[News] Venezuelan Guarimbas: 11 Things the Media Didn't Tell You
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Tue Feb 17 08:37:34 EST 2015
*Venezuelan Guarimbas: 11 Things the Media Didn't Tell You *
Feb 16th 2015, by Tamara Pearson and Ryan Mallett-Outtrim
At one year since the violence opposition barricades in Venezuela that
aimed to bring down the democratically elected government,
teleSUR reviews 11 things the media kept secret.
One year ago, three people were killed in unrest in Caracas, sparking
international interest in a wave of violence that had gripped Venezuela.
Across the country on February 12, 2014, anti-government groups took to
the streets to roll out a carefully prepared campaign for “la salida” –
“the exit” from the elected government of President Nicolas Maduro.
While the international media relied heavily on opposition-aligned
private Venezuelan media outlets and anti-government groups for
information on the rapidly changing situation, we - Ryan and Tamara -
were on the ground everyday watching the unrest evolve, speaking to
ordinary Venezuelans and getting the real story from the streets. While
the international media described a spontaneous, peaceful protest
movement that was quashed by repressive security forces, we saw
something completely different. We drew conclusions based on what we
could see on the ground, and burned the midnight oil researching our way
through the fog of war to get to the tangible truth. Looking back on the
unrest a year later, this is what “la salida” really was, what the media
doesn't want you to know
1. Despite constant harassment and attacks, the national guard were peaceful
(Ryan) As the unrest heated up in February, international human rights
groups decried what they claimed was mass repression against peaceful
protesters. On social media, photographs were proffered as evidence of
widespread abuses. Most of the photos later turned out to be lifted from
protests elsewhere in the world, such as Egypt, Ukraine and Yemen. While
the government has acknowledged numerous cases of misconduct by police
and the national guard (GNB) and arrested those allegedly responsible,
the majority of security forces that did their jobs well were largely
ignored. The hundreds of GNB personnel that spent weeks guarding social
missions and media outlets while enduring verbal abuse and physical
attacks from guarimberos, or violent barricaders, went largely ignored.
This wasn’t an accident, as activist Luigino Bracci explained in
February 2014. In an article published online he said he regularly saw
guarimberos in Caracas using a time tested tactic of goading GNB troops
for hours on end, filming their targets in a “coordinated effort.”
“If the guard makes a mistake and represses someone who is insulting
him, in just minutes the video is doing the rounds of Youtube, it will
be seen by millions of people and will form part of multimedia material
that arrives at international chains such as CNN, NTN24 Caracol and
others,” he explained.
Yet these brief snippets aren't representative of the general conduct of
the GNB. For example, in the second week of March 2014, El Nacional
newspaper and opposition politicians spread a story of how the GNB
supposedly repressed a peaceful protest in Lara state's National
Poli-technical Experimental University. Luckily for the GNB involved, a
local independent journalist filmed the entire confrontation. The video
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yONBN1fIYeM> shows the GNB negotiating
with guarimberos, before giving them a short workshop on human rights
and releasing them.
2. There was amazing, unusual police restraint
(Ryan) The video above is representative of the conduct of the majority
of Venezuela's security forces during the protests, and a far cry from
the narrative espoused by the private media. The guarimberos complaints
of repression in reality boiled down to the government's intolerance of
armed groups roaming the streets attacking pedestrians, throwing stones
at cars and stringing wire across the road to decapitate motorcyclists.
Cities were brought to a standstill by opposition violence, and
essentially the public was held hostage by groups demanding the
resignation of Maduro. Amid the chaos, I tried to imagine what would
happen in my home country of Australia if someone tried to do something
similar. How generously would they be treated by authorities? Today, I
don't need to imagine it. In December 2014, Man Haron Monis held members
of the Australian public hostage in a Sydney cafe, and tried to use them
as leverage to make demands of the government. Like the guarimberos, he
wasn't afraid to execute some of those he held hostage. I'm yet to hear
any human rights groups decry the Australian government for refusing to
surrender at Monis' feet
3. Beautiful cities were turned into rubbish dumps, and the Chavistas
cleaned it up
(Tamara) Merida is giant green mountains standing right over the
streets, old pastel colored houses, vibrant and often organized
communities, and quiet plazas full of artisans, dogs, pigeons, old
people mulling the shade, couples, skaters, and tall beard trees. During
the guarimbas, the violent opposition blocked off communities and main
roads, shutting down the city center, and turning Merida city into a
harsh empty zone of scattered and burnt rubbish, ripped up and destroyed
street fences, billboards, and burnt buses. The entrance to our dear
barrio – a tiny bridge over a shallow river – was blocked with rubbish,
stopping gas delivery trucks and food from getting to us:
The private media didn't tell the world about that, nor did they
describe how many nights, while the barricaders slept, communities would
go out and try to clean up the mess. Gisella Rubilar was shot and killed
by men in balaclavas on a motorbike, while helping to clean up. The (at
the time) Chavista city council and grassroots organizations also
organized a number of mass clean-ups, with the national guard tanks
clearing the big obstacles, and the council providing trucks for removal
of debris. Hundreds of communal council members, PSUV and PCV activists
and more would join in these 5am clean-ups, sometimes singing to Ali
Primera as they did, while opposition supporters watched on and booed
and yelled at them.
