Late Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez holding an electric guitar during a political rally. Photo: File photo.
By Víctor Lara – Jun 11, 2025
“The Venezuelan opposition’s primary election campaigns were paid for by USAID, they lied about the mechanism they were using,” stated Diasdado Cabello, first vice president of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), at a press conference on February 3. “We’re going to show you, we’re going to show you who they financed: Súmate, Provea, and even rock bands.”
Rock bands? But what is Diosdado Cabello talking about when he talks about rock bands? Here’s the story.
The Venezuelan government has already reported on several occasions that, through various NGOs funded by front organizations for the US entity and European governments, they have managed to produce events and attract personalities from the world of culture, in which this musical genre is no exception.
Two branches of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) are said to be the most active in promoting these destabilizing plans: the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), and the US Agency for International Development (USAID).
Cultural Cold War
Let’s see how this practice is nothing new. Since its creation in 1947, the CIA began conducting psychological operations using culture, and many of its influencers, especially in Europe, to instill anti-communist thinking and facilitate the pursuit of US colonial foreign policy interests abroad.
In the midst of the Cold War (post-World War II), when the Soviet bloc was strengthening its presence in Europe, the battlefield shifted from the trenches to the mind, with the aim of imposing a dominant ideology that arose from the struggle between the two blocs that were vying for the new global geopolitics.
At the time, Washington was promoting the Truman Doctrine and the well-known “Marshall Plan,” which would serve as a means of “reconstruction” for Europe after the devastation left by the war. However, the actions undertaken by Washington were not based on their altruistic pretensions.
“These countries were also secretly expected to assume other responsibilities ‘in support of the Cold War,’ and to this end, Marshall Plan funds were soon allocated to promote cultural struggle in the West,” reads Frances Stonor Saunders’ book, The CIA and the Cultural Cold War.
The tactic was simple: to use “covert actions,” which were defined, as the book quotes, as any “clandestine activity intended to influence foreign governments, events, organizations, or persons in support of US foreign policy, carried out in such a way as to conceal US involvement.”
The CIA, through the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC), created multiple front agencies to fund the spearheads of the “Cultural Cold War.”
From there was born the so-called Congress for Cultural Freedom, an event promoting other major events in Europe, such as the Festival of Masterpieces of the 20th Century, held in Paris, France, in 1952. “During the next thirty days, the Congress for Cultural Freedom filled Paris with hundreds of symphonies, concerts, operas and ballets by seventy composers of the 20th century,” states the aforementioned text.
But that event produced what would ultimately prove to be the trial run for what NGOs do today. The Farfield Foundation, a CIA front, positioned itself as “an apparently credible congressional backer,” with the help of billionaire Julius Junkie Fleischmann, the Foundation’s first president, who raised large sums of money for the aforementioned purposes.
“His personal fortune and various artistic patronages made him a perfect and credible front for the CIA in the Congress for Cultural Freedom,” the book says, also citing an interview with former CIA agent Tom Branden in which he states, “We used the names of the foundations for many purposes, but the foundation only existed on paper.”
Since then, these practices have continued unabated, and several changes in government around the world have been carried out through this strategy. This is why the US empire’s government and its European allies have also encouraged such actions since the arrival of the Bolivarian Revolution in 1999.
First attempts in Venezuela
The US empire’s actions in this regard have been seen since the beginning of what has been called the Fifth Republic in Venezuela, using its diplomatic personnel in order to do so.
In March 2008, then-ambassador of the US empire to Venezuela, Patrick Duddy, had requested funding from USAID and the US Department of Defense to hold “rock concerts and music festivals.”
A year later, in September, the Venezuelan-American Center of Zulia would serve as the epicenter for the Cevaz Rock & Pop Festival at the Sambil Mall facilities in Maracaibo.
The event’s purpose is to “raise funds to support the scholarship programs offered by the binational cultural center,” according to a CEVAZ review.
Duddy, accused of being part of the conspiracy against the government of Evo Morales in Bolivia in 2008, was expelled by Commander Hugo Chávez with the legendary phrase, “Go to hell, you fucking Yankees!” in the same year.
