Douglas Bravo – The Pull Of The Land

Caribbean and South American Communism Protevangelium

March 25, 2022March 25, 2022 Richard Barnes

In recent posts we have documented the fact that Communist activity in Cuba and Venezuela did not begin with Fidel Castro, let alone Hugo Chavez.

Communism did not arise in Cuba as a reaction to Batista or in Venezuela in revulsion to Gómez or Pérez Jiménez. Nor did it come because of the “horrors” of the United States’ invasion of Cuba or her “exploitation” of Venezuela (or insert any south-of-the-border country). The usual shibboleths insisted upon by our betters simply will not hold under more than casual examination.

Communistic ideals, preached in the Paris communes in the 19th century predated the Spanish American War as did Lenin’s radicalism and destructive activism as well as his admiration for the French Revolution. His initial hateful attitude was directed to the Russian Tsarist regime. His glee at the outbreak of the First World War had nothing to do with the United States, which entered that cavalcade of horrors towards its end. He wanted war and mayhem because he was convinced it would enable the overthrow of the Tsarist dynasty and the consolidation of power under a Communist regime. In this he was correct.

But the United States did not enter into his fevered dreams at that stage.

Neither did she enter into the fevered imagination of another admirer of the French Revolution: Simón Bolívar. Like Lenin, Bolívar was an acolyte of the Jacobins and, initially, of Napoleon, who was seen as the one who would ensure the Revolution would endure and advance. If one is to judge Bolívar by his fruits, one would inevitably be confronted with the parallels between the bloodshed and mayhem in France and that in South America. One would see that in both cases, the fruit was bitter, and the deleterious effects, long-lasting, persisting to this very day. The power and glory of late 18th and early 19th Century France and South America are no more, and no comeback is on the horizon.

And neither, at the time, vocalized any blame to America for their own disastrous policies and actions. The rationalizations and blame-game came much later by way of their advocates and fellow travelers seeking to justify the savagery and terror as well as their own consolidation of power and overarching control over people: their own and others. (For this, American universities and high schools will One Day give an account.)

So, as for instance, we have the Cuban, Paul Lefargue (Lefargue), one of the most influential Communists who predated the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Lefargue was born in Cuba in 1842 and died in Paris in 1911. He married Karl Marx’ daughter, Jenny, and the two of them were indefatigable in their successful promotion of the Communist virus in France and Spain, from whence it sailed back to the Caribbean and South America where the successful infiltrators, the Polish Comintern agent, Fabio Grobart (1905-1994), and the Venezuelan Comintern agent, Gustavo Machado (1898-1983) (agents) both were enthusiastic carriers, having promoted the objective conditions necessary for its propagation: hatred for the colonial past and for the United States present.

Hugo Chávez was born in 1954. His first overt coup attempt was in 1992. However, to understand him, his actions, and the worldview that motivated them, one must review well over a generation before, as this blog has striven to do.

Fidel Castro was born in 1926. His first overt coup attempt was in 1953 (ignoring the aborted 1947 attempt to overthrow Trujillo in the Dominican Republic). However, here too, one must provide a broader context well beyond Castro, to understand his actions and motivations, setting aside the psychological aspects.

Absent the actions and evangelistic fervor of Paul Lefargue, Fabio Grobart, or Gustavo Machado, there would have been no Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez, or Nicolás Maduro regardless of what the United States did or did not do. Special mention must also be accorded to Douglas Bravo, the Venezuelan guerrilla and erstwhile Castro ally, whose long-term strategy of infiltration of the Venezuelan armed forces and the use of Simón Bolívar as a euphemism for Marxist ideology enabled and ensured the rise of Chávez and Maduro and continues to pay dividends to this day. (Gustavo Machado had the same idea but was discovered during the Gómez dictatorship, resulting in his exile.)

Of course, these men did not act alone: the Comintern keenly sought and aided their success in the Americas; women of means and influence as well as United States reporters, bureaucrats, academics, and politicians were devoted disciples and promoters. Whether knowingly or duped is irrelevant; the results were horrible just the same.

Last photo taken of Lenin (1870-1924) in 1923. By this time he had had 3 strokes and was mute.

Chávez Rode the Cult of Bolivar

February 10, 2022February 10, 2022 Richard Barnes

“Nowhere was this cult more apparent and abundant than in the armed forces who were taught to consider themselves the heirs of the Libertador.” (Bolivar’s Endiosamiento)

If you were to visit the tombs of past Venezuelan dictators, all anti-Communist men, kneel and put your ear to the ground. You will hear their spinning.

