How Cuba learned in Venezuela to suppress military dissent

CARACAS.- In December 2007,
the president of the time, Hugo Chávez He suffered his first defeat at the polls. Although he was still very popular among the working clbad who had pushed him to power almost a decade earlier, voters rejected a referendum that would have allowed him to run for reelection indefinitely. Chaozing, Chavez turned to a close confidant, according to three former advisers: Fidel Castro. The elderly Cuban ruler had been a mentor for Chavez for years before becoming president, while he was known to have directed a failed coup d'etat.

The intensification of economic ties makes Cuba more dependent on Venezuela, rich in oil, and Castro is eager to help Chavez stay in power, said the advisers.
Castro's advice: to guarantee absolute control of the army. It was easier said than done. The Venezuelan army had a history of uprisings that had sometimes led to coups such as that organized by Chavez, then lieutenant-colonel, in 1992. A decade later, rivals organized a brief uprising against Chavez himself.

But if Chávez took the necessary measures, said the Cuban adviser, it could last as long as Castro, recalled the advisers. After all, the Cuban armed forces, under the command of Brother Castro, have been controlling everything for decades, from security to key sectors of the economy. In a few months, the countries concluded two agreements that gave Cuba wide access to the Venezuelan military sector and a great freedom to spy on and reform it.

The agreements, the details of which are reported here for the first time, have led to strict surveillance of Venezuelan troops through an intelligence service, now known as the Military Counterintelligence Branch ( DGCIM).

On the advice of the Cuban army, Venezuela reformulated the intelligence unit into a service that spies on its own armed forces, instilling fear and paranoia and repressing dissent. Recognized for its repressive tactics, the DGCIM is accused by soldiers, opposition lawmakers, human rights groups and many foreign governments, including acts of torture and torture. the death of a captain of the navy arrested.

According to documents reviewed by Reuters, the agreements signed in May 2008 allowed the Cuban armed forces:

• Train soldiers in Venezuela.
• Review and restructure parts of the Venezuelan army.
• Train Venezuelan intelligence agents in Havana.
• Change the mission of the intelligence service to spy on foreign rivals and monitor the soldiers themselves, officers and even senior commanders.

According to the documents, the first agreement would prepare Venezuelan intelligence agents for "the discovery and confrontation of the intelligence and subversive work of the enemy". The second agreement allowed the Cuban authorities to supervise the "badimilation" and "modernization" of the Venezuelan army.

The presence of Cuban officials in the Venezuelan army has been known for years. President Nicolás Maduro, disciple of Chávez and successor increasingly besieged, said during a speech in 2017: "We thank the revolutionary armed forces of Cuba.We greet you and always welcome you." But neither country has acknowledged the details of the agreements or the extent of Cuba's participation in the Venezuelan military sector.

In March, after US Vice President Mike Pence denounced "the perverse influence" of Havana in Caracas, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez tried to downplay their relationship. "The categorical refusal and false accusations were reiterated," said Rodriguez, "about Cuban military personnel who" train, "" control "or" intimidate "Venezuela."

Neither the Venezuelan Ministry of Defense nor its Ministry of Information, responsible for government communications, including those in Maduro, responded to e-mails and phone calls regarding this article.

Eleven years after its signing, military agreements have proved crucial for Maduro's survival, according to security experts, people close to the government and opposition politicians.

With the help and training of Cuba, the military has supported Maduro and has helped to overcome the economic crisis, hunger and widespread crime, as well as the migration of more than 4 million people, close to 10% of Venezuela's population.

The documents describing the agreements between Venezuela and Cuba, as well as dozens of interviews with active and retired members, government officials, and people familiar with the relations between Caracas and Havana, show just how much money is spent there. Castro's help was also decisive. .

These people said that the transformation of the DGCIM had been particularly effective.

"The most important mission of the intelligence agency was to neutralize what would affect our democracy," said Raúl Salazar, former minister of defense of President Chavez, opposed to Maduro. "Now, under the command of Cuba, the government uses it to stay in power."

Once Cuba began training its staff, agents were introduced to the DGCIM, often dressed in black uniforms, inside the barracks. There, they would compile reports on uniforms perceived as troublemakers and report any signs of disloyalty, according to more than 20 former Venezuelan army officers and intelligence services.

