Venezuela's National Youth Day on February 12, 2014 was a defining moment: Students rose up and Maduro murdered them.

"Gentlemen, he who is here will go out tomorrow to find a better future." - Bassil Alejandro Dacosta, age 24 , over Facebook on February 11, 2014. He was murdered the next day by the Maduro regime.

Robert Redman and Bassil Alejandro Dacosta murdered six years ago today

Six years ago today nonviolent student protesters Bassil Da Costa and Robert Redman were gunned down on February 12, 2014 in Venezuela, while engaged in nonviolent street protests against the government of Nicolas Maduro. Robert Redman was shot and killed hours after he had carried Bassil, who had also been shot and died earlier that same day, and tweeted about it.

"Today I was hit with a rock in the back, a helmet in my nose. I swallowed tear-gas, carried the kid who died, and what did you do?" - Robert Redman, age 28 over twitter on February 12, 2014 

On February 12, 2014 Venezuela's National Youth Day millions of young students took to the streets to nonviolently protest "the social and economic crisis caused by the illegitimate government that Venezuela has today."  

Robert Redman with other youths carrying Bassil Dacosta on February 12, 2014.

Young Venezuelans inside and outside of the country mobilized in a coherent and sustained effort to expose the anti-democratic nature of the Maduro regime. A full and brief explanation was offered by Andreina Nash at the time in the video titled: What's going on in Venezuela in a nutshell.

The violence had escalated in the days prior to February 12th. On February 11, 2014 in an update via twitter from Roderick Navarro and Guido Mercado they reported: wounded by bullets today: Jorge Monsalve 20 years old, Franco Perez 15 years old (Thorax), Pedro Alison 24 years old (Left arm), Anny Paredes 36 years old (Abdomen). 

These students continue to face a government that over the past eighteen years has been stripping Venezuela's democracy of all its constitutional and institutional democratic safeguards in order to consolidate power into the United Socialist Party of Venezuela and in the presidency. At the same time the presence of both Cuban state security and military officials in the country who have presided over the building of a totalitarian apparatus is cause for great concern. They have used technological tools to censor images over twitter. Over the past 20 years independent television press outlets have been taken over or shutdown by the government.

Bassil da Costa, Geraldine Moreno, Génesis Carmona, Ender Peña, Kluivert Roa, Paola Ramírez, Daniela Salomón, Lisbeth Ramírez y muchos otros son los nombres de los caídos, a quienes se les rinde honor cada 12 de febrerohttps://t.co/MacPlsuRo3

— Diario La Nación (@lanacionweb) February 12, 2020

Six years later and across Venezuela the youth still remember the fallen and the Maduro regime's repressive forces who murdered them. They have not forgotten and it marked a before and after in the history of the South American country. Ana Karina Garcia over twitter stated in Spanish that, " February 12, 2014 marked us as a generation. Bassil Da Costa, Juancho Montoya and Robert Redman were murdered by the tyranny while they were in the streets demanding a country of opportunities. #AHeroIsNotForgotten"    

Cubazuela: Maduro reveals once again that Venezuela is a Cuban colony

"To deprive man of freedom is to relegate him to the status of a thing, rather than elevate him to the status of a person. Man must never be treated as a means to the end of the state, but always as an end within himself." - Martin Luther King Jr. Stride to Freedom (1958)

Down with Cuban Imperialism in Latin America. Save Latin America

On January 20, 2020 Nicolas Maduro at the XX Meeting of the Intergovernmental Commission of the Cuba-Venezuela Integral Cooperation Agreement revealed the colonial status of his government: "I've told our older brother and protector, Raúl Castro Ruz, and he agrees. And it has been discussed in this mixed commission and we agree. The ambassadors are practically part of the Council of Ministers, the ambassador of Cuba has open doors in each ministry to coordinate, to move forward."