Their hagiography of Bolivar was used by men such as Douglas Bravo to enable the infiltration of the Venezuelan armed forces with men committed to the Bolivar mystique, under which they indoctrinated and recruited men who would readily obey orders to impose a Communist dictatorship.

Douglas Bravo understood the veneration that Venezuelans had for Bolivar. He used the image of Bolivar as a lure. He knew that the meaning of “Bolivarianism”, as preached and indoctrinated by infiltrators like Chávez, meant, to the minds of the soldiers, nationalism and anti-imperialism. And, importantly, the anti-imperialism was focused on the United States and the United States alone.

As “Bolivarianism” continued to be inculcated in the Armed Forces, it denied it had anything to do with Marxist theory and that it was only a description of the Libertador‘s dream of a united South America, free of the clutches of the dreaded yanquis, and focused on the prosperity and freedoms of the Venezuelan peoples.

So, Bravo and his acolytes acted like offended damsels whenever anyone asserted that their preaching sounded Marxist or Communist. Their usual riposte was that they were nationalists, meaning that they rejected all internationalism — which, of course, meant that they rejected Communist internationalism.

Which of course was a lie.

As a child, I would hear — remember, this was a time of children-can-be-seen-but-not-heard — adults express concerns about university student diatribes against the United States while loudly professing their love for Venezuela. To these adults, something sounded off key in the protestations. It was all-too-clear that the supposed love for Venezuela was drowned by their hatred towards the United States.

Why the hatred?

When asked one on one, the rioters would deny they hated Americans; however, at the mitínes (rallies), the hatred was palpable. Why?

The facile answers taught by American college professors and other usual suspects, did not hold water: Monroe Doctrine backlash, imperialist America, uninvited American missionary activities, Ugly American tourists, and more.

When I was about 13 or 14 a childhood friend visited the United States for the first time, accompanying her family on a long-expected vacation. On her return, she reported to us how she purposefully dropped trash in American parks and “I was not arrested, and no policeman saw me”.

What causes someone to hate another country so much that upon her first visit to said country — a country she had never travelled to before — she would throw trash and brag about getting away with it?

“Monroe Doctrine” backlash doesn’t cut it.

After the riots and violent attacks on Vice President Richard Nixon and his wife in 1958 (see Nixon), the United States National Security Council’s minutes recorded comments by John Foster Dulles:

“Secretary Dulles went on to say that there was one more very important factor in the Latin American problem which the United States faced. This was the collapse of religion generally in Latin America. We all believe in this country that religion, with its emphasis on the rights and freedoms of the individual under God, is the very core of our democratic system and that it is also the greatest bulwark against atheistic communism. Unhappily … organized religion had practically no influence on the mass of the people as opposed to the aristocracy. Admittedly, said Secretary Dulles, he did not know what we could do about correcting this very grave situation, but it was certainly at the heart of our problem in Latin America.“

I doubt anyone can imagine a member of today’s National Security Council, or any major college faculty lounge or school board, expressing thoughts remotely similar to those of Secretary Dulles. Even back in the 50s it was becoming somewhat rare albeit not surprising.

And that, in my opinion, helps explain the hatred.

The United States has long been identified with Christianity. Such identification is offensive, even to many Christians today. It may have been abused by some, but it cannot be honestly denied. From Alexis de Tocqueville in the 19th century and his marvel at the faithful church attendance of Americans and their reliance on their faith, themselves, and volunteer organizations, as opposed to reliance on the State, to an executive from Argentina, whom I had the privilege of entertaining when he visited Texas in the mid 90s, and hearing him express wonderment at seeing “so many churches! Practically one on every corner!”, the Christian influence on the United States is undeniable.

This is not to say that such Christianity has been watered down if not fully apostatized, but it is to say that our history has been greatly impacted by such, and such influence is readily discernible should one decide to look at primary sources — Mayflower Compact, Bradford’s journal, the constitutions of the 13 colonies, sermons from America’s founding era, letters and speeches by America’s founders, missionary activity, and more.

The maniacal, bitter hatred that Communism has against Christianity is real. This is blatantly reflected in The Communist Manifesto which frontally, unabashedly, and bitterly attacks the Christian faith: “Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experience.“

And so, Douglas Bravo infiltrated the Venezuelan armed forces with Communists (others did the same with the universities) but ordered them to never mention Communism, only “nationalism and hatred of the yanquis“. The hatred of the yanquis was said to be because of their imperialism, but upon closer examination it was a proxy for Christianity.

