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Operation Tun-Tun

Richard Barnes

When beginning this blog in 2019 I explained that its purpose was to enable a better understanding of the land and its people. As such, most of the posts since then do not deal with current events, but rather events of the past — whether historical or anecdotal — which, over time, serve to help us see through the fog of contemporary, tendentious reporting and allow us to focus on Venezuela herself and her people and to get at least an inkling as to why things are the way they are.

Much, if not most, of today’s “reporting” is existentialist — meaning, in this context, that it focuses on the present, usually in crisis form, and sheds little or no understanding of the moment we are living or how we got here, let alone what we are to do about it, if anything. This is ironic because the more honest existentialists from the 20th Century, men like Saint Exupéry, Camus, and others, were indeed men of action who did seize the moment and acted thereon. But they were rare. And their progeny is more disoriented than Sartre, the Grand Master of their sect. 

The lack of reporting on what goes on in Venezuela a mere four weeks after the outrageously fraudulent elections in that stricken land illustrates the above. The immediate crisis has passed and the mainstream media has returned to the “look-a-squirrel!” journalism which focuses on promoting the fashionable narrative of the present day.

Well, the immediate crisis may have passed for the usual suspects (CNN, ABC, NBC, ad nauseam), but it most certainly has remained and deepened for the people of Venezuela and for us as well, whether or not we are capable of seeing it. 

There have been thousands of detainees and disappearances. Arrests are without warrants or formal charges. If one complains of abuse, one exposes oneself to brutal arrests, accused of crimes including terrorism. Many minors have been kidnapped from their homes. 

Having taken a page from the totalitarians whose masks fell off during the recent pandemus, the state has urged people to report “suspicious activities” in what it has called “Operation Tun-Tun”, the sound of the knock on the door when officers arrive. This has promoted an environment of mistrust and fear of sharing or speaking openly among neighbors and even relatives, not to mention church. Precisely what the totalitarian relishes: family is nothing, relatives are nothing, neighbors are nothing, church brethren are nothing … the state is all.

Any reading or viewing of Cold War literature or art will immediately see “neighbor-reporting” and “Tun-Tun” visits for what they are. I need not elaborate.

The human rights NGO, Provea, reports that “Forced disappearances and arbitrary detentions have become the new normal …. They have gone from a period of selective persecution to one of massive persecution.”

For those who disbelieve the “alternative media”, perhaps the Agence France-Presse (AFP) might satisfy: 

“Edward Ocariz was cooking lunch in his home in a Caracas slum when police stormed in. ‘You’re coming with us,’ officers shouted, as angry neighbors screamed, ‘Damn you!'”

“Police — with no arrest warrant — whisked Ocariz away a week after the July 28 election…. Ocariz, 53, had complained previously about government abuses of power…. He was charged with crimes including terrorism and inciting hatred and taken to a maximum security prison….”

Multiply Mr. Ocariz by thousands, including minors and desperate parents; terrified neighbors who after complaining see their own neighbors or family members disappear, and you begin to get the idea of what is happening and why Venezuela has become “so quiet” lately.

And if you think such things can never happen in the United States, well, you’ve not been awake in recent years.

We are living in what for us can only be described as unusually bad times. 

But the Triune God is on His throne and His eyes go to and fro … and not a sparrow falls without Him … and these events, as ALL events, will serve to advance His Kingdom. The counsels of the ungodly will come to confusion.

Meanwhile, at the very least, we must be aware and we must pray and even if all we can actually do is speak or write or vote, we must do at least that.

I’ll close quoting an election worker, source The Caracas Chronicle:

“Nothing prepared us for the fear we have experienced in recent days. What we have felt since July 29 until now is unprecedented. Friends hiding for weeks. Or crossing borders. A few are still holding hope for a transition … but without certainty that it will happen, in the face of violence we’d never seen….. We wonder what to do if our passport is arbitrarily canceled, if leaving the country is an option, of if arriving at the airport means a prison sentence. We deal with paranoia, attentive to any strange sound, rushing to the window to ensure everything is in its place….