Maduro plantea que el Embajador de Cuba se integre al Consejo de Ministros de su régimen en Venezuela. #20Ene pic.twitter.com/UkZhH0Sv8F

— Gabriel Bastidas (@Gbastidas) January 20, 2020

This has been a long term objective of the Castro brothers. The Cuban dictatorship beginning in 1959 had strategic designs on taking over Venezuela to exploit its natural resources in order to magnify its regional impact.

On January 23, 1963 Cuban Communist leader Blas Roca made it public when he told a Havana rally that when the communists gained full control in Venezuela and they “make themselves owners of the great riches in oil, aluminum and everything their earth imprisons, then all of America shall burn.”  A cache of three tons of weapons was found on a Venezuelan beach in November 1963 that was to be used to disrupt the democratic elections there.

Fidel Castro would continue to agitate for revolution in Venezuela. A well documented incident occurred on May 8, 1967 and was reported in The Washington Post that described how: "two small boats carrying a dozen heavily armed fighters made landfall near Machurucuto, a tiny fishing village 100 miles east of the Venezuelan capital, Caracas. Their plan was to march inland and recruit Venezuelan peasants to the cause of socialist revolution." An all night gun battle with the Venezuelan military led to nine guerrillas dead, two captured, and one who had escaped.

Cuban Commandant Ramiro Valdes and President Hugo Chavez

Venezuelans successfully defended themselves from repeated ventures, and the Castro regime relented pledging not to attempt the violent overthrow of the democracy, but years later they succeeded with Hugo Chavez at the ballot box what they had failed to do through force of arms.

In 1992 Hugo Chavez was involved in a failed coup against the Andres Perez government. Pardoned by Andres Perez's successor, Rafael Caldera, in March 1994 Hugo Chavez made his way to Cuba later that same year where he was received by Fidel Castro as a hero not a failed coup plotter.

Fidel Castro greets Hugo Chavez in Cuba on December 13, 1994

Four years later, in a reaction to generalized disgust with the corruption endemic to the Venezuelan democratic order epitomized by the Carlos Andres Perez administration the former coup plotter was elected president.  President Caldera, who pardoned Chavez, handed power over to him in 1999. Together with Fidel Castro, as a mentor, Chavez began the process of turning a flawed democratic order into the regime it is today.

Maduro's action on Monday, was just the latest statement echoing what Hugo Chávez had already announced. In 2007 Chávez had declared that Cuba and Venezuela were a single nation. “Deep down,” he said, “we are one single government.”  

In February 2010  Ramiro Valdés Menéndez, then age 77, was hired "as a consultant for that country's energy crisis" but his expertise is not in energy.  Valdes was the Vice President of the Council of State and Minister of Communications in the Cuban government. His role in Communications was figuring out in 2007 a way to muzzle the internet, what he called a "wild colt of new technologies."

Nicolas Maduro and Ramiro Valdes

Commander Ramiro Valdes, founder of the Castro regime's feared Ministry of the Interior, head of the organization between 1961 and 1968 and was viewed by some as "the No. 3 man in the Cuban hierarchy." He is the architect of Cuban totalitarianism's repressive apparatus and assisted Chavez and Maduro in building the Venezuelan version.    

The Castro regime turned Venezuela into their colony. Today it is Cuban occupied territory.

Caracas Chronicles is right when it observes: "Amazing how everything the left accuses the U.S. of wanting to do in Venezuela —siphon off oil wealth, install a puppet dictator, run hundreds of spies, crush democratic institutions— is stuff Cuba is *actually* doing. And has been. For years."

Thousands of Cuban military advisers and intelligence officials assisted the Chavez and Maduro regime's consolidate power to entrench the dictatorship in Venezuela. OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro has described it as "being like an occupation army."

Maduro and the Castro regime are attempting to complete the installation of a communist dictatorship in Venezuela. One of the instruments that these regimes have used to subjugate populations is famine and rationing food to those who are loyal and denying it to those who are not.

Famine is a tool communists have traditionally used to remake societies. 