(The identification of the United States with Christianity does not at all mean that my position is that America is a “Christian nation” or that we are the chosen people. Those are straw men about which too much ink has been needlessly spilled while we continue down our road of denying our history and embracing those who genuinely hate us and mean us ill.)

The rise of Chávez was not an overnight thing. Other Communist infiltrators in key positions enabled him to be promoted despite pedestrian academic achievements and even betrayals resulting in deaths of Venezuelan soldiers. The rise was long term, methodical, and successful.

We will be writing more about this.

A first edition of Tocqueville’s *Democracy In America* (published 1835 and 1840)

Chavez in grade school, military academy, and as a paratrooper in 1992, year of his failed military coup attempt

Douglas Bravo (center) with Venezuelan guerillas, circa 1960. Bravo’s dates are 1932 – 2021. We will be saying more of him in due course.

First edition of The Manifesto of the Communist Party, published in German in 1848

Simon Bolivar’s Endiosamiento

January 29, 2022 Richard Barnes

Simon Bolivar was an enigma: heroic yet cruel; capable of stratospheric oratory yet acutely dishonorable (to put it mildly); extremely charismatic yet disloyal. To see prior posts about him, start here.

With such a flawed man, how is it that he was practically considered a god in Venezuela?

As he approached his final years, his luster had suffered greatly, given his openly carnal personal proclivities and, more alarmingly, his inclinations to tyranny. By the end of his life, he was little more than a repudiated dictator, having attempted to impose a centralized, totalitarian system on his Great Colombia. He died in Colombia in 1830 at the age of 47. A sketch of him shortly before his death reflects a man twice his age, the effects of tuberculosis but also of his dissolute actions.

His authoritarianism was so intensely rejected that the Venezuelan congress refused to approve the repatriation of his body to Venezuela, his place of birth.

However, twelve years later, General José Antonio Páez, who had betrayed Bolivar in leading a successful separation of Venezuela from Colombia (see Ranchitos III), began the intense process of resurrecting Bolivar for political purposes.

Páez requested the repatriation of Bolivar’s remains and, with much pomp, had him buried in the cathedral in Caracas. However, given the longevity of memories of people who had suffered much under Bolivar, more needed to be done later to divinize him.

In 1870, Guzmán Blanco initiated a systematic process to rehabilitate Bolivar’s image. Over Guzmán’s remaining years (he died in 1888) great public works were named after Bolivar, long-winded laudatory speeches extolled him with uninhibited exaggeration, and slowly but surely the former goat began to become the Great Libertador once more.

These rituals, motivated by political convenience, converted Bolivar into a sacred political military symbol, whose importance could not be underestimated.

Other political leaders continued this divinizing which, in many quarters, produced a cuasi religious cult to the dead hero. Nowhere was this cult more apparent and abundant than in the armed forces who were taught to consider themselves the heirs of the Libertador.

Fidel Castro and Douglas Bravo, a Venezuelan Communist whose ultimately successful strategy was to infiltrate the Venezuelan army (here), further converted Bolivar into a revolutionary saint. In fact, interestingly, it was Venezuela’s dictators who were most responsible for resurrecting Bolivar and elevating his memory to godlike status.

This could be done because it was not too difficult to take Bolivar’s heroic deeds and super-stratospheric writings and make him into a mythological figure, especially after several generations of hagiography by dictators who used him for blatantly self-serving political purposes. Juan Vicente Gómez, although greatly hated in some quarters, successfully pacified Venezuela and built roads still in use today. He ruled from 1908 to 1935, and built unnumbered plazas, buildings, and more, naming them after the Libertador.

Gómez died, fortuitously, on the anniversary of Bolivar’s death 105 years before. It is undeniable that Gómez had created an environment of stability that Venezuela had not seen since her separation from Spain over a century before. He did this while venerating Bolivar to an almost fanatical degree. For more on Gómez, see here.

Gómez legacy in infrastructure and consolidation of the country into one nation are undeniable, but those were not his greatest bequests. That honor belongs to his contribution to the rehabilitation of Simon Bolivar. Innumerable plazas, each one with a statue or bust of Bolivar, dotted the country and the cult of Bolivar became firmly established.

In addition, and portentously, Gómez, more than any other leader, professionalized the Venezuelan armed forces. Although ignored, Gómez, far more than Bolivar, was the creator of Venezuela’s soldier class. And he ensured that soldier class felt itself to be the heir to Simon Bolivar.

