The Devil's Excrement

Lisbeth Calzadilla, a young reporter, was contacted by Fonacit (Fondo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología, which depends on the Ministry of Technology) to occupy a position as reporter in that institution. She had done a traineeship at IVIC and that reference surely was what moved Fonacit to search for her.  

Lisbeth brought them her CV, was interviewed by officials from the Human Resources Department and was considered to have an adequate profile for the job. All of that took place between September and October of last year.
Almost hired for all practical purposes, she was called to what she presumed would be the last interview. She was right; it was certainly the last interview to inform her that “we are sorry” they could not hire her because she had committed the horrendous crime of signing the petition for the recall referendum. She was in the list of infamy, in the list of Adolfo (!) Tascón.   

Lisbeth Calzadilla believed that article 72 of the Bicha was for real and that she would be one of the “participants” of this democracy with “protagonists”.

She discovered in her own flesh what this song and dance of “participation” really meant: They participated her that in the civil service of a Chavista Venezuela, there is no job for her. She did not count on the Bicha being simply a fairy tale.  

By the way, we can now call it that because the connotation that the term has today is not what Chavez wanted to initially denominate with affection of “bicha” to his Constitution, but to the other one, that one that we all know and that it is now clear, is the one Chavez really had in mind when he made up the nickname.

The horrible figure of apartheid, created by the white South Africans to exclude blacks, which were the largest majority of the population of that country, has gone on to become one of the more sinister symbols of human evil. Apartheid is to deny your own nationals the rights that correspond to them as human beings and citizens. Apartheid is to discriminate, segregate, in the South African case for racial reasons, in the Venezuelan case for political reasons. If you signed or if you are merely known as not being pro Chavez, you have no right to work in Venezuela’s civil service or are exposed to all forms of humiliations to obtain your ID card or a passport, as we will relate in future editorials.

Yesterday we remembered Conrad; we will appeal today to another great writer, Dostoyevsky:

“Those that have exercised the experience of power, the unrestrictive capacity to humiliate another human being (…) automatically lose the power over their own sensations. Tyranny is a custom, it has its own organic life and turns easily into a sickness  (…) Blood and power intoxicate (…) Man and citizen definitely perish in the tyrant”

Do the Chavistas ever think about these terrible words of warning?

This is the first part of the series promised in yesterday’s Tal Cual Editorial

Case 1 The Fogade guillotine by Teodoro Petkoff

Valentina Guzmán, a lawyer, who in September 2004 had spent six and a half years working at Fogade (The Depositor’s guarantee fund). On the 19^th of that month, she received a letter firing her, signed by the ineffable Jesús Caldera Infante. Dr. Guzman was one of those that swallowed the lie of Art. 72 of the “Bicha” (What Chávez calls the new Constitution)- a true monument to cynicism- believing that she really had the right to ask for a recall referendum for the President, which, of course, the summa cum laude jurist Caldera Infante considered it a crime so horrible that he had no doubt but to kick her out.

How do you explain the conduct of those that make such decisions? There can be three main reasons

One, the fear of losing your own privileges for not applying the McCarthyst line that was imposed by the use of the scoundrel list of Adolfo Tascón and, with death in their soul, ashamed of himself, execute the measure. This does not appear to be the case of Cabrera Infante. Another, the sincere conviction that he is providing a service to the revolution, that he is fulfilling his duty as a militant of persecuting and punishing those he considers to be counterrevolutionary who deserve such luck. This does not appear to be the case of Cabrera Infante either, up to recently a well known militant of the social Christian party COPEI, who only recently began riding the train of the revolution. The third is an opportunist without scruples, weather vane that moves according to the wind and obeys the owners’ voice without complaint. It is possible that Caldera Infante qualifies for this third option.

In any case, any of these three reasons is part of this mephitic atmosphere which authoritarism, personalism and the cult of the boss secretes so naturally, much like the liver secrets bile

A revolution that seeds hate in the soul of their supporters, which forces them to act against their conscience, which forces them to shut up and obey all orders, no matter how unfair they may be, is worthless. A revolution that instills in its supporters the spirit of denying others the right to have their own ideas, which aspires to make thinking uniform according to the totalitarian soviet-Cuban model, has very little substance and what little it has, is worthless. A revolution that is loaded with opportunists and shameless people of all kinds is worth even less.