“We see teenagers being torn from their parents’ arms in the middle of the night or mothers dragged out of their homes, still in their nightclothes before the terrified eyes of their children…. The checkpoints … are real guillotines where they check your phone without a judicial order, risking your safety. An incorrect message in a WhatsApp group could lead to your disappearance in a jail …. And yet, we try to put on a smile to encourage those outside Venezuela; to show ourselves strong so that our friends and family do not have to worry too much about what we are living through….

“…the heartbreaking testimonies of kids who, because of a WhatsApp message or a TikTok video, fall in the most dangerous prisons, alone, unable to see their relatives and without the right to defense. Kids who live in a country that already deprived them of a sane childhood and now inflicts on them physical torture, rape, psychological terror, for which no school, university, or way of life can prepare them….

“Waking up to calls at 6 in the morning: ‘They took M_____ in the early morning along with 20 kids from the neighborhood, they entered her house and dragged her in her underwear in front of her daughter, regardless of the screams from her family: they beat her, they beat her!’

“We knew repression was a possibility, but one thing is to call it and another to see it….”

A Summary of the Recent Elections in Venezuela and Their Aftermath

Richard Barnes

Rene J. Abreu wrote a post on his LinkedIn page which you might find of interest. It is brief and compact, yet the full story. The most recent news is that the Venezuela state has suspended X (formerly Twitter) in Venezuela, thereby further hindering the communication and the uncensored news among the Venezuelan people.

I thank Rene for his post and have put his link further below.

By Rene J. Abreu

Venezuela Events After the July 2024 Presidential Elections and the “Venezuelan Mining and Metallurgical Engineers Society (SVIMM)”.

In Spanish SVIMM is “Sociedad Venezolana de Ingenieros de Minas y Metalúrgicos”, an institution created in 1958. As censorship grew up significantly in Venezuela during the last two decades, new directors took the institution lead in 2017. Bravely, this professional institution has been publicly in favor of the truth and the right doing in the natural resources industries in Venezuela.

On Sunday July 28th, 2024, a Presidential Election took place in Venezuela and the opposition won with roughly 70% of the votes. On the same day, the Government announced fraudulently their victory, showing no proof of votes and proceedings.

As it is not easy to understand this situation by my non-Venezuelan friends and readers, following are some facts that may help:

1) For 25 years the same government/political system has been in power.

2) After the first election in 1998, using the democracy tools the government was able to control all the internal institutions and became a “modern dictatorship”.

3) Some opposition parties and leaders were prohibited, controlled, jailed, assassinated, or forced to emigrate. Approximately 8 million people were forced to emigrate and some 4.5 million of them were lawfully registered to vote abroad. Only less than 70,000 emigrants were allowed to vote in this presidential election.

4) Through a Primary Election in 2023, leader Maria Corina Machado unified the opposition, but the regime disqualified both, Mrs Machado and her appointee Mrs Corina Yoris. The lawful opposition party “Plataforma Unitaria Democrática (PUD)” was able to register Mr Edmundo Gonzalez as the unique opposition candidate.

5) While the regime changed rules, jailed politicians, and used traps, the opposition built up a huge social movement of people along the country.

6) Peacefully millions of Venezuelans attended and voted on July 28th.

7) On Monday July 29th the opposition started progressively publishing in internet the actual proceedings (Acts) to prove the wide gap in votes between both candidates. This platform is still open to the world.

8) Venezuelans have been peacefully demonstrating on the streets nationwide against the fraud. The regime is violently acting as a gang of foreign and local criminals combined with some police and military Venezuelans. The repression continues now. It is urgently required the support by the world’s democracies to save the Venezuelan People and for the truth to prevail.

I would like to congratulate SVIMM for publicly demanding on August 1st the Venezuelan Electoral Authorities the publication of all the proceedings supporting their July 28th, 2024, announcement. I think that the future of geology, mining, and metallurgy is bright in Venezuela with the resilience and bravery of institutions like SVIMM.

