

The Venezuelan government, accustomed to exchanging adjectives and saved with the White House for years, seems this time to have more careful reactions. The dome of Chavismo has taken this last climb very seriously, in which the unreasonable tone and severity of the accusations is very evident.

Venezuelan Chancellor Yvan Gil, said in a statement that United States threats “not only affect Venezuela, but endanger the stability of the entire region, including the peace zone declared by the CELAC (community of Latin American and Caribbean states).” For the Chavista government, the accusations of the United States “are a sample of their lack of credibility.”

“We are facing the development of a narrative to justify an aggression,” said Vladimir Padrino López, Minister of Defense, who these days has been seen with Maduro in all his public spells. “We have seen it before, many times. There are no arguments, lies are invented and repeated to turn them into truths, even if they are not.” Godfather and other official spokesmen have described the accusations against Maduro as “ridiculous” and “absurd.”

Two days ago, Maduro announced the mobilization throughout the country of four million members of the National Militia, the fifth component of the Bolivarian National Armed Forces, founded by Hugo Chávez in 2007, and very institutionally strengthened since then.

The militia is a branch of the military sector of a mixed nature, made up of reservists, military, paramilitaries and civil, educated in the criteria of loyalty to Hugo Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution, and inspired by the foundations of asymmetric war.

“The first who went ahead to express their support to this workers’ president have been the military of the homeland,” said Maduro, satisfied and surrounded by military and police. “They went ahead with their rifles, with their missiles, their tanks, their planes. The Bolivarian National Armed Forces, at the forefront,” he proclaimed in the middle of applause.

While all this happens, Maduro has hardened the pressure on critical voices within Chavismo. The president questioned what would apparently be internal dissensions between his followers: “There are people who are weak, and in the face of a circumstance, right there it reacts. It is easy to attack Maduro and the revolution, how easy. There is a lot Commander Chávez. ”

From the underground, María Corina Machado, the main leader of the opposition, and her collaborators – all in exile – seem to assume their responsibility in the gestation of this siege of the United States to Chavismo.

The language they use describes what a development situation would be. Many Venezuelans abroad seem again excited about the possibility of a political change. Machado has considered a success for the democratic cause that the United States has clearly identify, according to his gaze, the threat of Chavismo.

Machado, who has time by stating that Maduro’s government structures are weaker than it is thought, he thanked President Trump to have uploaded the reward for his capture. It has not ceased to repeat that Chavismo is a threat to the entire region.

While it is evident that the police and military presence in the streets of the country has been redoubled, among the population, however, life passes normally, without any sense of imminence, without major expectations. Exhausted from having expectations.

The moderate opposition sectors that are still tolerated in the legality of Chavismo are skeptical of the promises of change that Machado prophesies. They also discard the possibility of foreign intervention.

In the wide channels of local pessimism that navigate on social networks, those who insist on those who are committed to entertaining, every few days, the imminent arrival of the return to democracy are usually accused of being affiliated.