However, when Barack Obama arrived at the White House in 2009, Venezuela lifted the ban on Duddy, and he was again sent as ambassador to Venezuela until July 16, 2010.
Color Revolution
In 2011, a new event would take place, reflecting the US imperial government’s efforts to overthrow President Hugo Chávez, using cultural events and rock bands as a cover.
This plot was revealed on May 27, 2020, by Tim Gill, a sociology professor at the University of North Carolina, within the US entity, after obtaining declassified documents through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
The professor, through a message on his X account, evidences the links between the NED and the financing of Venezuelan rock groups for these purposes.
“In 2011, the US, through the National Endowment for Democracy, funded rock groups in Venezuela to write songs about freedom of expression,” reads the social media post. “They hired a producer, recorded the songs, and distributed them.”
Have to share this.
Going through documents I FOIA’d from the government.
In 2011, the U.S. through the National Endowment for Democracy funded “rock groups” in Venezuela to write songs about freedom of expression. It paid a producer, recorded the songs, and distributed them. pic.twitter.com/UZJJNCDPia
— Tim Gill (@timgill924) May 27, 2020
Gill explained in an article that, under the terms of the agreement, Venezuelan bands would compete against each other in a national competition, and the winners would perform a final concert in Caracas.
In this particular agreement, the researcher adds, the NED subtly notes the project’s objectives as “promoting greater reflection among young Venezuelans on freedom of expression, its connection to democracy, and the state of democracy in the country.”
The project would be funded with $22,970, funds that were to be used for song production and concerts with emerging bands. A quick internet search reveals that several urban music festivals, including rock, were held in various parts of the country in 2011.
Among the best known are WTFest (Anzoategui state and Caracas), Ni Tan Nuevas Bandas (whose last edition was July 9, 2011, involving nine local rock bands), 100% Venezuelan Rock Festival (Carabobo state), Música Sin Mordaza (several states in the country), and Unión Rock Show (Miranda state).
No gag on the attack
In his article, Gill reveals that the NED would use the NGO A World Without Gags for these destabilizing purposes. The NGO was founded in 2009 and, according to its website, “throughout its ten years of operation, the organization has grown beyond its borders, with volunteers throughout the country and the world, to coordinate campaigns using music, art, cultural events, new technologies, and online activism to promote human rights and democratic values in Venezuela.”
The organization is led by Rodrigo Diamanti, who has been behind various destabilizing campaigns against the Bolivarian Revolution. He graduated from the Andrés Bello Catholic University (UCAB), and was part of the “White Hands,” a tropicalization of the “Color Revolution” movement known as Otpor, which overthrew governments in Eastern Europe. He was also part of the self-proclaimed “Student Movement,” formed by the US colony’s government in Venezuela.
“Since 2005, Washington has been redirecting resources through the NED and USAID toward the student sector in Venezuela. Of the $15 million invested and channeled by these US agencies in Venezuela, more than 32% is directed toward young people,” recalls an article published on the Rebelion website, entitled “Washington organizes student network against Venezuela, Cuba, and Iran.”
This work would be carried out under the guise of Freedom House, an anti-communist think tank founded in 1941 that specializes in psychological warfare. It arrived in Venezuela in 2005 with funding from USAID “to advise and finance various groups, emerging NGOs and opposition projects.”
Diamanti, who at the time represented the organization Futuro Presente (created by far-right Yon Goicochea, dedicated to “the training of young political leaders”), participated in a 2010 meeting called “Activists for Freedom and Human Rights” in Dallas, Texas, hosted by Freedom House and the George W. Bush Institute.
In 2015, the year Obama was about to formalize his decree labeling Venezuela as “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the security of the United States,” Un Mundo Sin Mordaza (A World Without a Gag) and Rodrigo Gonsalves, singer of the Venezuelan rock band Viniloversus, launched a joint project “that links art with human rights.”
Diamanti explained that the concert’s purpose was for Venezuelans to “feel supported by music in these difficult times,” while the artist himself justified the collaboration by making spurious claims such as that the “government violates the human rights” of the population.
Four years later, Diamanti, as the president of the right-wing NGO, was also one of the producers of the “Live Aid” concert in Cúcuta, Colombia, promoted by British magnate Richard Branson.