(26) Feed | LinkedIn

Sound Familiar?

Richard Barnes

From the AP two days ago:

“By the time National Electoral Council President Elvis Amoroso was shown on television handing Maduro a document certifying his victory, the opposition had scanned more than half of the tally sheets. The scanned tallies were also uploaded to a searchable website, and [those] who voted could use their  government identification number to check out the tally sheet belonging to the machine they used to vote.

“The government then claimed that the electoral council’s website had been hacked. National Assembly President Jorge Rodriguez insisted Maduro was the indisputable winner and called his opponents violent fascists. He called for Machado and González [opposition leaders] to be arrested.“

When those in power — the permanent bureaucracy, their media sycophants, and the political party most aligned with them — facilely tar their opponents with the fascist tag while insisting their electoral results — which not too long ago reflected the “winner” with more votes than any presidential candidate in U. S. history — are as pure as the driven snow, the rest of us ought to see the parallels that so obviously exist. As in Venezuela.

The Venezuelan opposition was clearly anticipating this and was ready to respond with actual results. I still don’t know exactly how they did this when the electoral count is centralized in the hands of the regime, but they did. Of course this does not mean that truth and justice will prevail in that dark corner of the international Socialist world; however, we can be excused for hoping that the rest of the world will grow a bit of spine and support the people of Venezuela as they exhibit the courage — courage! — that in aeons past used to characterize the free West.

Apart from a few exceptions, I do not see the same moral courage in the opposition here, in the United States. 

May we remember these days — days when a husband and father was murdered in cold blood, in his own house, by the regime’s thugs; days when an election observer was dragged from her house, in her underwear, and taken by the motorcycle gangs hired by the regime to “keep order”; days when multitudes of protesters have been rounded up and taken under horrendous custody; days when the opposition offices have been ransacked and their leaders have had to seek refuge in the Argentina embassy in Caracas; days when Cuban snipers have been seen on the roof of the presidential palace, Miraflores — and be encouraged by the steadfastness of our Venezuelan friends.

Pray for Venezuela.

Visegrád 24 on X: “BREAKING: Maduro and his thugs have launched a wave of arrests of election observers who saw too much and spoke out in public. This woman thought she would help safeguard honest elections. Now, she gets arrested from home while just in her underwear. Via @AlertaMundoNews https://t.co/O866LgfyGf” / X

Fourth and Fifth of July: Declarations of Independence

Richard Barnes

(First posted on July 4, 2020)

Those who grew up in El Pao will remember celebrating both the Fourth and the Fifth of July, reflecting yet another similarity between the two countries. The American and Venezuelan holidays afforded an opportunity for executives to declare and affirm ongoing genuine friendship and a collaborative spirit between both peoples while we children looked forward to a long “recess” as well as having our fathers home for a more extended time than usual, and also learning a bit more to understand and appreciate our liberties. I was fortunate to have had a father and mother who, as best they knew how, taught us appreciation and gratitude for America and also for Venezuela.

Venezuela history was a required subject in school. And a most frustrating one it was for me. For the life of me, I could not understand what the early 19th century fighting was about. My teachers seemed to tell stories assuming we students possessed presupposed knowledge as to why the revolutionaries rose against Madrid. But I had no such knowledge. My father had told me about the North American colonies and how they had a history of self-government and liberties and how England had begun taking those liberties away, even to the point of stationing mercenary troops in private homes where they abused and in some cases even defiled the mothers and daughters. 

Furthermore, the English parliament had decreed the assignment of Church of England bishops to the colonies: a last straw. I could see why folks would resist and seek to stop that, even if it meant overthrowing the rule of the English king. 

