The military Alí de Jesús Uzcátegui Duque, current ambassador of Venezuela's regime to Austria, was, according to El Universal, the director of the basic school of the Military Forces in Maracay in 2002.
Uzcátegui rose to prominence because he was the one sent by Baduel to the Orchila Island that year to bring back the former coup monger and then president Chávez to Caracas. Chávez had been deposed for less than two days but Baduel and other military rethought their stance and decided to put Chávez back in office. Uzcátegui was then appointed as Director of Military Intelligence as prize for his behaviour. Baduel is a former friend of Chávez now in prison for falling out of love with Chávez and/or corruption, depending on what opinion you hear.
Uzcátegui graduated from the military academy in 1976 and he was actually in the same group with Baduel. Uzcátegui, unlike Baduel, remained loyal to the "comandante eterno". While Baduel became a maverick, Uzcátegui kept close to power.
Uzcátegui rose to prominence because he was the one sent by Baduel to the Orchila Island that year to bring back the former coup monger and then president Chávez to Caracas. Chávez had been deposed for less than two days but Baduel and other military rethought their stance and decided to put Chávez back in office. Uzcátegui was then appointed as Director of Military Intelligence as prize for his behaviour. Baduel is a former friend of Chávez now in prison for falling out of love with Chávez and/or corruption, depending on what opinion you hear.
Uzcátegui graduated from the military academy in 1976 and he was actually in the same group with Baduel. Uzcátegui, unlike Baduel, remained loyal to the "comandante eterno". While Baduel became a maverick, Uzcátegui kept close to power.
The man was made secretary general of the National Defence Council in 2007. Just a few months later Uzcátegui was sent to Austria to become the Venezuelan ambassador. He had also been director to one of Chávez's countless foundations, the Fundación Proyecto País, between 2005 and some time before it was closed down in 2008. General Uzcátegui was married between 1979 and 2011. Mario Silva apparently mentioned him in his infamous interview with a Cuban operative in Venezuela, which was leaked last year. Mario Silva said there Uzcátegui was one of the military "they" (the Cubans?) could trust to become minister of Defence or be close to the minister of Defence.
And now he is in Austria and, according to this article, he put a school under pressure to sack a Venezuelan woman working there who had taken part in a march in Vienna for human rights in Venezuela. His embassy had apparently sent a picture of the woman in the march and asked the school to sack her because Maduro is the "legal president". Apparently, this military doesn't know in Europe you can march to demand the head of State to step down. And now Austrians know what we always knew: employees of the Venezuelan embassy in Austria -like elsewhere- take pictures of Venezuelan dissidents and use those pictures for bullying or worse.
I am still waiting for the Austrian foreign office to tell us what is really going on in Austria.
You can watch a boring speech of military Alí de Jesús Uzcátegui Duque introducing another speech by writer* Britto García, an old communist during an event in Bratislava, Slovakia. The usual mantra propagated by officialdom abroad goes like this:
- there was a coup against Chávez (true but they don't mention the military were the main responsible for that and they don't mention Chávez carried out an even bloodier coup in 1992 against a democratic government) and everyone opposing Chávez and now Maduro is a fascist
- there is now some kind of "marriage" between the civil society and the military - the unión cívico militar
* Britto's merits as a writer might be the source of dispute, I took away the quotation marks I had initially, see comments for reason
