NYT, Nov. 20, 2020
They Championed Venezuela’s Revolution. They Are Now Its Latest Victims.
In an effort to complete his consolidation of power, Nicolás Maduro is
cracking down on the leftist activists who once supported him, but have
begun to speak up against his administration’s corruption and cronyism.
By Isayen Herrera, Anatoly Kurmanaev, Tibisay Romero and Sheyla Urdaneta
GÜIRIA, Venezuela — The host of a popular radio show, “The People’s
Combat,” had always diligently praised Venezuela’s governing Socialist
Party, even as millions sank into penury under its rule. But when acute
gasoline shortages paralyzed his remote fishing town this summer, he
strayed from the party line.
On his show, the host, lifelong Socialist José Carmelo Bislick, accused
local party chiefs of siphoning fuel, leaving most people queuing for
days outside empty gasoline stations.
Just weeks later, on Aug. 17, four masked, armed men burst into Mr.
Bislick’s house and told him he had “run the red light,” before beating
him in front of his family and hauling him away into the night. He was
found dead with gunshot wounds hours later, dressed in his favorite Che
Guevara T-shirt.
Those responsible for Mr. Bislick’s death remain at large in the town of
30,000, where everyone knew of him, and of his lifelong dedication to
Venezuela’s Socialist revolution. The Socialist mayor never spoke of the
crime or visited the family, who said the killing had been politically
motivated.
“Is denouncing wrongdoing so wicked that it should cost the life of a
man who only wanted social well-being?” asked Mr. Bislick’s sister,
Rosmery Bislick.
His death appears to be part of a wave of repression against leftist
activists alienated by President Nicolás Maduro, who seems intent on
consolidating power in parliamentary elections in December. The vote,
boycotted by the opposition as a sham, could bring what used to be one
of Latin America’s most established democracies to the verge of being a
one-party state.
After having crushed the political parties opposed to his version of
socialism, Mr. Maduro’s critics say, he has trained the state’s security
apparatus on disillusioned ideological allies, repeating the path taken
by leftist autocrats from the Soviet Union to Cuba.
Mr. Maduro’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
“Whoever makes any criticism is lumped with the opposition, the right,
called a traitor,” said Ares Di Fazio, a former urban guerrilla and
leader of the far-left Tupamaros Party, which was dismantled by the
government in August after having voiced discontent.
Longtime government supporters who in recent months flooded the streets
of provincial towns to denounce the collapse of public services have
been suppressed by security forces. Public employees who denounce
corruption are charged with sabotage.
Members of the ruling electoral alliance who decided to run as
independents are disqualified. Those who persevere are harassed by the
police or charged with spurious crimes.
The repression is partly an outcome of Mr. Maduro’s decision to abandon
the wealth redistribution policies of his late predecessor, Hugo Chávez,
in favor of what amounts to crony capitalism to survive American
sanctions. The change effectively legalized Venezuela’s sprawling black
market economy and condoned the pervasive corruption, creating a new
economic order that benefited the military and business elites loyal to
Mr. Maduro.
The result has been a jarring chasm between the official rhetoric, which
blames the national collapse on sanctions, and the extravagant lives
flaunted by the government’s cronies in supermarkets stocked with
expensive imports and luxury car showrooms.
“For some, there’s blockade, for others — boutiques,” said Oswaldo
Rivero, a prominent Venezuelan left-wing activist and national
television host, who had for years stoked attacks on the opposition on
his program.
For years, Oswaldo Rivero attacked the opposition on his television
program. Now he’s being threatened for criticizing the government of Mr.
Maduro.
Those who question this “are turned into sawdust,” said Mr. Rivero, who
is now being called a traitor and threatened on social media for
speaking out against corruption.
For the past two decades, leftist parties represented by activists like
Mr. Rivero had helped Mr. Chávez, and then Mr. Maduro, stay in power.
The parties, some dating to Cold War-era insurrections, campaigned for
Mr. Maduro’s candidates, attended government rallies and sometimes
harassed opposition protesters. Their message of radical change
resonated in Venezuelan shanty towns and rural outposts fed up with
ingrained inequality.
But these allies grew increasingly disillusioned with Mr. Maduro’s
authoritarianism and corruption. This year, for the first time, they
decided to field their own congressional candidates.
Courts in August installed Mr. Maduro’s loyalists at the top of the
Tupamaros and three other dissident parties.
The police arrested the head of the Tupamaros party, José Pinto, on
unproved murder charges, harassed the leaders the Communist Party and
briefly detained a veteran leftist, Rafael Uzcátegui, 73, on accusations
he had visited a brothel. All defendants have called the cases political
persecution.