The deadliest famines in the 20th century were not in Africa but in Europe (Ukraine) and China.
Social science research has demonstrated that famines "happen only with some degree of human complicity."  Human decisions "determine whether a crisis deteriorates into a full-blown famine."

Jean Pierre Planchart malnourished inVenezuela. Pic: Dr. Livia Machad

In the case of Venezuela, Chávez and Maduro destroyed the market in food by imposing price controls "that resulted in underproduction when the official prices did not meet costs of production. Their governments expropriated farms, ranches, and even food distributors such as butchers. There’s very little if anything produced on these expropriated territories." Rhoda Howard-Hassmann's article "Famine in Venezuela" published on August 21, 2018 in the World Peace Foundation reports:

"By 2017 malnutrition was confirmed in Venezuela, precipitating the political unrest now roiling the country. According to Antulio Rosales (“Weaponizing Hunger is a New Low for the Venezuelan President,” Globe and Mail, March 12, 2018, p.A11) and Enrique Krauze (“Hell of a Fiesta,” New York Review of Books, March 8, 2018, pp. 4-7), by early 2018 more than half of all Venezuelans had lost between 19 and 24 pounds, and 90 per cent said they do not have enough money for food."

Despite this reality, on February 4, 2018 Maduro shipped 100 tons of aid to Cuba. Maduro's regime issued ration cards for food in a country were mass hunger is an ever present reality and it is understood by many that following regime instructions, such as going to vote in the last sham election, was necessary to be eligible for rations.  The electoral calculus was clear: "Everyone who has this card must vote," said Nicolas Maduro and continued, "I give and you give."

This is a very old playbook.

According to Felix Wemheuer, professor of Modern China Studies at the University of Cologne, in his book Famine Politics in Maoist China and the Soviet Union," during the twentieth century, 80 percent of all famine victims worldwide died in China and the Soviet Union." 

Maduro, and his Cuban allies issued denials about the extent of the problem of hunger in Venezuela. The rejection and destruction of humanitarian assistance combined with images of tons of humanitarian assistance shipped from Venezuela to Cuba appears bizarre, but it needs to be placed in the context of previous episodes involving other communist regimes.

Both the USSR and China used Western journalists, such as Walter Duranty in Moscow and Edgar Snow in Beijing to deny that a famine was taking place and to defend the official lies of the regime. This practice continues today in Cuba, Venezuela and elsewhere.

Fidel Castro lounging with Mengistu Haile Mariam, in Ethiopia in 1977

In Ethiopia, Mengistu Haile Mariam's regime, reproduced Soviet and Chinese practices when he blacked out communications, and refused access to aid agencies.

In December 1979, during an Ethiopian military offensive, this time including Soviet advisors and Cuban troops, it “was more specifically directed against the population’s means of survival, including poisoning and bombing waterholes and machine gunning herds of cattle.”

Worse yet, as starvation took hold in Ethiopia, Mengistu ordered planeloads of whisky to celebrate the tenth anniversary of his taking power. Denying that a famine was taking place. Once that could no longer be denied he then used the famine as a cover for ethnic cleansing and removing opponents.

Despite all of this the Castro regime on too many occasions is being given a pass, and this is not only a disservice to Cubans, suffering under a 61 year old dictatorship, but also to Venezuelans that have been colonized by the Castro regime.
  

A Tale of Two Tweets: Why 80% of Venezuelans want Nicolas Maduro and the Castro regime to go away.

Two tweets explain why Nicolas Maduro and the Castro regime are detested in Venezuela.

(Left) Tons of aid blocked from Venezuelans. (Right) Tons of aid sent by Maduro to Cuba

Venezuelans are going hungry and moderate to severe malnutrition of children under five is increasing in the country. To add insult to injury the response of the Maduro regime is to block aide entering Venezuela, and condition assistance to political support. Blocking humanitarian aid has been going on for some time. At the same time the Maduro regime is exporting humanitarian assistance to Cuba while their own people literally starve. Two tweets set 48 hours apart dramatize this reality. This is why 80% of Venezuelans want him gone.