4. While the media claimed government crack down on free speech, the
violent opposition attacked journalists
(Tamara) On Feb. 11, the day before the violence broke out in Caracas, I
walked home from work, passing one of the main blockades, on Avenue Las
Americas. Opposition barricaders, with no placards, no chanting, no
demands, were burning things in the intersection, pulling buses over at
gunpoint and ordering people to get off and the buses turn around, and
throwing rocks or pointing weapons at any motorcyclists who dared to try
to get through. I stopped to take photos:
Then three of them came over and put their guns to my face and demanded
my camera. “Give us your camera, or we'll kill you,” they said, over and
over, pushing me onto the ground, shoving me, ripping my bag. That was
just one case of many. Already, a VTV office had been attacked, a Radio
Mundial journalist in Merida was attacked and a photographer was shot in
the leg. Later, they attacked journalists form the Merida TV collective,
Tatuy, and threw their one video camera on the ground. A VTV office in
San Cristobal was attacked with molotovs and shot at, a community TV in
Tachira was set on fire, as was a community radio station in Arapuey,
Merida state. Journalists – public, community, and private- were
attacked repeatedly in Plaza Altamira, Caracas, and the VTV head offices
in Caracas were basically under siege throughout February, March, and April
5. The psychological effects of constant fear and destruction
(Tamara) Chavistas, non-political people, and even the peaceful
opposition suffered the psychological effects of the constant violence,
insecurity, and fear, but the media were more interested in the
far-right, whiter, upper-class sectors, and didn't cover this. It didn't
suit their message. I remember walking in the street, being scared, when
people on motorbikes holding long things drove past, or there were
groups of young men talking in the street – because they resembled
barricaders. We were scared to take photos, to meet or march too, since
snipers had killed people at a march in Bolivar – of course, we did
anyway. A doctor friend would walk three hours through barricades to get
to the hospital, and be scared every time she crossed one, because they
would yell out sexual abuse, beat up people, or demand large bribes to
be able to cross. Once we tried to leave our barrio late at night to
work, and because we weren't participating in the caceroles – weren't
banging pots, neighbors we didn't know yelled at us, “Go to hell,
Chavistas, die!”. Chavista effigies were hung off bridges. Another
friend had a heart attack because his son had been stuck at home for
weeks due to death threats. It became an act of courage to wear a red
t-shirt in the street. A lot of public institutions were attacked,
burnt, had windows smashed. An explosive was thrown at a Mercal food
store in San Cristobal, the governors' residencies in San Cristobal and
Merida were attacked, Chavista ULA students were attacked, ambulances
trying to take people injured at the barricades were attacked, a man was
half striped and tied to a tree and humiliated, a gas truck was burnt,
as were many buses and private vehicles including food delivery trucks,
various of Merida's new free tram stops were destroyed, some of the
Bolivarian universities were ransacked, burnt, or wrecked, the housing
ministry in Caracas was burnt, Merida's water was poisoned, a national
park was set on fire, 5,000 trees were chopped down for the barricades,
metro bus stations were wrecked. In Lara, they tried to burn Cuban
doctors alive, and all up, there were 162 attacks registered on Cuban
doctors.
In early April, before the guarimbas were over, Maduro calculated total
damages at US$15 billion. But how do you calculate the long term damage
on human beings caused by constant fear and loss?
6. Who was responsible for the death toll
(Ryan) Yet the opposition's violence rarely seeps into international
media coverage, despite the death toll from the 2014 unrest undermining
claims the guarimberos were peaceful.
In an op-ed for the New York Times in March 2014, opposition figure
Leopoldo Lopez claimed, “More than 1,500 protesters have been detained,
more than 30 have been killed.” To its credit, the NYT issued a
correction admitting the figure of 30 deaths “includes security forces
and civilians, not only protesters,” but didn't go into details. So what
does the actual death toll look like?
Throughout the disturbances of early 2014, independent news collective
Venezuelanalysis.com (VA) kept a detailed, running tally of who died,
where and how. Of the 40 deaths listed by VA, deaths of those against
and for the government are almost equal, though the news organization
conceded a number of killings took place in unclear circumstances.
Around 20 deaths were deemed to have been directly caused by opposition
violence or barricades. As Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting put it,
“The presence of the protest barricades appears to be the most common
cause of deaths: individuals shot while attempting to clear the
opposition street blockades, automobile accidents caused by the presence
of the barricades, and several incidents attributed to the opposition
stringing razor wire across streets near the barricades.”
