The Devil's Excrement

I have written three times about the La Paragua massacre by the Venezuelan military (1,2,3). The Government has tried to cover it up and has shown a remarkable insensitivity to the whole issue. These are people and people’s lives we are talking about. As usual, a few soldiers have been jailed, but none of the bosses. Am I to believe that the 26 kilos of gold were stolen by mere soldiers? And more people are missing than the Government claims, admits or says.

In contrast to the prisoner of Miraflores or the insensitive Minister of Defense Baduell, Manuel Rosales went to La Paragua to check things firsthand and vcrisis not only provided the picture above, but also a great story on it. Meanwhile Daniel gives us his historical analogy to Dukakis’ demise in the 1988 election when he remained aloof from events.

All of this happening, more deaths from abuses and all Chavez can do or say is hail the supposed alliance between the people and the military. Some alliance! But the people only see death and pillage as the military hiearchy becomes very rich indeed. Remember General Cruz Weffer? He was the one in charge of Plan Bolivar 2000, the first big corruption scandal of the Chavez Government. He has his own million dollar private jet now. He doesn’t even hide it. I can write about it, because he could not deny it.

These are the truths of the “pretty” robolution.

This article was distributed yeasterday by the people at Veneconomia, written by Toby Bottome. It speaks for itself, but I can’t help but point out the destructive character of this so called revolution, which can’t stand those that do things well, whose own incompetence and inefficiency leads them to be jealous of those that can do and who in the face of failure of their own cooperative program, prefer to destroy than to allow them to suceed at their own game. This is the reality of the robolution, no values, nothing to admire, full of hate and jealousy. What kind of legacy can be derived from this for future generations? Is this the “ideology” that Chavez wants to introduce into our educational system?

The cannibalism of the revolution by Veneconomy

The
quality of Venezuelan cacao goes back to before Colonial times. The varieties Maracaibo, Chuao and
Choroni are equal -if not superior- to the world’s most prized fine cacaos.
Today, the fine cacaos account for 5% of the world’s total cacao crops, and Venezuela has
excellent possibilities of its fine cacao capturing 50% of the total world
export market.

One would think that the Bolivarian government, which is
constantly trumpeting the importance for the economy of “banner products” and
endogenous production, would give support and incentives to the small cacao
producers who eke out a living in the eastern (Sucre and Delta), central
(Miranda and Aragua), and western (Barinas, Zulia and Tachira) regions of the country.

But, if the experience of some small producers in
Barlovento, Miranda state, is anything to go by, it seems as though the exact
opposite is true. These small producers are receiving absolutely no protection
from the law and have been left at the mercy of groups of vandals who have
damaged their property and crops and threatened them with violence while the
National Lands Institute (INTI) and the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands
remain totally indifferent.

What happened recently at Hacienda Agricola La Concepcion,
located between Panaquire and El Clavo (Miranda), is a case in point. This is a
privately owned farm with proven deeds of title going back to 1738 and it is
fully productive with 308.75 hectares given over to fine cacao and trees for
timber.

Agricola La Concepcion C.A., the owner of the farm, has
worked hard at developing an excellent cacao of the highest quality that has
won international recognition. This small company exports its entire production
to Europe Japan, and the United
States, where it has positioned Venezuelan
cacaos with chocolate houses such as Michel Cluizel and Scharffen Berger. It
also gives technical, financial, and marketing assistance to another 47
producers in the area and in Aragua state. Moreover, in the purest Bolivarian
spirit, Agricola La Concepcion supported some of its former workers in setting
up a cooperative (Cooperativa Emprendedores del Cacao 1902), which operates and
maintains production both at La Concepcion and the Cacao Processing Plant,
where all member producers in the area process their cacao.

On September 20 this year, the farm was invaded -with
violence- by a group calling itself a cooperative and with the support of the
INTI. As a result, nearly a hundred people were prevented from working, the
property was ransacked and wrecked, seeds destroyed, and the crop stolen. Now
this group poses a permanent threat to owners and workers alike, keeping them
in a state of anxiety, while the authorities have turned a deaf ear to the
complaints and requests for help filed by the farm’s administrators.

It seems that neither small producers nor those who, in
good faith, have tried to follow the guidelines of the cooperativism preached
by the Bolivarians are safe from cannibalism in this revolution.