On  February 4, 2018 Maduro shipped 100 tons of aid to Cuba while Venezuelan children are dying of hunger  and on February 6, 2018 Maduro, once again, orders humanitarian shipments of aid to be blocked from entering Venezuela.

#Maduro sends 100 tons of aid to #Cuba as #Venezuela meanders through its own crisis https://t.co/4b9rrG8NW0

— Nora Gámez Torres (@ngameztorres) February 4, 2019

#Venezuela #Colombia
Venezuelan military officers blocked a bridge on the border with Colombia ahead of an anticipated humanitarian aid shipment, as opposition leader Juan Guaido stepped up his challenge to President Nicolas Maduro's authority. #AFPphoto by Edinson Estupinan pic.twitter.com/nB74UXBZ7a

— AFP Photo (@AFPphoto) February 6, 2019

This is Cuban imperialism in Latin America. Not that the Castro regime helps Cubans in need.
This is why Castro puppet and usurper, Nicolas Maduro, and the Cuban occupation force must go.

Maduro regime still murdering Venezuelan youth but it is failing to silence protests and generating outrage

 Venezuela, June 24, 2017

Protesters shout "murderers" in Carlota, Francisco Fajardo highway

22-year-old David Vallenilla was shot and killed by the military police and is the 75th killed in anti-government protests in Venezuela on June 22, 2017. This has failed to quell protests and is generating outrage among Venezuelans.

The Associated Press reported the following today: "Venezuelan anti-government protesters once again took to the Francisco Fajardo highway Saturday in response to the latest casualty from the protest movement, a 22-year-old student who was shot and killed Thursday."  However the video does not reflect what was taking place at the peak of the protest but only the aftermath.



The press is also failing to mention the extensive involvement of the Castro regime's intelligence services and military assisting Maduro's repressive forces repressing and killing peaceful Venezuelan protesters.

Communism has killed over 100 million persons over the course of the 20th century and continues to do so in the 21st in places like Venezuela.  What Hugo Chavez called "socialism of the 21st century" looks a lot like "communism of the 20th century": a deadly totalitarian failure.

Venezuela: Protests continue as Maduro's forces kill more students

"Years selling us the idea that all the weapons of war they bought was to fight the gringos, it turned out to be that it was to kill ourselves," Juan Pablo Pernalete, student age 20, murdered by Maduro's political police

Juan Pablo Pernalete, age 20 murdered by Maduro's political police

The situation in Venezuela continues to deteriorate as the Maduro regime announces that it will leave the Organization of American States to avoid having its anti-democratic behavior called into question as it's repressive forces kill more students.

Marching in memory of Juan Pablo Pernalete and other fallen students

Juan Pablo Pernalete, a 20 year old college student majoring in economics, was shot and killed by Maduro's Bolivarian National Police on April 26, 2017 and a day later thousands took to the street to honor his memory. Juan Pablo was a youtube sensation who had a presence on twitter with a photo of his girlfriend, Fabiana Marchesini, who now mourns for him.

Juan Pablo Pernalete with his girlfriend Fabiana Marchesini

The killings are meant to terrorize and break the spirit of the young protesters. Maduro and his Cuban handlers have apparently misjudged the situation and a child of a prominent regime official has taken to the streets and to social media to call out his dad to do the right thing and denounce the violence.

The narrative of the Castro and Maduro regimes in Latin America that all the evils of the world are due to the United States is breaking down before the cruel reality both are inflicting on Venezuela's youth in the name of 21st century socialism.

The nonviolent struggle by the student movement in Venezuela is shaking the pillars of power of the Maduro regime now is the time to step it up not abandon it.  Maduro and his Cuban masters know how to deal with violence, but are at a disadvantage confronting a nonviolent opposition.  
 

