Accompanied by a group of military personnel Diosdado Cabello visited Cuartel de la Montaña (Mountain Barracks) on February 2023 to pay tribute to the memory of Hugo Chávez, the leader of the Bolivarian Revolution. Photo: PSUV/file photo.
A new terrorist plot was dismantled in Venezuela last week, reported Venezuela’s Minister of the Interior Diosdado Cabello. Cabello revealed that the plot aimed attack political leaders, institutions, and embassies on a symbolic date for Chavistas: July 28.
“It must be said that it is not just on the occasion of July 28, that is to say, they are taking advantage of the crucial moment of July 28, which marks another year since the election of President Nicolás Maduro, but that this is part of a coordinated policy, a policy structured at a global level from the perspective of US foreign policy,” warned Charles Giuseppi Castillo, a researcher in the area of geopolitics at the Center for Advanced Studies of Latin America and the Caribbean, in an interview with Sputnik.
For the specialist, destabilization attempts should not be interpreted as isolated incidents but rather as part of an imperialist doctrine: “We must understand that US foreign policy has global aspirations. It seeks to turn the world into a sort of global Auschwitz, a sort of concentration camp, where countries must be aligned with US unilateralism.”
The offensive as imperialist doctrine
According to Castillo, the recent events in Venezuela respond to a logic well known in contemporary history: that of North American imperialism which, through force or blackmail, imposes its will on nations it considers strategically important or rebellious.
“The United States has a global vision of politics,” said Castillo. “They have an idea of governing the world, and that is the principle of imperialism. The notion of imperialism—when Professor Atilio Borón speaks of imperialism, he’s talking about that. It’s like Rome thought: ‘I have to govern, and there is no other power superior to mine.’ So that superiority must be expressed in different ways.”
The researcher thus highlights that the US seeks to demonstrate its “superiority” through narratives, sanctions, covert operations, hybrid wars, financing of armed groups, and delegitimizing dissident democratic systems. In the Venezuelan case, he argues, this has translated into a constant media, political, and military offensive.
“When countries don’t respond to this logic, the United States begins to undermine their sovereignty, to undermine their institutions, to support long-standing internal conflicts that are adverse to the revolutionary government,” Castillo continued. “It begins to create all the external and internal conditions to overthrow it, whether through media conditions, through infiltration by terrorists, through advocacy groups, or through ‘peaceful demonstrations,’ so to speak.”
Paramilitarism, Uribe, and the Venezuelan right
One of the most worrying elements of the recent discovery is the involvement of irregular armed groups linked to drug trafficking and Colombian paramilitaries.
“Everyone knows that the self-defense groups are the most rancid and pure expression of the Colombian right, that they are linked to Colombia’s traditional political and economic sectors, that they were the front for Álvaro Uribe’s government, and that they are financed by Uribe supporters and their henchmen,” said Castillo.
In this context, the researcher added that attempts to link the Venezuelan government to these armed groups are not only a distortion of reality but also part of a propaganda strategy of criminalization and international isolation.
“Let us remember, for example, the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, which never appeared,” noted Castillo. “Let us remember the fear of communism during the Soviet Union’s existence. Iran is accused of having nuclear weapons when Israel does. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard is considered a terrorist organization, while the Israeli army and paramilitary groups within Israel are murdering nearly 70,000 people in Gaza. It’s necessary to create a narrative about the enemy, criminalize it, and undermine the image of the other in order to overthrow it with international legitimacy.”
The construction of the “other criminal”
From the perspective of cognitive warfare, the creation of an internal or external enemy serves to justify policies of intervention and aggression. In the Venezuelan case, Giuseppi Castillo points out that this narrative is meticulously constructed.
“Remember the narrative of the Cartel of the Suns,” recalled Castillo, “which is brought back periodically: ‘here is this narco-jet’ [it is claimed], when everyone knows that Venezuela complies with international agreements, that it constantly responds to persecution, to the violation of its airspace, and to the violation of its sovereignty.”
Castillo highlighted that the recent conflict in West Asia has been instrumentalized to fuel these narratives.
“Immediately after the events in the Middle East unfolded, María Corina Machado said that Iranian missiles are being manufactured in Venezuela,” noted Castillo, “and that Venezuela supplies uranium. And it was also said that uranium had been exported to Hamas and Hezbollah in eastern Venezuela. Completely false.”
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Armored democracy: intelligence and sovereignty
In the face of this multi-pronged attack, the Venezuelan state has adopted a policy of comprehensive defense of its democratic institutions, relying on civil–military coordination and grassroots intelligence work.
“We have managed to maintain the revolutionary process precisely thanks to the work of intelligence, grassroots intelligence, and the intelligence of our security forces, who are working hand in hand with Comrade Diosdado, exercising control and power in the territory,” said Castillo.
In this regard, he emphasized that Venezuela has made progress in consolidating the rule of law amid extremely adverse circumstances, largely thanks to popular resistance and the strengthening of the institutional apparatus.
“Venezuela is constantly working to have a civic–military government that adheres to its institutions and adheres to the Constitution and the law,” the analyst noted.
In his view, the current electoral situation not only represents a new moment to reaffirm Venezuela’s democratic vocation but also an opportunity to demonstrate the strength of the Bolivarian Revolution in the face of external threats.
“When we talk about all possible means, there are also discursive resources,” concluded Castillo. “There are narratives that are being constructed around the need to criminalize others. But we remain here, steadfast, defending our sovereignty, our democracy, and our peace.”
(Sputnik) by José Negrón Valera
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/JRE/SL