7. What the origins of the violence were
(Ryan and Tamara) The 2014 BBC article, 'What lies behind the protests
in Venezuela?', nicely summed up the Western media's understanding of
what sparked the unrest when it stated, “The protests began in early
February in the western states of Tachira and Merida when students
demanded increased security after a female student alleged she had been
the victim of an attempted rape.”
This isn't true. The “protests” began in the first week of January 2014,
when a few dozen masked individuals began barricading the main road
outside the University of the Andes (ULA), and burning tires. For the
first week, the masked individuals drew no police attention, and were
left to block the street and harass passerbys. Buses carrying residents
of the working class barrios uphill from the ULA were forced back.
Without the buses, it became difficult to reach the city center from the
barrios, and it was a common sight to see poor retirees slowly walking
up the hill past the ULA, carrying their shopping in the tropical heat –
while the “peaceful protesters” looked on. The protesters carried small
arms, and weren't afraid to draw them on anyone who complained. When the
police began trying to clear the barricades, the guarimbas would hide in
the university and throw rocks. Once the officers left, they would
quickly rebuild. This was the prototype of the kind of urban fighting
that would be employed across Venezuela a month later.
The media failed to explain this, and did not explain any of the context
behind the guarimbas: upperclass and business discontent with a
revolution and national government that favored (and favors) the poor,
the failed opposition coup in 2002 and many opposition electoral loses,
including one just months before - seeing them desperately seeking
other means to gain power.
8. How dodgy the private media's sources were
(Ryan) A major part of the reason why the international perception of
Venezuela's opposition is so skewed is because of the voices presented
in the Western media. While ordinary, working class Venezuelan voices
rarely appear in the international media, right-wing fanatics are often
presented as experts. Take Caracas Chronicles co-founder Francisco Toro,
whose work was described by Associated Press in 2014 as “a must-read for
foreign journalists, academics and political junkies.” One of Toro's
last regular articles for the blog he founded was penned on January 20,
when he broke news of a “tropical pogrom” where protesters in middle
class neighborhoods were supposedly massacred by pro-government
“paramilitaries” the night earlier.
The article went viral on social media, despite the fact that still
todaythere is no evidence of any mass killings on February 19. The
“tropical pogrom” never happened, but Caracas Chronicles continues to be
taken as a credible source of information by the mainstream media. For
example, in a January 2015 edition of Al Jazeera's The Stream, Caracas
Chronicles blogger Emiliana Duarte Otero joined a panel of academics and
a student activist to discuss Venezuela's economy. She used the
opportunity to warn that Venezuelans could start going hungry within
months, labeled one of the other guests (George Ciccariello-Maher, an
Assistant Professor of Political Science at Drexel University) an “agent
of communism” and claimed “every single supermarket” in Venezuela has
military personnel monitoring “ration” distribution – of course,
completely false.
9. Human rights were denied
(Tamara) The opposition barricades meant that for months, people
couldn't get to schools or hospitals. One friend couldn't get medicine
to her sick, elderly mother. Other people couldn't get to the social
security center for vital medicine, such as insulin shots. Schools –
primary, high schools, and universities – near the main guarimbas were
closed for months, denying children their human right to education. A
few schools held classes in alternative venues, when they could,
including a meeting room in the workers' hall. The media ignored all this.
10. Scarcity was exacerbated
(Ryan) One of the main complaints from Venezuela's opposition was
regarding scarcity of consumer products, yet their main “protest”
strategy was to block roads. By blocking roads, the opposition
inevitably impeded the transportation of consumer products.
Unsurprisingly, the height of opposition unrest was accompanied by a
spike in scarcity. For me personally, the logic of this was rammed home
one March morning, when I passed a shuttered supermarket with a torched
out semi-trailer out front. The burned truck was graffitied with
anti-government slogans and had an opposition electoral poster slapped
on the side. A few minutes further down the road, there was more
anti-government graffiti complaining of scarcity. Again, the media
ignored this.
11. People still organized, despite it all, and continue to do so.
(Tamara) Most importantly, what the media doesn't want anyone to know is
that the guarimbas failed. There were weekly marches around the country
demanding an end to the violence, and the Chavista's main form of
resistance to it was to keep on working on their media, education,
health, and community projects – projects they are still working on one
year later. The alternative school I taught at still held classes,
though I couldn't go because the two main entrances to the barrio were
blocked by armed barricaders. Despite no public transport and all the
fear, hundreds of us met in the main cultural hall to discuss a
collective response to the violence.
While the media demonized the “collectives,” portraying government
supporters and grassroots organizations as violent, and the opposition
as peaceful, the pro-government youth organized regular cultural events
in the main plaza to counter the violence. The collective patience in
the face of abuse was, and continues to be extraordinary.
Elias Sanchez, PSUV youth activist told teleSUR, "We're in a permanent
struggle, advancing more every day."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Source URL (retrieved on /17/02/2015 - 9:02am/):*
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/11211
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863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org
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