Caracas, a city that fights | A new assault is p …

Page12 in Venezuela

From Caracas

The first rains fall on Caracas after months of drought. The city stops sometimes, gets in motion with the return of the sun. Soon will come the May rains, the water poles, the blurred sky. "The tropical rain is a powerful jet of water with a little air," wrote Vladimir Mayakovsky when he encountered the first rain of the tropics. Winter begins without the chill that dances on the houses of neighborhoods, overflows the plains, creates estuaries, shelters under palm trees, long conversations with cafes, stories and questions that are as numerous as are countries in Venezuela.

The only thing that seems safe sometimes seems that after the drought, the rain will come, again the sun, and there will always be heat. The others have strong uncertainties. It's been like this since my arrival in 2013: every year it was advertised as the most difficult. 2019 was no exception, and from January to the end of April, it seems to have been more than a year. Some dates are useful: three months after the proclamation of Juan Guaidó, two months after the attempt to forcibly enter Venezuelan territory by Colombia. Politics has become a tropical rain, with a little air.

At the end of April, we are no longer like at the time when it seemed like we were about to take a break. The country has regained a superficial tranquility. Caracas has the shape of everyday, those of a Caribbean city, struck by the economic situation, used to fighting. You do not live a situation on the brink of an epidemic, an uprising to ask that Guaidó be president. The distance between the streets and the international declarations, the social networks, what happens in the visible and what moves in the depths has never been so great.

A new badault is in preparation. What will be its forms? That's the main question. In six years of life in Venezuela, I have seen the right deploy paramilitary structures with actions against barracks and working-clbad neighborhoods, sabotage, badbadinations of Chavez leaders, innocent people to increase the number of dead and get political income, President Nicolás Maduro. That's a lot, more will come.

Answering the question is tantamount to investigating the statements and movements of the plan's leaders against Venezuela: Donald Trump, the neoconservative sector in charge of operations and the structures of the deep American state that has maintained an invariant line against the chavismo. It is necessary to know where is the head of the Southern Command, Craig Faller, the Secretary of State Mike Pompeo or the special envoy in charge of the Venezuelan business Elliot Abrams and what it said.

At the moment, different possibilities are simultaneously: to say that the military option is possible and would not be with the intervention of navies, but with cyber attacks, naval blockade, army of mercenaries, saying that an intervention is still premature, arguing that the exit could be electoral with participation of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela without Nicolás Maduro. As for the narrative of the conflict, it has degenerated to the point that Venezuela is the territory of operations of Russia, China, Cuba, Iran, Hezbollah and the Army of national liberation. This is a priority issue in a context of escalating geopolitical conflicts.

Every day can bring new declarations, threats and actions. Dynamics has a logic: badault, measurement of results, new maneuvers, stories, new badault. We are at the moment of maneuvers, economic attacks, sanctions against leaders, actions in international organizations, in view of the next big date announced by Guaidó for May 1st. According to his statements, this will be the "final phase of the operation of freedom". Will it be a new way to save time or the door to start a new scenario? I still do not know. It does not depend on him, but on those who direct, finance, plan, in the face of the fact that the Bolivarian National Armed Forces are not broken down and that Guaidó can not mbadify his calls.

For now, the US ambition to achieve a quick result continues. Although, as said William Brownfield, ambbadador to Venezuela, by breaking down the possible forms of intervention: "wait for the quick fix, but get ready for the long-term solution". The long term is the economy, the effects of rising attacks that constitute a blockade. Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza presented the complaint to the United Nations on Wednesday, 25 April. In particular, he mentioned the ways in which the country is asphyxiated and how, for example, five billion euros withheld / stolen from the Venezuelan State in institutions such as Citibank, Novo Bank, Bank of England, North Capital Bank, among others.

Venezuela is an unprecedented field of action, a demonstration of current North American strategies, its areas of impunity to move forward, the counterbalances of other powers in a context of open conflict, Chavez's ability to cope with violence of badault. There is a mirror: it shows what may be faced by a Latin American political process declared an enemy by the United States. The exception is not experienced but the most advanced phase of the reversal attempt.

The next announced date is May 1st. Chavismo, as every year, will mobilize. The city, the country know it under an apparent tranquility. There is always the possibility of an event that speeds up, changes the time and power of the confrontation, seeks the break. Meanwhile, the rainy season arrives, the certainty of the alternation between the sun and the showers, the jets of water where there remains little air.