The Strange Phenomenon of Confessions That Never Happened (Or How to Plot a Coup in Venezuela & Be a Victim)

By Clodovaldo Hernández – Mar 23, 2024

How many times have we seen the scene in which someone involved in one of the many conspiracies against the Venezuelan constitutional order confesses their participation and betrays their bosses and accomplices?

And how many times, despite this confession, do opposition leaders, media, journalists, commentators, and influencers say that these people and their henchmen are innocent, that they are political prisoners, prisoners of conscience, persecuted for thinking differently, abducted by the “regime”?

In the case of political and media leaders, it is very clear that they really do not believe in these people’s innocence. They know very well that these people are guilty, but presenting them as meek doves is part of the strategy.

Yet, what is really a phenomenon worthy of sociological, psychological and even psychiatric study is that people not involved in subversive acts, apparently functional people, refuse to believe what their ears hear or their eyes see just because it does not align with their ideas. It is the essence of the post-truth era made evident.

“This never happened”
Let us review some confessions and revelations that have been media issues or, as they say, “public, notorious, and communicational.”

For example, the loudmouths at dawn on April 12, 2002 [coup against President Hugo Chávez], when they went on morning TV shows to brag about having participated in a successful, albeit shortlived, coup d’état. Unforgettable acts of bragging by conceited nobodies who afterwards, in most cases, swore that “I didn’t do anything, I was passing by, I signed an attendance list, I went to see what it was all about.”

It is natural that the protagonists of such public confessions would later pretend that those did not occur. Cowardice is free. But it does not seem so normal that a part of society has pandered to this “forgetfulness” and continues to consider these individuals as excellent democrats.

There have also been confessions or declarations made before the police, the attorneys, or the courts, recorded on video and broadcasted urbi et orbi, such as that of National Assembly Deputy Juan Requesens (about the failed assassination attempt on President Maduro in 2018); that of the tabloid chronicler Roland Carreño (about the theft of the money that CITGO allocated to medical treatments for children suffering from dangerous illnesses and which became used for “logistics” expenses of the party-megaband Popular Will and for some personal whims of the refined journalist); or the confessions of those involved in the White Bracelet plot; and, the still more recent one from Vente Venezuela activist Emil Brandt Ulloa.

This is where the phenomenon worthy of study occurs: the leadership and part of the opposition base deny these admissions of guilt, considering them non-existent, or without legal, political, or moral value.

It is a childish denial of the fact, like when children, influenced by speeches translated from comic strips or silly US movies, say, in front of the broken vase or the shorn dog, that “this never happened.”

It is not childish, however, but part of the perennial narrative of the criminal State and the ferocious dictatorship that a democratic, peaceful, and long-suffering Venezuelan opposition supposedly faces.

What is at its core is the attempt to deprive the Venezuelan authorities of the constitutional power to act through the legal route against those who carry out insurrectionary activities. That is why they call arrests kidnappings and forced disappearances. That is why they enter a serious situation of cognitive dissonance when one of those involved “sings” and confirms the government’s claims. And when faced with those pieces that do not fit into their story, these people choose to say that they are worthless, that they are not real, that they do not exist.

The main test
What could be a reason to determine that a confession is invalid? For non-lawyers, the commonplace “confession by a party to the crime makes evidence not essential” [when there is a confession, you need no proof] suggests that confessions have an important weight in any legal process. In fact, confession has been classified as regina probationum [incontestable evidence] or probatio probatissima (the highest evidence), or the evidence par excellence. But the lawyers—as is their job—have already given this matter a lot of thought, and claim that confession is not as good an evidence as it seems.

Deniers of the confessions claim that they were given under duress, coercion, torture, or threat thereof, although these accusations are, in turn, obviously difficult to prove because the confessors show no signs of any of this.

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Now, beyond the legal aspect, it is evident that confessions have a significant value in the political sphere. And that is where the opposition party and media leaders operate to declare them as non-facts.

The spokespersons of the imperialist power and its local franchises maintain the following approach: “You saw and heard this person confessing, but that did not happen, it was a montage planned in Cuba 15 days ago,” as the great comedian Roberto Hernández Montoya said once. It is a difficult play because it is like erasing a part of the memory of physiologically healthy people, without having to do a cranial trepanation or something similar. However, they achieve it.

This refusal to accept as true facts admitted by its perpetrators also has to do with the need not to believe the government’s complaints that these statements confirm. And this effort continueseven if the confessions are not the only evidentiary elements.

We are going to give an updated example of the confession made by a criminal against humanity, the Colombian Uribista paramilitary guy Salvatore Mancuso, who has just repeated something he had already said a few months ago: soldiers and politicians linked to the Venezuelan extreme right went to Colombia to contract him for a coup d’état, assassination, or a tailor-made attack against Hugo Chávez. That happened just in the months during which the paramilitary gang that was preparing a false flag attack with uniforms and equipment of the Bolivarian National Armed Force was dismantled in Venezuela, the infamous Daktari Case.

The deniers have been saying for 20 years that this did not happen, that these gentlemen were Colombian laborers who worked on a farm and had become very fond of having small pieces of ham for breakfast from a fancy bakery in Caracas. No one can get them out of that headspace, not even the confessions of the super-murderer Mancuso.

In the White Bracelet conspiracy case that has occupied our media spaces in recent days, the same thing is happening. The confession-indictment of the FANB deserter Ányelo Heredia was made public. He explained in great detail what the coup plotters intended to do last year and in the first hours of this year, to destabilize Venezuela and, eventually, to kill the president and take power by force.

Then Brandt Ulloa was arrested, and soon started telling the whole story about Vente Venezuela’s foreign financing and street violence plans.

Both confessions fit perfectly with the claims of political and media figures whose secrets are always “sparked,” such as Antonio Ledezma and Orlando Urdaneta. And they also fit with the adventures of the imperialist officials in the neighborhood and with the spooky conclaves of individuals who are better lost than found, like Álvaro Uribe and Leopoldo López.

And then, thanks to the phenomenon worthy of study, opposition leaders, media, journalists, commentators, influencers, and, above all, some ordinary people, deny the guilt of those who have declared themselves guilty and insist that they are martyrs who are fighting peacefully for the return of democracy and freedoms. Virtual lobotomy, we could call it.

(LaIguanaTV)

Translation: Orinoco Tribune

OT/JRE/SC