Mr. Uzcátegui claims 37 members of his party, Fatherland for All, have
been detained for campaigning against the government in the upcoming
elections. Four of them merely sprayed on a public wall the words
“Dignified Salary Now,” a plea to raise Venezuela’s minimum monthly
salary, which is the equivalent of $2 in local currency.
“The government no longer fears the right,” said Mr. Uzcátegui. They
fear the left, he said, “because they know we’re telling people the truth.”
A Communist Party activist, Isabel Granado, 32, decided to run for
congress against the government in December, because she said it no
longer represented the poor.
Two years ago, she and two dozen small farmers from her town of El
Vigía, in the Andean foothills, decided to take over a plot of land,
which she said the authorities had declared idle since 2010. They called
their farming group “The Powerful Hand of God,” and began cultivating
crops to feed their families.
The government had long endorsed such takeovers to win rural support and
attempt to reduce inequality.
Suddenly, on Sept. 24, Ms. Granado said a black-clad special operations
police squad burst into her home, threw her 9-year-old daughter to the
floor and threatened to beat the activist in front of the child if she
didn’t come with them. She was taken to a police station and accused of
illegal land occupation and livestock rustling, a charge Ms. Granado denied.
She was released the next day for lack of evidence, but was detained
again two days later, this time by military commandos. Ms. Granado said
in her time in custody she was handcuffed, threatened with phony drug
charges, and told she would be executed.
It was not an idle threat in a country where the United Nations
investigators have implicated Mr. Maduro’s special operations police,
known as FAES, in thousands of extrajudicial executions in poor
neighborhoods in recent years.
“I was truly terrified, because apart from being a social activist, I’m
also a mother,” said Ms. Granado. “The only thing I could think of were
my children.”
Ms. Granado said that the timing, the brutality and the arbitrary nature
of her detentions pointed to a desire by the local authorities to deter
her from running for congress. She said she lives in constant fear,
frequently changing safe houses.
But she said she would carry on her campaign.
“The people’s support for us is what hurts them the most,” she said,
referring to the government.
After a tense calm brought by the pandemic, the popular discontent with
Mr. Maduro’s government erupted in more than 1,000 flash protests in
September.
Unlike the previous waves of unrest, the latest were concentrated in the
poor rural states, which have long formed the ruling party’s base. The
protesters, many of them longtime government supporters, demanded food,
fuel and electricity rather than political change, according to
interviews in four affected towns.
Mr. Maduro responded to discontent in the socialist heartland with the
same repression applied to opponents. More than 200 protesters were
detained in the September protests, and one person was shot dead by the
police, according to the Venezuelan Observatory of Social Conflict, a
nonprofit group tracking the disturbances.
“What they are doing smells to us a lot like dictatorship,” said Edito
Hidalgo, a veteran Tupamaro activist who led a protest in the western
town of Urachiche in September. “They have the power and they won’t let
it go.”
Urachiche, a close-knit farming community, had overwhelmingly voted for
Socialist candidates since Mr. Chávez was first sworn in, in 1999,
promising to govern for the people.
“This is a revolutionary town,” said Mr. Hidalgo, who proudly recounted
Che Guevara’s visit to Urachiche in 1962.
After enduring Venezuela’s worsening economic conditions for seven
years, the town finally raised its voice in September. Thousands of
residents peacefully marched to the town hall singing the national
anthem to give the mayor a proposal for improving food and fuel supplies.
A band appeared from the multitude with traditional instruments —
miniature guitars and maracas — capping the rally with an impromptu
concert, said Mr. Hidalgo. “Then everyone went to their homes without
throwing a single rock.”
A few days later, the FAES police pulled up outside Mr. Hidalgo’s house,
looking for him. Alerted by his wife, he fled and spent two weeks in
hiding, while security forces harassed his neighborhood.
“They had decided they must get rid of Edito Hidalgo because he’s
preaching the Revolution to the people,” he said.
Back in Güiria, the family of Mr. Bislick, the dead radio host, are
still waiting for justice.
After the armed men abducted Mr. Bislick, his family ran to the police
station — their car, like most in town, was out of gas.
Instead of immediately undertaking a search, the officers spent two
hours taking down their details, said his family. In despair, the family
then ran to the ruling party’s office, where Mr. Bislick had worked for
two decades, to seek spare fuel to help the search. They were denied.
A neighbor eventually discovered Mr. Bislick’s body in the bushes.
Mr. Bislick’s denunciations of corruption had grown so popular that
residents blasted his program in the streets from their car speakers
during blackouts, said his radio colleague, José Alberto Frontén.
“We were giving it hard on the program and we knew our punches were
landing where they should,” said Mr. Frontén. “But we never saw that hit
coming to us.”
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