Hugo Carvajal, a perspective

In January 2014 one of the best known Dutch newspapers, De Telegraaf, published an article about  the retired general Hugo Carvajal. A few of the issues it stated were:

• Aruba is worried about the nomination of Carvajal, a general suspected of being involved in drug dealings as Venezuelan consul
• Carvajal has been linked to the torture and killing of two Colombian military men
• The US had him in the Clinton list since 2008 in relation to drug trafficking and the FARC

The Aruban Parliament had been discussing this back then. Opposition deputy Evelyn Wever-Croes from the MEP party had demanded from the Aruban government an explanation. The government responded it was up to Den Haag to decide whether to accept or not the man as a consul. 

Maduro had signed that nomination 16 January of 2014.

There are lots of Venezuelan "diplomats" in the Netherlands and in the ABC islands and it seems incredible none of them read that article. Why was Carvajal going to Aruba at this stage in a private airplane?

Hugo Carvajal was born in 1960. There are two versions about his birth place: Puerto La Cruz, Anzoátegui or Viejo Fresco, close to Maturín, in the Western Llanos (not far from where Diosdado Cabello was born). I believe the right location is the latter. His sister, Wilma Carvajal, is the mayor of the Cedeño municipality, close to Maturín. She won over Pedro Emilio Briceño. I mentioned Briceño's clan in another post about gangsters from the Maturín region. Nepotism was always an issue in Venezuela but we keep reaching new levels.

Back to Hugo Carvajal: he finished his military studies in 1981.

In February 1992 he took part in the bloody coup led by Hugo Chávez. Carvajal was called "the other Hugo" and he was in the same prison with the caudillo until president Rafael Caldera set them free in 1994.

He worked for the Venezuelan Military Intelligence (DIM) from 2002 and he became its head in 2004. In April 2002 he was in Russia for training when the coup against Chávez took place and he came right away from Moscow. He arrived in Caracas and, handling a machine gun, asked everyone he met in the state buildings who was against Chávez. He was one of the first who got into the Miraflores building. He became colonel and vice-head of the Military Intelligence. 2 years later, in 2004, he became the head of the institution. He remained there until 2011.

Carvajal was in charge with negotiating the liberation of Richard Boulton, who was kidnapped by the FARC.

In 2008 United States accused him of cooperating with the FARC. Chávez defended him.

In 2012 opposition deputy Ismael García wrote on his Twitter account someone told him Carvajal and a judge had left the country. This was false but: is there something about this?

24 April 2013 Maduro named him head of Military Counterintelligence, which is the new DIM. If you visit the site of that organisation you will see they don't even update the dates (2012 is the latest).

In 2014, when Maduro decided to send Carvajal to Aruba, he named general Iván Rafael Hernández Dala (born in 1966) the new head of the Military Counterintelligence. Hernández Dala had been colonel until mid 2013.

What game is being played here? What can Ismael García tell us now? Why did Maduro think it was a wise move to propose Carjaval as consul to Aruba? Or did he just sign something proposed by someone else? Who was that?