Although my mother and father taught me to respect and honor Venezuela, my teachers told no stories about Spain’s abuses against Venezuela. We heard much about abstract concepts of liberty and fraternity and equality. However, all stratospheric disquisitions about intangible concepts did not satisfy me as to why the Criollos rose against Madrid initially, let alone explain the eventual extermination of over one-third of their number. The entire country churned with violence and at the end had been practically depopulated. It was clear to me that the savagery and atrocities occurred not prior to, but during the Revolution. I do remember hearing a teacher quote the words uttered by Simón Bolivar as he approached death in the late 1820’s, “I have plowed in the sea….” And, “…those countries will infallibly fall into chaos and dictatorships….”

But why cast off Spanish rule for intangible concepts only to install tangibly cruel “chaos and dictatorships”? 

To read the July 4, 1776 and the July 5, 1811 declarations of independence back to back is an instructive exercise which might help explain why.

The Venezuelan is over 800 words longer and reflects allusions to French revolutionary thinking that is absent from the American. Consistent with the American, it also alludes to the Christian religion which sounds discordant if one has a basic understanding of Rousseau and the Declaration of the Rights of Man.

The Venezuelan opens by alluding to a former declaration (April 19, 1810) which was adopted as a result of Spain’s occupation by France. It goes on to complain about three centuries of suppressed rights and that recent political events in Europe had served to offer an opportunity to restore those rights. They then, following the 1776 Declaration, proceed to justify their actions.

The United States [American] declaration does not complain about 150 years of colonial rule. Rather it expresses concern that, when abuses make it necessary to dissolve long-standing political bands, that such action must be taken carefully and with strong justification. It expresses the need and the willingness to “suffer, while evils are sufferable” before abolishing government and relations to “which they are accustomed.”

I know this is simplistic, and historians will disagree, but to the layman, the 1811 comes across as willful, the 1776, as reluctant.

The longest body in each is the justification. The Venezuelan uses 1,156 words, beginning with another allusion to 300 years of Spanish rule and affirming that a people has a right to govern themselves. Then the author expresses a willingness to overlook those 300 years by “placing a veil” over them (“corriendo un velo sobre los trescientos años“) and proceeds to recent European events which had dissolved the Spanish nation. It goes at length criticizing the Spanish monarchy for its abandonment of her throne in favor of the French and how this state of affairs had left Venezuela without legal recourse (“dejándola sin el amparo y garantía de las leyes“). 

It asserts, furthermore, that the vast territories of the Americas with far more population than Spain itself cannot be governed from afar, etc. Here, the author presumes to speak for all the Spanish Americas. The layman is justified in wondering if this misdirection is inserted to remove attention from special pleading in the document that does not wholly stand up.

This section is not easy to follow today without some knowledge of the events current in 1811.

This was not a unanimous declaration; three provinces did not join, presaging the terrible bloodletting which was to follow.

For its justification, the American declaration uses 824 words (332 less than the Venezuelan), to list the abuses and their attempts to humbly address these legally only to have their attempts rebuffed. They make no allusions to 150 years of oppression or of unhappiness with their colonial status. They address only relatively recent abuses, including violence against life and property, mercenaries on their way to fight against them, war waged against them, threats to their religious liberty (the Quebec allusion), and much more. These are listed almost in bullet point format, but without the bullets, and are easy to understand, even 244 years later. It reads as if the document were a declaration of the right to self defense.

This was a unanimous declaration signed by representatives of each of the thirteen colonies.

In their conclusion, the Venezuelans, yet again, allude to centuries of oppression and their natural right to govern themselves. They assert they have a right to establish a government according to the general will (“voluntad general“) of her people.

It is hard to miss the influence of French revolutionary thinking in the Venezuelan document, despite allusions to a Supreme Being (“Ser Supremo”) and to Jesus Christ (“Jesucristo”). Its reference to the “General Will” is Rousseauean and is also found in the atheistic French Declaration of the Rights of Man. 

They also state they will defend their religion. 

The layman can’t help but be impressed by the schizophrenic nature of this document which contained appeals to atheistic revolutionary thinking then in vogue, while recognizing that the “regular folk” were still very religious and needed to hear allusions to religious fidelity.

