The revolutionary oligarchy's infighting in Apure (updated)

Minister of Interior, who led the bloody attack to the Presidential Palace in 1992. His father wants to become the governor of Apure

News came in of a conflict between two Chavista groups in the Southwestern region of Apure, bordering with Colombia. A group of eight armed men went into the hacienda of 46-year old rancher Juan Carlos Rodríguez Torres and tried to kidnap the rancher. They didn't succeed because he was not there.

The first detail: Juan Carlos Rodríguez Torres is the brother of Miguel Rodríguez Torres, the current minister of Interior. Miguel Rodríguez Torres was one of Chávez's military pals. He was the one officer who commanded the bloody attack against the president's palace back in February 1992 during the coup led by Chávez.

Second detail: Juan Carlos also works as "political consultant" to his brother, the minister.

Third detail: Juan Carlos' hacienda has an area of five hundred hectares. That is not small for the brother of a socialist revolutionary. The place is located in the municipio Rómulo Gallegos of Apure.

Agents of the criminal police, under Miguel Rodríguez Torres' control, detained Oscar Montilla, member of a group called Frente Campesino Ezequiel Zamora. Montilla was accused of coordinating the attempted kidnapping. They accused him of commanding the men who tried to do the kidnapping. He was taken into custody to the alcaldía of Alto Apure and, according to deputy Zambrano, another Chavista, he was beaten up there. Alto Apure is a 10-year old entity, a sort of Über-municipality comprising the municipalities of Rómulo Gallegos and of Páez. It was created in 2004 by Chávez's suggestion. The mayor of Alto Apure is Jorge Rodríguez Galvis, Miguel Rodríguez Torres's father. Jorge wants to become the next governor of Apure.

Anyway: there is a conflict between the Rodríguez clan and the governor of Apure, Carrizález. The criminal police is, according to Montilla, trying to link him and Carrizález to the kidnapping. 

That's just the start. What do I expect? Carrizález's days as governor of Apure are counted.

Here you can read (in Spanish) a little bit more about how some local PSUV politicians critisize the Rodríguez clan.

Alto Apure, where the minister's father is the boss

Ps. Jorge Rodríguez Galvis had already been accused of not providing the required reports for the way he managed Alto Apure. The red judiciary system dismissed the case in 2009.

A new round in Venezuela's ministerial chairs: the Monk is gone (updated!)

Maduro does just as his "intellectual father" did: change ministers with incredible frequency. As Rory Carroll wrote in his book on Chávez, "the comandante went over 180 ministers in over a decade". 

Below you have an overview of the ministries as of  yesterday evening, 17 June 2014. Those with a diamond sign have military honchos as ministers. Other ministers might be like the minister of Tourism, Izarra, who is the son of a military and former coup monger, friend of Chávez, or former guerrillas who fought against democratic governments or related to a guerrilla aristocracy, like the minister of Energy, Boligarch Rafael Rodríguez.

Maduro has changed ministers once for those ministries in yellow. He has changed ministers twice for those ministries in blue. This is all since he produced his first cabinet in April 2013. That means those ministries in blue have seen three different ministers in fourteen months.

A very important event: Maduro demoted Jorge Giordani, aka The Monk, who...got no apparent position as an ambassador or at some institute so far. He also transformed the ministry of Planning into a vice-presidency. He appointed Menéndez for that position. The military Herbert Plaza, who was minister of Water and Air Transportation, became minister of Food. Things are not looking very bright on the food sector and Maduro thinks he can fix that without doing something about the economy. Menéndez was minister of University Education, so Maduro has to look for a replacement for him there and he found a guy called Jason Guzmán. Little is known about him.

Maduro took over many ministers from Chávez and some others he changed.

In the case of the Ministry for University Education we have this order since 2013:

Yadira Córdoba was the minister until Chávez died and Maduro replaced her as soon as he officially took office by Pedro Calzadilla, then Ricardo Menéndez and now Jason Guzmán.

In the case of Trade we have the following order since 2013:

Edmée Betanourt was the minister of Trade until Chávez died, then the job went to Alejandro Fleming, then to José Salamat Kahn and now it's in the hands of Dante Rivas.

