President Nicolás Maduro at an official event for the delivery of equipment and resources to the security forces and disaster management corps of Venezuela. Photo: Presidential Press.
The president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, decried that the far-right is currently investing a lot of money to train Venezuelan migrants abroad with the aim of “repeating violent events similar to those of July 29-30, 2024.”
At an official event for delivering vehicles and supplies to the security and disaster management forces held at the Poliedro de Caracas on Saturday, November 2, President Maduro referred to a group of mercenaries who were recently captured “and confessed all of this. Details of the capture and the training will be made public soon.”
He stated that between 2014 and 2017 the far right hired young men who were unemployed, from “dysfunctional families. This has not been discussed much. The guarimbas [barricades] were maintained by small groups of delinquent youths who were paid 20, 40, 50 dollars.”
He added that Diosdado Cabello has shown those videos, “and they were kids from the poor neighborhoods.”
President Maduro explained that now the far right is trying to combine those two elements, given that some of these young people left the country. “They put [wanted drug lord] Niño Guerrero in charge of Greater Caracas, who promised to set Caracas on fire, and [organized crime leader] Wilexis, who used his gangs in Petare to burn and kill people.”
He reported that almost 80% of the detainees had entered Venezuela about a month earlier. Some of them were Venezuelans and had left the country in the last few years. They returned 15 days before the July 28 elections and they did not vote. All of them had orders for operations to attack targets.
He further reported that most of them had been under orders to attack the Bolivarian National Police, so they burned numerous police barracks and toppled symbolic statues, and attacked health centers and schools that he had inaugurated before the electoral campaign.
“All those who were captured confessed to having been trained in street violence and the use of weapons,” President Maduro stated. “A lot of money was spent for that, but they had not taken into account our capabilities because they always underestimate Venezuela. But we have been building a system of citizen security that we must keep strengthening.”
President Maduro: We Are Going After the Corrupt and the Traitors
Three major attacks planned for July 28
The president made a summary of the violent events that occurred in the days leading up to and following the July 28 presidential elections. “More than 190 people were injured, and 27 people were violently killed in those attacks,” he summarized. “But in 48 hours, peace was restored to the country.”
He stated that on the night of July 28, he was informed of three events between 7 and 9 p.m.
“There was a plan to assault electoral centers in various parts of the country,” he explained. “CNN and Bloomberg broadcasted the assault attempt on the electoral center at Andrés Bello School. I was also informed that we were on the verge of a national blackout and a cyber attack on the CNE, so that the far right could then cry for intervention.”
He expressed that the goal of the far-right was “to call for the suspension of the elections and to unleash the death squads, the fascist terrorists to burn and kill, and then to tell the world that it was the people who had taken to the streets to protest. But we were able to put a stop to that plan. We were able to neutralize them thanks to the perfect security plan that we have.”
He further reported that on July 28, there was an attempt to cut disrupt the electricity supply to the western states, “but the patrols captured the traitors who had come with explosives to destroy the Táchira substation and leave the country without electrical service for several days. We were able to neutralize all that thanks to the security plan and the civic-military unity, together with the professional capacity of the workers of the National Electrical System.”
“The leaders just hid, the main leader, the old glutton who is now in Spain, he just hid when they were killing and burning, he hid in the Dutch embassy and then fled,” President Maduro remarked, referring to the far right’s former presidential candidate Edmundo González Urrutia. “And now he says that he is going to take oath [as president]. The other one, María Corina Machado, fled. Now she moves between Colombia and Panama, wandering around, asking for meetings, hoping to be received by the president over there and over here, uttering a thousand insults, asking for an invasion against Venezuela. They are traitors and we should be proud to have defeated them with votes and in the streets. Alert and maximum morale. This is our homeland, and that of our children and grandchildren.”
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/SC/DZ
