Robyn Marshall, Caracas
On the morning of May 9, the government television channel announced that 55 Colombian paramilitaries had been captured by Venezuelan national investigative police, DISIP, at a farm in Baruta, a municipality in southeastern Caracas. Later that day another 71 Colombian paramilitaries, who had escaped the raid, were captured.
Venezuelan defense minister Jorge Garcia Carneiro said they were being trained by retired Venezuelan military officers to carry out a coup against the radical left-wing government of President Hugo Chavez.
One of the detainees confessed to a TV reporter that the owner of the farm offered him 500,000 Colombian pesos to work there. When he and other Colombians arrived more than a month ago, they were greeted by men in camouflage uniforms, who told them they would receive training for an attack on a National Guard base.
He said that the goal of the operation was to steal weapons from an arms depot at the base in order to arm a militia of about 3000 paramilitaries who would come to Venezuela.
According to documents found at the farm, at least 100 of the captured men were Colombian military reservists.
The property on which they were captured belongs to Cuban right-wing emigre Roberto Alonso, who is one of the leaders of a Venezuelan opposition group know as Bloque Democratico.
Ismael Garcia, a pro-government member of the legislature said that the paramilitaries who managed to escape did so through a property belonging to Cuban-Venezuelan media magnate and Chavez opponent Gustavo Cisneros. According to Newsweek magazine, Cisneros was one on the main architects of the failed April 11, 2002, coup against Chavez.
On May 12, DISIP director Miguel Rodriguez said that in the previous two days his organisation had carried out 25 raids on suspected hide-outs of the right-wing paramilitary groups. According to Rodriguez, "everything indicates that there is a well-organised and financed plan whose fundamental objective is the elimination of the president of the republic, Hugo Chavez".
Venezuela is passing through a tense political period. Beginning on May 21, the process for "repairing" the opposition-initiated petition for a presidential recall referendum will begin.
On March 2, the National Electoral Commission (CNE) announced that not enough valid signatures had been submitted to it on December 19 to force a recall referendum. After finishing the counting and validation of signatures submitted, the CNE found that only 1,832,493 signatures were valid — about 640,500 short of the 20% of voters constitutionally required to force a presidential recall referendum.
From May 21 to May 30, Venezuelan voters will have an opportunity to either confirm or deny that they intended to sign the petitions for recalling the president.
The capitalist-backed opposition, however, is divided, being unsure whether it can get enough confirmed signatures to meet the constitutionally required quota for the recall referendum.
The capitalist-backed opposition's hostility to the Chavez government has intensified over the last year as the government has deepened its pro-worker policies. On May 1, for example, Chavez announced a 30% increase in the minimum wage.
The announcement as warmly welcomed by the hundreds of thousands of workers who participated in the Caracas May Day march. The massive march, spanning several kilometres, was organised by the pro-Chavez Union Nacional de Trabajadores (National Union of Workers).
Since its formation a year ago, the UNT has become the country's largest trade union federation, with a membership of almost two million workers grouped in more than 500 unions. Among UNT affiliates are the two biggest oil workers' unions, Fedepetrol and Sinutrapetrol and the public sector workers' union Fentrasep.
From Green Left Weekly, May 26, 2004.
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