Notice this: most key ministries but the one of oil are in the hands of military. That is the case for the ministry of Economy, the one of Interior, the ministry of Air & water transportation (control of airports and harbors), the ministry of Electricity (yes, that's key in Venezuela) and last but not least, the ministry of Food. The change we saw yesterday was from one military to another one there.

Wao: and Giordani writes a very long letter in Aporrea talking about his work. He breaks with Maduro and tries to justify what he did. There will be turmoil among the apparatchiks.

US Congress representatives supporting Maduro's regime

Conyers

The House of Represenatives Foreign Affairs Committee passed a bill for sanctions against Chavista oligarchs. Apparently, a bunch of representatives led by John Conyers (born in 1929) is asking Obama to repel the bill.

Representatives Gregory Meeks (born in 1953) and Karen Bass (also born in 1953) are also supporting the move because they think any sanction would undermine a dialogue. There are a few others (11 in total) but I haven't been able to find the names.

Now, these three people agreed, like 99.7% of all representatives who took part on a vote, to support a motion "supporting the people of Venezuela as they protest peacefully for democratic change and calling to end the violence". What are they looking for now? Who are behind them? Not us, the opposition of Venezuela.

My question: what dialogue if Maduro has said he wants a dialogue but he won't accept negotiations? A Mugabe-style dialogue?

Meeks

Bass

Some of the Boligarchs these representatives would be protecting:

Diosdado Cabello, former coup monger and current president of National Assembly

Rafael Ramírez, oil company PDVSA mogul

Venezuelan ministries - a glimpse (I)

Here you have a glimpse of the thirty-two ministers in Venezuela under Madurism. In dark green, ministers who were military coup mongers in 1992. In light green there is a minister who is the son of such a military. The age field is in red if the minister is a woman. There are really strange ministries. Ernesto Villegas Poljak, for instance, has the ministry for the Revolutionary Transformation of Caracas. In reality that ministry is just a parallel government to deviate the money that should go to the Mayor of Caracas, who is an opposition politician. The strange thing: Villegas is lefty because his parents were communists...communists who were jailed by Pérez Jiménez, a right-winged military Hugo Chávez admired a lot.

As you see, Chavistas feel the need to have separate ministries for air and water transportation and for land transportation or for electricity or for jails. When Chávez came to power he said he would reduce ministries to fight inefficiency and bureaucracy but what he did was to triple their number. Maduro has continued that tradition. At the end this group will say XXI Century "Socialism" came down because of bureaucracy, "a problem of capitalism". That's the way the extreme left react.

Name	Ministry	Age
Yván Eduardo Gil Pinto	Agriculture	41
Reinaldo Antonio Iturriza López	Communes & social protection	40
Delcy Eloina Rodríguez Gómez	Communication & information	44
Fidel Barbarito	Culture	40
Carmen Teresa (Meléndez) Rivas	Defence	52
Rodolfo Clemente Marco Torres	Economy, finance & public banking	47
Héctor Rodríguez Castro	Education	32
Ricardo Menéndez Prieto	Education – university	44
Jesse Alonso Chacón Escamillo	Electricity	48
Miguel Leonardo Tadeo Rodríguez	Environment	52
Félix Ramón Osorio Guzmán	Food	44
Elías José Jaua Milano	Foreign affairs	44
Francisco Alejandro Armada Pérez	Health	48??
Ricardo Antonio Molina Peñaloza	Housing & urbanism	53
José David Cabello	Industries	44
Miguel Rodríguez Torres	Interior, Justice & Peace	50
Jesús Rafael Martínez Barrios	Labour	69
Aloha Joselyn Gutiérrez Núñez	Native American affairs	30
Rafael Darío Ramírez Carreño	Oil and mining	50
María Iris Varela Rangel	Penitentiary	47
Jorge Antonio Giordani Cordero	Planning	73
Hugo César Cabezas Bracamonte	Presidency & follow up	41
Ernesto Emilio Villegas Poljak	Revolutionary Transformation of Caracas	43
Manuel Ángel Fernández Meléndez	Science, technology & innovation	47
Antonio Enrique Álvarez Cisneros	Sports	37
Andrés Guillermo Izarra García	Tourism	44
Dante Rafael Rivas Quijada	Trade	39
Haiman Douwara El Troudi	Transportation – land	43
Hébert Josué García Plaza	Transportation – water air	52
Andreína Tarazón Bolívar	Women and Gender Equality	26
Victor José Clark Boscán	Youth	31

A frequent Venezuelan visitor to Europe: doña Luisa

You can see Luisa Ortega Díaz, the General Attorney of Venezuela and fervent supporter of Maduro's regime, in the video below doing some shopping n Germany now. She is really a frequent visitor to Europe. Venezuelans living and working in Europe have been able to photograph her in different shops around the Old Continent.