March of Silence for the Fallen: Remembering the Maduro regime's victims

Silent marches and vigils for Maduro's victims in Venezuela

"No more murders in Venezuela"

The Maduro regime is killing young Venezuelans in order to provoke a violent response for the opposition. It is a trap for the opposition as was seen in Syria. A civic movement abandoning nonviolence and fighting the regime militarily is taking the fight to ground where the dictatorship has the advantage. Rather than falling into the trap, nonviolent opposition is organizing a nonviolent silent march later today to remember those killed and demand justice.

"Silent march in honor of our fallen"

 Mobilizing millions of Venezuelans to nonviolently resist the Maduro dictatorship has a better chance of forcing a democratic transition and the ouster of the regime. The alternative would be civil war and the odds are it would lead to the permanence of the Maduro regime with the aide of Cuban soldiers and intelligence assets.

Paola Ramírez and Carlos Moreno both shot in the head on April 19, 2017 in Venezuela.

Shooting young Venezuelans in the head to terrorize demonstrators and provoke a response has been a Maduro regime tactic since at least February 2014.

Beginning on February 12, 2014 regime agents shot Bassil Alejandro Dacosta, age 24 in the head.  One of the young students who carried Bassil off  after he was shot was Robert Redman, age 28, who reported later that day over twitter: "Today I was hit with a rock in the back, a helmet in my nose. I swallowed tear-gas, Carried the kid who died, and what did you do?" That same day he was also gunned down by Maduro's colectivos, working in concert with his security forces, and murdered. The killings continued.

Some of the young Venezuelans shot in the head by Maduro's agents

 A high profile killing that shocked the world was the murder of a local beauty queen. Génesis Carmona was marching at approximately 4:00 pm on Tuesday February 18, 2014, near Cedeño Avenue and the intersection of Carabobo, when  a group of masked gunmen on motorcycles opened fire on the demonstrators. Génesis was shot in the head in the left occipital region. She was a model who had won the Miss Tourism Carabobo beauty pageant in 2013.There have been dozens more executed by Maduro regime agents in an effort to terrorize and either silence or provoke nonviolent protesters.

March of silence for the fallen on Saturday, April 22nd at 10am

Families of the victims have pursued justice and had some successes, but much remains to be done to end impunity and hold those responsible accountable. This morning beginning at 9:00am silent marches and rosaries will be held in Acarigua and Araure while an hour later marches will begin in other parts of Venezuela. Demonstrators are asked to dress in white.

March of silence in honor of the fallen. Saturday, April 22, 2017 at 10am

Those of us who advocate for nonviolence in Venezuela have an obligation to speak out and denounce the violence visited on non-violent opponents by the Maduro regime and their Cuban handlers. Those engaged in violence need to understand that sooner or later they will have to answer for their crimes in a court of law.

"They did not die. They murdered them."

Please use the hashtags #MarchaDelSilencio and #SilentMarch along with #Venezuela and share pictures of those killed by Maduro. Tragically, there are many to choose from. They must be not be forgotten.

Vigil for the fallen in Anzoategui, Venezuela last night

 

Déjà vu: Venezuela's Universal Periodic Review at the UN Human Rights Council

Today reading UN Watch's report on the UN Human Rights Council review of Venezuela's human rights record it gave me déjà vu because I'd seen this before during the last Cuba UPR in 2013. Below is a summary of the report released earlier today by UN Watch.

Nicolas Maduro with UN prize for combating hunger—Venezuelans are in fact starving.

Venezuela used 500 front groups to subvert today’s UN review of its rights record 

GENEVA, Nov. 1, 2016 – UN chief Ban Ki-moon and human rights high commissioner Zeid Hussein are being called upon to investigate how their officials allowed Venezuela to commit “fraud on a massive scale” to influence today’s UN review of the country’s human rights record by using hundreds of “front groups” to submit comments favorable to the regime, a watchdog group reported.

While “an astronomical amount of 519 supposedly non-governmental organizations” submitted comments for Venezuela’s review, only 54 commented on Uganda, 26 on Syria,  23 for South Sudan, and 20 on Zimbabwe, according to a new report published by UN Watch, a Geneva-based non-governmental human rights monitoring group.