IMCI also began intercepting officers' phones, including high-ranking military commanders, to hear about possible conspiracies.

The crackdown has led to hundreds of arrests. At least 200 soldiers are currently in detention, according to the opposition – led National Assembly. Control Ciudadano, a Venezuelan non-governmental organization that studies the armed forces, says that the number exceeds 300.

In a report published in June 2017 and reviewed by Reuters, the DGCIM accused a soldier, enrolled in a university considered as aligned with the opposition, of "political and ideological subversion".

When discussing the case for the first time, the former soldier told Reuters that he was handcuffed to a chair, kept in a room permanently lit and beaten until two vertebrae were broken. "These days were endless," he said. He revealed his story to Reuters on the condition that the news agency only uses his first name, Daniel, and does not reveal his age.

Since its reorganization, the ranks of the DGCIM have increased from a few hundred agents at the beginning of Chavez 's administration to at least 1,500 today, according to former military officers. # 39; army.

A recent UN report accused the DGCIM of being tortured, including electric shocks, asphyxiation, immersion in water, badual violence and water deprivation. and food.

Under the Maduro government, the DGCIM officers were promoted to positions of responsibility, including the president's personal security command.

The crackdown, say the opposition leaders, has made the armed forces impenetrable. Juan Guaidó, president of the National Assembly, denounced earlier this year that Maduro's reelection in 2018 was a joke and declared, with the support of most Western democracies, that he was the president legitimate of the country.

But calls for opposition to a military uprising have not been heard.

"We failed," said a senior opposition official involved in attempts to negotiate with the military leaders. "We have nothing to offer them, to convince them."

Bastion of dignity

For Chávez, the planned changes in both agreements have had a personal impact.

Castro, whom he had long admired, was the first international leader to embrace Chavez as a politician in the 1990s.

The military intelligence unit, meanwhile, was led by officers aligned with the conservative elite and opposed to Chavez's vision of transforming a country where, despite the world's largest oil reserves, many people remained poor.

When his 1992 coup failed, the unit officers, then known as DIM (Military Intelligence Directorate), were tasked to arrest Chavez. At first, the leader was in one of the same underground cells at the headquarters of the DIM in Caracas, where he would then arrest some of his own political opponents, according to several former officials.

In 1994, a few months after his release from prison after his presidential resignation, Chavez flew to Havana, where Castro, at his first face-to-face meeting, greeted him at the airport . Castro saw in Chávez a leftist leader with similar ideas, of a style hard to find since the end of the cold war. With regard to Venezuela's oil wealth, Castro saw the food potential of a hungry Cuban economy due to the collapse of its expansionist Union, the Soviet Union.

With Castro as a spectator of a speech at the University of Havana, Chavez said that Cuba was, at the time of his fourth decade of reign under Castro, "a bastion of Latin dignity. American ". He promised to heal the capitalist "gangrene" that afflicted Venezuela.

After the visit, the two men began to speak frequently, former councilors said.

In the late 1990s, high inflation, weak economic growth and increasing poverty made Chavez's socialist message attractive to a growing number of Venezuelans. In 1998, he was elected president.

Almost immediately, he deepens his official ties with Cuba.

In October 2000, Castro traveled to Caracas to sign a series of economic agreements. Venezuela would give Cuba enough oil to meet half of its energy needs. Since 2000, Venezuela has shipped an average of 55,000 barrels of oil per day to Cuba, for a total of more than $ 21,000 million.

In return, Cuba sent thousands of doctors, teachers and agricultural specialists to help diversify Venezuela's basic economy.

In 2002, many members of the Venezuelan elite were tired of Chavez. In April, conservative opposition leaders joined the military leaders, including senior DIM officials, and arrested him.

But the coup failed in two days, after a mbadive popular uprising on his behalf.

Back in power, and with Castro's blessing, Chávez placed the Cubans in his inner circle to bolster security, according to his former ex-councilors and several former army officers. A purge of the intelligence service and other senior army officers has begun.