I was at a dinner in Venezuela early in the first decade of this century where, in the midst of a discussion about the direction of the country, a young lady spoke up, “Given all the adulation about Bolivar and how his name is being used as justification for the actions taken since the late 90s, I am having second thoughts about just how great that man really was….”

I’ve not been back to Venezuela since then. But I was left wondering whether the cultish hagiography is the same today as it was when I was young.

We’ll have more to say about this, given that Hugo Chávez rose to power as a “Bolivarian”. What is the meaning of that term? Why is it important to both Venezuela and the United States?

Bolivar as seen in innumerable plazas and city centers throughout Venezuela

Sketch of Bolivar made shortly before his death at age 47 in 1830.

All Within the State: Understanding the Cuba – Venezuela Nexus III: Fidel’s Revenge Part I

July 5, 2021July 5, 2021 Richard Barnes

“My entry to Caracas has been more emocional than my entry to Havana, because here I have received everything from those who have received nothing from me.” — Fidel Castro, January 23, 1959, Caracas, Venezuela

As explained in the prior post, on that seemingly propitious visit, Fidel Castro was eventually Spurned by Rómulo Betancourt, who then proceeded to defeat Castro’s efforts to subvert and overthrow his democratically elected government as well as to disrupt the next elections where the Venezuelan people elected Raúl Leoni, who also successfully blocked Castro’s nefarious efforts against Venezuela.

In early 1992, Hugo Chávez led an attempted leftist military coup against the elected president, Carlos Andrés Pérez. In November of that same year, from prison, he led yet another coup attempt. Both attempts failed but not before the deaths of at least 150 people, although historians believe several hundred were killed.

Records indicate that preparations for these coups actually began in the 1970’s under former Communist guerrilla fighter, Douglas Bravo. He initiated an “infiltration” strategy with the objective of taking power via the Venezuelan military. In the early 80s, Chávez joined in this enterprise, having founded a “Bolivariano” movement with the same objectives. Such reports help explain former president Rómulo Betancourt’s concerns and his working to organize a coalition of Latin American armies to fight Castro in the 1970s. His plans never came to fruition as his health deteriorated followed by his death in 1981.

Unsurprisingly, according to officially unconfirmed reports, as well as the excellent (but poorly edited) history, El Delfín de Fidel, Castro was behind and helped organize much of this subversive activity, even placing sleeper agents in Venezuela in the late 80s to foment unrest. His intent was to use Chávez as the face of the coup so as to avoid retaliation by the United States.

By then, Castro desperately needed financial succor, as Cuba had entered its “special period” when aid from the Soviet Union had been severely reduced. Venezuelan Major Orlando Madriz Benítez reported that Castro also worked to falsely assure President Pérez that there was no truth to reports of an impending coup. Infuriatingly, but also credibly, in addition to Castro, future president, Rafael Caldera also knew of the coup. Castro and Chávez were to have ensured he would have been named interim president as had been the case with leftist Wolfgang Larrazábal after Marcos Pérez Jiménez was overthrown 34 years earlier.

This explains why Caldera pardoned Chávez in 1994, a mere two years after the coup attempts. This freed a man who at least twice had plotted to overthrow the elected government and who went to jail with the blood of many on his hands. That same year, 1994, he flew to Cuba where Castro had organized a massive reception.

And here was the inchoate, yet palpable incunabula of Castro’s inadvertently prophetic statement, “I have received everything from those who have received nothing from me.” For here, Castro and Chávez, in a firm, mutual embrace agreed to proceed on their common path of “the anti-imperialism of our era….”

By 2009, ten years after Chavez’ first inauguration, fifteen years after his pardon and portentous visit to Havana, Cuban functionaries were present throughout the whole of the Venezuelan territory as the face of multitudinous “social programs”. By then, Cuba jointly administered the Venezuelan ports (some would drop the word jointly), she had ensconced herself firmly in the army and navy and was well on her way to management of Venezuela’s internal security apparatus, including identification documents and passport control. And there is much more.

But Cuba did not do this for free. She was receiving over 100,000 barrels of oil daily, in addition to hundreds of no bid contracts for projects and services at astronomically priced rates. So great was the financial impact that as Venezuela sank from positive to negative GDP growth, Cuba rose from negative to positive.

So, Castro’s words in 1959 can be read as a prophecy of what was to come a generation later when indeed the Venezuelan people will have begun giving “everything” to Castro while “receiving nothing from” him.

However, actually, they did receive “something” from him, as we will discuss in future posts.