Although “critiques by genuine NGOs do appear, they are overwhelmed by an unprecedented amount of submissions by fraudulent ‘NGOs’ that, if  they do exist, are either controlled by the government of Venezuela, or by its allies Cuba and Bolivia,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch and an international lawyer.

“This is fraud committed on a massive scale,” said Neuer, as Venezuela’s foreign minister appeared before the UN Human Rights Council this morning in Geneva, Switzerland, to present her government’s case. The UNHRC audits each nation every five years for its Universal Periodic Review (UPR).

“Venezuela used hundreds of front groups to hijack the United Nations database and compilation summary of NGO submissions, and turn it into a propaganda sheet for the regime of President Nicolas Maduro,” said Neuer.

The UPR is not binding on anyone “but does have an impact because it’s a megaphone, a podium, which does shape the way people think and it’s a source of legitimacy,” said Neuer.

“Among the 500 groups absurdly praising Venezuela’s alleged human rights accomplishments include the Bolivian Baseball Association, the Cuban Federation of Canine Sports, and the ‘Association for Obvious Things,’ a group in Slovenia that hailed Venezuela’s record on combating hunger,” said the UN Watch report.

“The result is that the review today of Venezuela’s human rights record is being conducted based on a massive amount of manifestly false information,” concludes the report.

Under UN rules, the world body is only supposed to gather submissions that provide “credible and reliable information.” The report calls on UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Hussein to investigate “how and why their officials failed to screen out submissions that clearly do not meet this standard.”

“Ban Ki-moon and High Commissioner Zeid should declared Venezuela guity of conempt for the Human Rights Council on which it sits,” said Neuer.

UN Watch has often criticized the Council itself for electing non-democracies, including Venezuela itself last year, as members.

On Friday UN Watch slammed the re-election of Saudi Arabia, China and Cuba to the Council. “Electing the Saudis to the UN’s highest human rights body like making a pyromaniac into the fire chief,” said Neuer.

During the UNHRC meeting today on Venezuela, the Syria, North Korea, and Iran praised Venezuela while Western nations criticized its abuses and lack of democracy. All the comments and Venezuela’s responses are eventually added to the UPR.

The UN Watch report, titled “Fraud on the UN: Venezuela’s Corruption of its 2016 UPR Human Rights Review,” gives 20 examples of praise heaped by the NGOs on the socialist-run regime.

Among the “NGOs” were several organizations controlled by the Cuban Communist Party—and having no obvious expertise on the human rights claims in their submissions—such as the Cuban Association of Animal Production, the Cuban Federation of Underwater Activities, the Cuban Society for Philosophical Investigations, and the Cuban Society for Urology.

Also commenting were numerous Bolivian groups including the Bolivian Association of Plastic Arts.

According to the UN compilation document, despite Venezuela’s mass hunger, a Slovenian-based group called the “Association for Obvious Things” hailed Venezuela for being “recognized by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization for surpassing the first Millennium Development Goal of halving hunger.” (See full submission here.)

The UN document also reported that “a total of 238 organizations” welcomed “the reinforcement of people’s power and popular governance” in Venezuela. “Yet the truth is that the democratic opposition leaders like Antonio Ledezma and Leopoldo Lopez have had their freedom taken away,” said Neuer.

“A total of 40 organizations” reported Venezuela’s alleged “advances in the provision of free education at all levels.” A group called Desarrolo Humano Integral stated that in Venezuela “there is freedom of religion, belief, expression of ideas and thought, association, assembly and peaceful demonstration.” Neuer said this too was false: “The regime routinely arrests dissidents for the crimes of peaceful demonstrations.”

The UN reported that 24 organizations praised Venezuela for “positive outcomes” including a “reduction in school dropout rates and the introduction of a school meals program.” A total of 21 organizations reported that “progress had been made in adopting health legislation to ensure compliance with constitutional provisions prescribing free, high-quality health services for all.” In reality, said Neuer, the state of health in Venezuela is “a catastrophe—people are desperate for basic medicines.”