He appointed Hugo Carvajal as deputy director, a lieutenant-colonel who joined Chavez's coup movement in 1992 and who later headed the investigation division of the DIM. In two years, Carvajal became his CEO.

Carvajal started modernizing the DIM. In an email to Reuters, Carvajal announced that the Central Bank of Venezuela had sent millions of dollars in cash to DIM for new technologies, including monitoring equipment and a database to centralize intelligence.

The army would lead the counterintelligence service for nearly a decade. He has just left his post and has been sanctioned by the United States Treasury Department for allegedly helping the Colombian guerrillas.

In April, he was arrested in Spain and remains in detention because of an order from the United States regarding alleged drug trafficking. In the email sent by his lawyer in Spain, Carvajal denied the accusations.

In July 2007, Chavez appointed Gustavo Rangel, loyal officer at the head of the army reserves, to the post of Minister of Defense. In his oath, Rangel spoke of the need for a "new Venezuelan military thought" to counter the "real enemy".

"The empire," he said, using Venezuelan official rhetoric to refer to the United States, was the godfather of "subversive groups" determined to destroy the revolution.

Reuters could not contact Rangel, now retired, for a comment.

In December, Chavez lost the referendum on the limits of the mandate. On television, he promised a "new offensive" to pursue his goal.

Defense talks with Cuba have begun. At a meeting held on May 26 in Caracas, Rangel and General Álvaro López, First Deputy Minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Cuba, signed the two agreements.

Under the first agreement, the Cuban Ministry would oversee a restructuring of the IMU and advise on the establishment of "new organs" within the service. The DIM would also send groups of up to 40 officers to Havana for three months of spying training.

According to the documents, Venezuela would send the curricula vitae of the candidates to Cuba for examination. The courses included: how to manage "secret collaborators", how to conduct criminal investigations and how to select new intelligence agents.

According to the documents, most of the training was conducted at the Arnés Estévez Sánchez Superior Military School, in the west of Havana. At the academy, a group of four-story white buildings and badembly camps, Cuban instructors told the agents of the DIM that their mission would now be to infiltrate and control the army, according to five people aware of the courses.

The second agreement created a committee called the Coordination and Liaison Group of the Republic of Cuba or GRUCE. The GRUCE, made up of eight Cuban "military specialists", would send Cuban advisers to Venezuela to inspect military units and train soldiers.

A former Venezuelan intelligence chief recalled the training he had received from Cuban instructors on a farm in the state of Anzoátegui, in the east of the country. The instructors, he told Reuters, harbaded the students by asking them questions about their political beliefs. The DIM, they said, must be the "spearhead" in the fight against the "traitors".

Chavez, boosted by increases in government spending that have boosted his popularity, won a new referendum ending the presidential term limits.

In 2011, he changed the name of DIM to include the term "counterintelligence", which reflected his new mission: to counteract any sabotage from within. The new DGCIM was then stronger with several hundred agents, said former officials.

Hardly out of Cuban training, the new agents began to infiltrate the barracks. "We live and train with the troops to monitor, keeping the bosses informed," said another former DGCIM officer in Reuters. "We had a tight grip."

Some claimed to be regular soldiers. Others donned their DGCIM uniforms and encouraged the soldiers to relate to each other. They became known as "men in black," according to several former soldiers.

"I will deliver you to the DGCIM," said a soldier to a battalion commander. Stories of arrests and torture by DGCIM agents, sometimes with skeleton masks and hoods, have spread throughout the ranks.

"Nobody fights against the state"

Chavez, after four surgeries in Cuba, died in 2013.

In a newspaper column, Castro called him "the best friend of the Cuban people throughout his history". Voters chose Maduro to succeed him.

In 2014, oil prices dropped. Maduro's efforts to stimulate the economy have failed.

Hunger and scarcity strike even the armed forces, and have only worsened since. A military doctor recently told Reuters that many of the enlisted soldiers were underweight and lived mainly with pasta and lentils.

While an increasing number of troops were looking to defect, the DGCIM became more aggressive. He expanded the surveillance, intercepting the same phone tapping to senior officers.

On the top floor of its headquarters, about 40 officers from its Operational Communications Branch used a platform called Genesi, according to a former member of the team.