The American conclusion appealed to the Supreme Judge of the world and in the name and authority of the people in the colonies they declared independence.

I know that professors delight in pointing out that Thomas Jefferson was the “author” of the American declaration and that he was not a Christian, etc.

However, one does not read the Virginia Fairfax Resolves (1774), or the Virginia Declaration of Rights (May, 1776), both of whose  primary author was George Mason, a Christian, nor does one read clergyman, John Wise, who in 1710 wrote, “Every man must be acknowledged equal to every man,” and “The end of all good government is to cultivate humanity and promote the happiness of all and the good of every man in all his rights, his life, liberty, estate, honor, and so forth…” and “Democracy is Christ’s government in church and state.” Jefferson drew from a rich, deep Christian well. According to President Calvin Coolidge, Jefferson himself “acknowledged that his ‘best ideas of democracy’ had been secured at church meetings.”

The American declaration was followed by seven more years of war whose official end was the Treaty of Paris in 1783 and a constitution, still in effect, whose final ratification was in 1790. The Venezuelan declaration was followed by nineteen years of wars (plural) characterized by unspeakable cruelties and tortures, including a proclamation of “war to the death” by Simón Bolivar. By their end in 1830, one third of Venezuela’s population had perished. These wars were followed by more wars and rebellions which continued to the end of the century. She’s had at least 27 constitutions.

In sum, the American hearkened to her Christian heritage and history; the Venezuelan, to French revolutionary atheism, most starkly demonstrated by yet another revolution, the Russian, in 1917. Both the American and the Venezuelan shed blood. But the latter, like the French, shed it more abundantly.

I love the United States of America and its history. I love her Christian heritage and her pioneers. She is a wonderfully great country with a people who will always pull at my heart. I also love Venezuela and the warmth and genuine friendship of her people. I am grateful the Good Lord has exposed me to both and shown me that, in Christ, our best days are yet ahead.

Declaration of Independence – Text of the Declaration of Independence | Britannica

Text of the July 4, 1776 Declaration of Independence

Acta de la Declaración de Independencia de Venezuela – Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre

Towards the bottom of article linked above, the reader will find the text of the July 5, 1811 Venezuela Declaration of Independence. It is in Spanish.

Speech on the 150th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence | Teaching American History

Highly recommended to all, not just Americans.

Motorcade 1958

Richard Barnes

The President of the United States, Dwight Eisenhower, had commissioned his vice president to embark on a “Goodwill Tour” of South America. This was public and widespread knowledge and a highly anticipated visit by the continent’s governments as well as the great majority of “common citizens” of South America, as became clear after the dust had settled and cooler heads had had an opportunity to investigate and do some independent research and interviews in later years.

But in 1958, the message to foment agitation was very similar throughout the countries he visited: the Yankee Imperialist has hired puppet regimes in [fill-in-the-country] for long enough! It is imperative for the communist parties, on behalf of “the people”, to stop any inroads the United States might make into Latin America.

In the case of Venezuela, such propaganda was especially effective, having recently overthrown the Perez Jimenez government. The agitators added incredible tales of torture and unending horrors, tying the United States to such. They also took the credit for the overthrow of Jimenez (and, thereby, the simultaneous defeat of the Imperialist Giant from the North), although he was in fact deposed by a left-wing military coup. Nevertheless, and more importantly, as all successful agitators, they were effective propagandists and knew how to “personalize” whatever they identified as the obstacles to their objectives.

There was much opposition to their dream of a Venezuelan Communist utopia – whether the conservative elements within Venezuela itself, or the inherent desire of a majority of Venezuelans to live in peace, with a measure of liberty, or the generally anti-communist foreign policy of the United States, etc.  But they easily personalized all of that, and more, in Richard Milhous Nixon.