For full report, click here

#WithVenezuela Mass protests across Venezuela demanding recall of Maduro held

SOS Venezuela: All eyes on Venezuela

Protests across Venezuela on October 26, 2016

Time Magazine describes the situation in Venezuela as explosive and The Washington Post reports that large anti-Maduro protests filled the streets of Caracas and other major cities across the country chanting Democracy Yes! Dictatorship No! Opposition activists placed the number of protesters in the street yesterday at 1.2 million.

CNN in Spanish revealed video of Laura Lara, Venezuelan woman dressed in White, beaten down and kicked repeatedly by Venezuelan security forces yesterday. An investigation into this assault has been requested.

Youth leader Ana Karina Garcia giving thanks to Venezuelans participating in the protests outlined over twitter the next steps the opposition will be taking: today they go to the National Assembly, on Friday a national general strike has been called and on November 3rd a march on Miraflores.

In Miami and in over 60 cities around the world protests where held in solidarity with the protesters in Venezuela using the hashtag #ConVenezuela (#WithVenezuela).

Last night Venezuelans gathered in Miami to show their support for a free Venezuela

This past weekend Venezuelan women took to the streets of their homeland in protest and despite the efforts of the Maduro regime to shut down spaces for political participation over a million Venezuelans took to the streets today in an act of defiance.

All eyes on Venezuela.

Nonviolent resistance in Cuba and Venezuela: Case against violent flanks

 "Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon. Indeed, it is a weapon unique in history, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it."  Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., Oslo (1964)
 

"I want to denounce North America  for the manipulation of the Venezuelan Opposition"

Carlos Alberto Montaner has written an essay that asks an important question: "Do massive marches serve a purpose?" which also analyses the differences between the Venezuelan and Cuban democratic oppositions in their respective countries:

In Cuba, the opposition was liquidated by gunfire in the first five years of the dictatorship. There was resistance, but the authorities killed some 7,000 people and jailed more than 100,000. Two decades later, in the late 1970s, when the cage had been hermetically shut, they began to release them. The Castros have held Cuban society in their fist for half a century now. The Soviet KGB and the East German Stasi taught them how to lock the padlock. Today, Raúl has perfected his repressive strategy. It was the one the Chavists futilely tried to use in Venezuela.

The Venezuelan opposition holds on precariously in a virtual zone of the state apparatus. They are mayors, governors or deputies. They hold posts but neither power nor a budget. Chavism has deprived them of resources and authority, although, because Chavism emerged from a democratic setup, it has not been easy for it to build a cage. According to surveys, the Chavists are opposing 80 percent of the population, including a good portion of the D and E sectors — that is, the poorest.

Both in Cuba and in Venezuela the democratic opposition in its vast majority have chosen to pursue a nonviolent strategy, but their respective starting points are radically different. In Cuba the regime arrived in power through a violent revolution replacing a dictator, while in Venezuela the regime took power through the ballot box. Both sought to install totalitarianism, but in the case of Venezuela the residue of democracy has made it more difficult. Another factor is that in Cuba the opposition to the regime during the first seven years was a violent resistance with guerillas in the Escambray region. Despite their courage they where either exterminated or imprisoned as Montaner describes above.

However, it was the violent nature of this resistance that made it easier for the regime to consolidate its totalitarian rule and "hermetically" seal the island, but less than a decade later a nonviolent alternative arose with the founding of the Cuban Committee for Human Rights on January 28, 1976. 



University Academics Maria J. Stephan and Erica Chenoweth in their 2008 study "Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic on Nonviolent Conflict" compared the outcomes of 323 nonviolent and violent resistance campaigns from 1900 to 2006 and there study suggests “that nonviolent campaigns are more likely than violent campaigns to succeed in the face of brutal repression.” 