I don't usually upload this kind of videos but the regime has been using private information from customs official to "shame" opposition politicians who have travelled abroad.

Mind: Venezuelans - at least those who are not revolutionary - only have access to a limited amount of dollars every year as there is a strict currency control.

Darth Cabello in Russia

Boligarch supremo and head of the National Assembly Diosdado Cabello is flying to Russia on Monday.

According to Chávez's putative child Nicolás Maduro, Cabello is delivering Putin a letter of "congratulation from the Chavista soul" (sic). Don't ask me to interpret that, I haven't smoked today.

But apart from that, the former coup monger Cabello will meet Russian officials and try to talk about further military and intelligence cooperation.

Readers should remember Venezuela owns Russians over 4.4 billion dollars thanks to Chávez's last wish list of arms. Russians gave Chávez a loan that will allow us - or rather the Venezuelan military - to import some extra weapons in the coming years. Since 2004 Venezuela has spent some 11 billion dollars in Russian defence hardware. If you think Russians cared for Assad, consider this: Chavista Venezuela is a much  better client.

Chavistas need to tinker further with the election system. They need better SIGINT support to spy on the opposition. Will and can they get any help from Putin's boys?

Jesse Chacón (I)

Here you can see one of the most typical oligarchs from the Chávez era: Jesse Chacón. This man was one of the military coup mongers of 1992. His brother Arné Chacón was another military and coup monger. Arné went from being a coup monger to being a banker soon after Chávez got elected as president of Venezuela. He became a billionaire in no time and was so flashy that he turned into an embarrassment. That's why Chávez himself made him go to prison in late 2009. Jesse Chacón had to go low profile for a time, stepped downas minister and started to work as "independent pollster". At the end of 2012, when it became obvious even for the staunchest Chavistas that Chávez was going to die soon, Arné Chacón was freed and no comments were made anywhere. The trial? Thank you.

Jesse Chacón felt he could get a more central role again. So he is once more a minister. This time he is minister of the Popular Power for Electricity (no kidding). About 100 days ago he declared he would step down if he didn't manage to improve the  very serious situation with Venezuela's electricity grid. As expected, he won't resign even if people outside Caracas have to endure daily blackouts - sometimes for several hours.

Here you can see his tour through governmental bodies since 1999.

Dedico esta canción a todos los boliburgueses

Analysing Boligarchs' sentiments: Diosdado Cabello (I)

God Given's Hair, aka Diosdado Cabello, is one of the most notorious Boligarchs. This  military coupster gives the creeps even to the terrorist organisation FARC, according to Reyes' emails.

I decided to take a look at his latest tweets for a wee bit of sentiment analysis.

Let's start with the basic things.

Below you can see the most used nouns and adjectives in the last 3 months. In red you see references to Cabello's demons.

It is quite remarkable that the second non-function word (i.e. words other than those "the", "of", "and" and the like) is the adjective-nominal form "amargados", embittered (ones).

More to follow...

#venezuela

amargados

comandante

compatriotas

patria

días

pueblo

#psuv

revolución

@partidopsuv

derecha

camaradas

chávez

uribe

asamblea

años

camarada

diosdado

compatriota

leopoldo

mud

paracos

presidente

cabello

compa

compañera

gobierno

ley

locos

oposición

tiburones

#cuba

4f

@cubadebate

ravell

#eeuu

#usa

@chavezcandanga

@reflexionfidel:

abrazo

apoyo

graterón

miranda

noches

país

solidaridad

vida

#chavez

@psuvaristobulo

amor

año

culpa

desastre

designación

directiva

familia

josé

kevin

leyes

lópez

orden

oro

paz

popular

revolucionario

socialismo