The system, designed by the Italian telecommunications company IPS SpA, allows users to "intercept, monitor and badyze all types of information sources", according to the company's website .

IPS has not responded to calls, e-mails or letters soliciting comments at its headquarters in Rome.

In July 2017, Daniel, the lieutenant of the army in Caracas, was called to the office of the commander of his battalion. One day a supporter of Chávez, Daniel joined the army in 2004, but under Maduro he lost his enthusiasm and informed his superiors that he was planning to leave. He attended law courses at the university while he was still active in the military and even participated in opposition marches.

Daniel's behavior, according to an intelligence report reviewed by Reuters, was "counter-revolutionary." The report describes the university, whose name, Daniel asked Reuters not to reveal, as a school for the opposition.

On his way to his commander's office, Daniel said, three uniformed counterintelligence officers confiscated his phone and said it was necessary to accompany them for an "interview" at the headquarters of the DGCIM. .

Daniel said the agents transferred him to an underground cell and handcuffed him to a chair. Every day a man would come in and beat him several times. The blows broke two vertebrae, according to a medical report reviewed by Reuters.

After 20 days, a military court accused him of treason, rebellion and violation of military decorum. Waiting for his trial, he was transferred to another prison. Six months later, after pleading guilty, the court released Daniel on condition that he stays in the country. He was expelled from the armed forces.

He returned to law school, but feels remorse for pleading guilty. "I've never been convinced that it's the best," he said, but noted that many people are not being detained indefinitely. "But nobody is fighting against the state."

The surveillance hurt even senior officers. One case triggered national indignation, forcing the DGCIM to recognize the violations.

Rafael Acosta, 50, Navy Lieutenant Commander, died in the custody of the DGCIM on June 29, eight days after his arrest by the officers.

Tarek Saab, Attorney General of Venezuela, said that Mr. Acosta was arrested for participating in an "unjustified" plot. Waleswka Pérez, wife of Acosta, said the charges were false and accused the DGCIM of torture.

On July 1, Saab said the government had accused two DGCIM agents of homicide. He did not give any cause of death nor the circumstances in which it occurred. The charges, said Saab in a statement, follow an "impartial" investigation into the "unfortunate fact".

Most of the operations of the DGCIM are never revealed.

In March 2018, five DGCIM agents asked about Lieutenant Colonel Igbert Marín, commander of the 302nd Mechanized Army Brigade in Caracas. Marín, now 40 years old and a father of two, was a rising star who had distinguished himself in Venezuela's main military academy for most of his career.

His wife, Yoselyn Carrizales, told Reuters that the agents had led Marin to the Ministry of Defense, where he had been received by officers, including Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino and Iván Hernández, the current one. head of the DGCIM.

Officials accused Marín of conspiring against the government, said Carrizales, one of the army's attorneys. They said they had evidence in a video of Marin and eight other conspiracy officers, he added, but they did not show him the video.

Marin denied the accusation and said the meeting had been just a meeting of former clbadmates of the academy.

Indignant, he told the defense minister that such accusations were counterproductive, especially at a time when most of the military were suffering from food shortages, equipment and low wages.

The minister must "leave the office, he must open his eyes and feel what the troops feel," said Marín to Padrino, according to Carrizales. Another lawyer defending Marín, Alonso Medina Roa, confirmed the version.

Neither Padrino nor Hernández could be reached for comment.

The agents took Marín and the eight other officers to the headquarters of the DGCIM. Marín then told his lawyers that the police had handcuffed him to a chair, put a bag on his head and filled him with tear gas. His lawyers detailed Reuters' allegations of abuse.

A week later, at a hearing attended by Carrizales, a military court accused Marín of treason, instigation to rebellion and breach of decorum. The agents took Marin. He remained incommunicado for 78 days.

"I did not know if he was alive or dead," Carrizales said. Marín is still in detention and his wife is working for his release.

Venezuelan authorities have not publicly commented on the case, nor shown to Marín's lawyers the so-called video. The date of the trial has not yet been set.

"They are afraid of him," said Carrizales. "He has undisputed leadership in the armed forces, which is why he was arrested."

Reuters Agency

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