Beginning with a trickle months before, and culminating in torrents of pamphlets, speeches, lectures, and harangues, the message was clear and consistent: 

[To] send the “truculent” vice president of the United States to this land is an “imperialist abuse” and evidence of their intention to continue running Venezuela via puppet regimes. Richard Nixon is the one who most pushed for “sword diplomacy” against the countries of South America, installing and maintaining dictators who governed and tortured at the Yanqui’sbeck and call; whose strings were pulled directly from the Yanqui embassies in the capitals of South America.

Richard Nixon wants to increase his filthy, blood-soaked riches by taking control over all our natural resources and to do so he will order the imprisonment, torture, exile, and execution of all who oppose such self-serving policies. Etc.

Clearly such crassly personalized propaganda would not move the great majority of Venezuelans or South Americans. But the objective was not to move the majority; only the dedicated, combative, and disciplined minority. In this, it succeeded. Wildly.

Nixon’s plane landed shortly after 11AM on Tuesday, May 13th, 1958.

As he and his wife came to the door of the Air Force prop plane, they were met with the requisite dignitaries and the usual security apparatus.

However, all that was overwhelmed by the jeering, shouting, blowing whistles and horns, and clanging steel. As the Nixons, whose security detail was no more than 12 secret service officers, walked to their waiting limousine they found themselves not only attacked by “death-to-Nixon” chants and banners and all manner of vulgar vituperations, whistles, and jeers, but also hit by trash and spittle. 

It was quite a sight. Professional agitators and organizers had bused down hundreds and had stationed most on the balcony above where the Nixons and the official party had to pass. So the American party had to walk towards those angry mobs wishing them ill and spitting on them and Mrs. Nixon. 

In the Cadillac limousine, the danger did not abate, but intensified, as the mob easily overwhelmed the minimal local police force and surrounded the car, hitting it with pipes and rods, and began to rock the car, seeking to overturn it and burn it, all the while loudly chanting “death to Nixon”. The secret service, did not once use their fists, but with open palms, even when injured, continued to move insistently between the attackers and the vice-president. Inside the car, one agent did pull his gun when windows were broken and it seemed the crowds would gain entrance.

Miraculously, though, the car was able to break through and then proceed towards the city, only to encounter blockades along the way. By then, the Venezuela military had sent a large flatbed truck which was used to clear blockades and allow passage to Caracas, where more rioters were ready for action; including a mob desecrating the Simon Bolivar pantheon. As witnesses wryly observed later, the “defenders of Venezuelan virtue did not mind desecrating their own flag that day, as they tore and destroyed it.”

Vice President Nixon was persuaded to cancel the scheduled wreath-laying ceremony at the tomb of Simón Bolívar, which cancellation was clearly not anticipated by the rioters. 

The behavior of the mobs was precisely as had been instructed and promoted by the omniscient leaders, who had not anticipated that the “truculent” vice-president would have actually acceded to cancelling the scheduled public ceremonies. As was ascertained later, this act short-circuited the preparations for further violence by the Juventud comunista, including the use of Molotov cocktails at the site.

Decades later, Allen Hansen, posted to the American embassy during this event, wrote: 

There was such a well-organized mob around the Pantheon, that it was decided on the spot the Nixon party would not stop there but would go directly to the American Ambassador’s residence. Well, they made it safely. Some felt concern, even, that the embassy residence might be attacked, but that was never a real likelihood. There was a question as to whether the VP should give a press conference; this he did, and he conducted himself with great dignity. He’s never been higher in my esteem than he was at that moment, speaking with such reserve and calm about it not being easy to see one’s wife being spit upon, and that kind of thing, but still statesmanlike in his reaction although he was obviously seething beneath it all. So I gained some respect for the political leadership of Richard M. Nixon that day.

A day later, upon arrival in Washington, D.C., the vice president and his wife were met by President Dwight Eisenhower and 15,000 well-wishers.

The events above took place over 65 years ago; however, the strategies and tactics used by the perpetrators ought to be familiar to us today. They continue to be used with varying degrees of success because we continue to refuse to see and teach the tie between godlessness, anarchy, and totalitarianism.