Valentina Guzman, a lawyer, was not counting with the human misery of those that end up appropriating the generous revolutionary ideals in order to prostitute them. “The scrupulous and the just, the noble, humane, and devoted natures; the unselfish and the intelligent may begin a movement – but it passes away from them…The hopes grotesquely betrayed, the ideals turned into caricature, such is the definition of revolutionary success”

This was written, with foresight, by Joseph Conrad in 1911. Is this what we are living now?

Teodoro Petkoff is starting today a series of what he calls examples of “Chavista McCarthyism”. He starts with the cae of Carlos Ayala Corao, a well known Human Rights activist and lawyer in Venezuela who was going to be charged today by the Prosecutor’s office for going to the Presidential Palace (He was told to come back next week without explanation). The whole thing is so ridiculous, that this case alone shows how trumped up and silly the whole thing is. Carlos Ayala has been a Human Rights activist for a very long time, even before it was “fashionable”. He was a member of the Interamerican Commission on Human Rights. He has been a defender of the Human Rights of indegeous people, adviser to COFAVIC and trainer and teacher in the program for Human Rights of the OAS (More of his CV here). COFAVIC, which I consider to be this country’s premier human rights organization has called the charges “an attack on the Human Rights movement” and Human Rights Watch said “This is a clear case of political persecution, whose target is the most effective critic of Chavez’ record on human rights…this accusation is outrageous and would be rejected by any independent Court”

This man inspires the black list of the Prosecutor’s office by Teodoro Petkoff

The Republic’s Prosecutor has decided to charge lawyer Carlos Ayala Corao on the events of April 12 2002.

This reminds us that when this writer suggested the creation of a Truth Commission, after the coup of April 2002, the Prosecutor, Isaías Rodríguez, called me by phone to ask that we convince Carlos Ayala so that he would accept to be part of that commission and if my memory serves me right, I believe he even suggested that he should preside it. This reflects the high esteem that Isaías had for him. And now, the Prosecutor decides to charge Corao.

The Prosecutor does not ignore that it was Ayala that on April 11th. , together with other human rights defenders, who went to the intelligence police to protect Tarek Williams Saab and ask for his liberation and that he stayed there for five hours in front of the headquarters of the political police, as it is registered in the report of the Special Parliamentary commission to investigate the events of April 2002, without receiving by the way, any information about the status of Deputy Saab.

He does not ignore either that Carlos Ayala not only did not have anything to do with the ineffable Carmona decree, but that he openly challenged it, expressing his absolute disagreement with that document.

Then, why does the Prosecutor charge him? We find no other explanation that the Prosecutor’s office has decided to take on the role and personality of Joe McCarthy, pretending to demolish the role of Carlos Ayala as an activist and defender of Human Rights. Isaías, apparently, is pretending to give his own original contribution to the scoundrelly line of political apartheid which was inaugurated by the infamous Tascón list. Ayala is being charged in order to intimidate others. Because the way things stand, the charge by itself becomes a punishment. Much like McCarthy in the US, at that time of rats that that country lived through, when the sinister and mad Senator searched all over with his “black list” , which is now also present among us, the destiny of many Government adversaries is written in that scoundrelly list of Tascon. Carlos Ayala, of course, is in it, but besides his job as a jurist, his role as an adviser to Human Rights organizations, makes it look as if they see him as a pebble in their shoes that needs to be eliminated. They will probably ban him from leaving the country, with which they will block his presence at the Interamerican Human Rights Court. Ayala is an activist of Human Rights and nobody should feel more responsible to defend him that the old human rights activist Tarek William Saab. Not only because of gratitude, but also because of an elementary sense of justice.

But Ayala’s case is not unique. It is part of a systematic practice by the Government, of political segregation and discrimination of its adversaries, which is not only unconstitutional but also inhuman, which we will begin to denounce starting tomorrow, in this page, with the most dramatic cases of Venezuelans that have been the victims of the Chavista McCarthyism.