This is why Fulgencio Batista's authoritarian regime (1952 - 1958) was more susceptible to being violently overthrown, because it was less brutal than the Castro regime (1959 - present) that followed it. However, the Castro regime though able to systematically exterminate violent resistance has been unable to do the same with its nonviolent adversaries.

Meanwhile in Venezuela the opposition from the beginning decided to pursue nonviolent resistance because it had the hindsight of the successes of nonviolence in Eastern Europe, Chile, the Philippines and South Africa in the late 1980s and early 1990s. 

Montaner's essay makes the following argument and analysis that calls for further reflection :

Nevertheless, the opposition lacks the muscle needed to force Maduro’s overthrow and the system’s replacement. In general, the oppositionists are peaceful people, trained for 40 years in the sweet exercise of electoral democracy. What could they do? They could march. Bang on pots and pans. Stage peaceful protests. It was the only way to express their opposition in the desperate situation in which they found themselves.

They could fill the public squares in the manner of Gandhi and Luther King, but against an adversary much more unscrupulous than the Anglo-Saxons. They have done so, dozens of times. It was a civilized way to confront totalitarian harassment. The people who kill, the scoundrels, the organized criminals are on the side of Chavism.

The Venezuelan opposition is being led by a student movement that has a moral authority that traditional political parties no longer have. It was the moral bankruptcy of the political parties in Venezuela which paved the way for Chavez in the first place. The student movement studied strategic nonviolence and carried out successful nonviolent campaigns over the past decade. This upset the Chavistas who attacked Gene Sharp, and the Albert Einstein Institution accusing both of being agents of subversion for being nonviolent.

Perhaps the Chavistas and their Castro regime handlers understand something that Montaner missed in his analysis:  The opposition doesn't lack the muscle to overthrow Maduro but the strategic plan and tactical creativity to replace the current regime with massive popular support they already have. On September 1, 2016 in Caracas the opposition was able to mobilize over a million Venezuelans while the Maduro regime could only mobilize a small fraction of that number.

The implication that a nonviolent struggle against the Anglo-Saxons would be easier because they are more scrupulous than the Maduro regime doesn't hold up under greater scrutiny.  Non-violent resistance movements successfully challenged regimes equally as unscrupulous as Maduro's in East Germany, Poland, and Czechoslovakia. Nonviolence not only proved successful against communist regimes in Eastern Germany but also against Nazism. German housewives carried out a successful nonviolent campaign against the Nazi regime in Germany in 1943 taking to Rosenstrasse (Rose St.) to rescue their Jewish husbands.

Despite the accomplishments of nonviolent democratic resistance movements worldwide and in Cuba and Venezuela there has also been a temptation in some quarters to embrace the dubious idea that a nonviolent movement could have a "violent flank" and that this "diversity of tactics" would somehow speed up democratic change.

The example of Syria, where a nonviolent movement made incredible gains only to have a violent flank emerge out of defecting army units, ostensibly to defend nonviolent activists from the violent Assad regime, should serve as a warning. The belief, in some quarters, was that this was inevitable and would speed up the victory over the Syrian dictatorship. The result was just the opposite. Assad's regime was able to consolidate itself and the body count of the conflict exploded and radically violent elements overtook the violent resistance.

"Violent flanks" and the use of the so-called "diversity of tactics" reduces mobilization and decreases the probability of success for a resistance movement. Strategic thinker Gene Sharper put it succinctly when he said: "using violence is a stupid decision."

This would explain why both the Castro and Maduro regime's manufacture evidence and constantly accuse nonviolent activists of being violent ignoring all the evidence to the contrary. First and most importantly if the charges are believed it helps to reduce popular mobilization against these regimes which is the greatest threat to their power. Secondly, it raises questions that can impact international solidarity and support. Third, it allows these regimes to infiltrate agents to carry out violent acts that de-legitimize the movement placing it on the defensive in damage control mode.

However there is a not-so secret tactic that democracies are largely immune to but that is fatal to the most repressive dictatorships. This weapon is difficult to wield, but incredibly powerful: humor.