“When we needed help most, Richard Branson rose to the occasion,” the president of A World Without Gags said in a post on Instagram on February 23, 2019.
It should be remembered that this event served as cover for the invasion supported by Juan Guaidó and other far-right leaders from Venezuela and Latin America, under the guise of bringing “humanitarian aid” financed by USAID.
The two had already met in 2014 at the World Economic Forum in Davos. There, Diamanti posted on Instagram that Branson was “one of his favorite people in the world.”
Anti-Chavista rock
The US empire’s strategy was no coincidence, a tactic to respond to events like GillmanFest, a landmark of revolutionary rock that drew large audiences across six Venezuelan states in 2011.
“We’re talking about events that drew 15,000 or 20,000 people, mostly young people,” Ennio Di Marcantonio, a Venezuelan rock and metal journalist and researcher, told Últimas Noticias.
The specialist noted that rock music originated from enslaved Africans working on 19th-century US colonial plantations, evolving from blues into its modern form.
“It seems the US was truly outraged that Venezuelan rock—made in Venezuela—attracted more people to support the Bolivarian Revolution than any opposition effort,” the journalist emphasized. “The idea of creating anti-Chavista rock failed because there were no bands for that.”
This explains why Di Marcantonio questioned how large events, like those organized by the Unión Rock Show Foundation, took place. While free to attend, their sponsorship remained unclear, suggesting possible foreign funding.
KAS also enters the game
One such institution, Di Marcantonio noted, is Germany’s Goethe Institute, which promoted supposed cultural exchanges between Venezuelan and European rock bands.
The researcher explained the institute is part of the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS), denounced by Venezuelan authorities for funding subversive groups.
“They financed Venezuela’s riots alongside organizations like George Soros’ Open Society Institute, one of the world’s greatest destabilizers of democracies,” he added. “These groups work to overthrow progressive governments opposing US interests.”
KAS has been linked to extremist political party Justice First (PJ), according to the article “The Third Sector as ‘Soft’ Imperialism: Interference of the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) in Latin America and the Caribbean.”
Sing a Song of Regime Change: US Funded Venezuela Rock Bands to Dent Chávez (NED)
It also funds the Institute for Political and Social Studies, Training, and Action (FORMA), which hosted far-right Vente Venezuela politicians María Corina Machado and Edmundo González ahead of the 2024 presidential elections.
Provea and New Bands Festival
Another active Venezuelan NGO funding rock events is Provea, which claims to defend human rights but faces criticism for destabilizing actions.
“It’s not Provea, it’s ProCIA, they’ve worked for the CIA since the 1990s,” President Nicolás Maduro said in 2024 during a Miranda state rally, condemning the NGO.
While Provea’s general coordinator Rafael Uzcátegui denies receiving US imperial State Department funding “due to the high political cost,” he admits resources come from “the German government and the US-based Open Society Institute.”
Provea has backed numerous pop rock events, particularly through the New Bands Foundation that has promoted emerging groups since the early 1990s.
The foundation is led by Felix Allueva, who, in numerous interviews, has called Venezuela’s government “authoritarian and populist,” claiming it only supports leftist groups.
In 2018, Provea released the album “Rock Against the Dictatorship,” featuring 16 bands. It was distributed for free at the Lima Summit of the Americas.
The Goethe Institute also partnered with the Nuevas Bandas Foundation, which, in 2020, promoted an event condemned by the Corazón Rokero Foundation for allegedly coercing bands into creating anti-government music under the guise of a “rock-for-medicine compilation.”
In 2019, the foundations collaborated on events from April 25-28 commemorating the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Notably, bands like Caramelos de Cianuro, who participated in Nuevas Bandas 1992, performed at lockdown protests in Miranda state municipalities Chacao, Baruta, and El Hatillo, reportedly during COVID-19 social distancing restrictions.
Venezuela has become one of the countries where the strategy of financing musical groups has been implemented, just as was done in Cuba with hip hop, according to the US empire-based Associated Press. However, in both cases, these actions have failed to achieve their ultimate goal: to help destabilize the country and bring about “regime change.”
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/JRE/AU
