[News] Top Brazilian paper reveals Bolsonaro government’s terror plot against Venezuela
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Fri Jan 17 14:06:03 EST 2020
https://thegrayzone.com/2020/01/17/brazil-paper-reveals-bolsonaro-terror-plot-venezuela/
Top Brazilian paper reveals Bolsonaro government’s terror plot against
Venezuela
*Brazil’s right-wing government attempted to attack Venezuela in a plot
to overthrow its elected president. The shocking terror operation has
received absolutely no coverage in mainstream US media.*
By Ben Norton - January 17, 2020
Brazil’s right-wing government helped support military attacks on
Venezuela in hopes of inciting a coup and violently overthrowing the
country’s leftist government.
This plan was revealed by a major pro-government newspaper in Brazil.
Oddly, the shocking story was not covered by any mainstream paper in the
US or Europe.
Outside a lone report by Venezuela’s state-backed teleSUR
<https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Brazil-Complicit-in-Attacks-on-Venezuela-Military-Base-O-Globo-20200102-0010.html>
— which US-backed coup plotters are now trying to usurp
<https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Juan-Guaido-Wants-to-Silence-teleSUR-by-Taking-Over-TV-Signal-20200112-0001.html>
– the story was completely ignored in Anglophone media.
The United States has supported a series of regime-change attempts
<https://thegrayzone.com/2020/01/01/top-20-the-grayzone-stories-of-2019/>
against Venezuela’s elected government since 2002. But the details of
Brazil’s role in the latest coup plot is a novel revelation.
On December 31, the Brazilian newspaper O Globo disclosed the putsch
plans in an article titled “Attack on barracks by soldiers who took
refuge in Brazil was part of larger plan against Maduro
<https://oglobo.globo.com/mundo/ataque-quartel-por-militares-que-se-refugiaram-no-brasil-era-parte-de-plano-maior-contra-maduro-24165689>.”
The subtitle added, “Deserters intended to initiate large-scale military
uprising, but failed.”
O Globo is one of Brazil’s most widely circulated outlets. It has a
staunch right-wing editorial line and is infamous for supporting
Brazil’s fascist military dictatorship between the 1960’s and ’80’s.
The paper maintains close ties to Brazil’s political and military
establishment. And it consulted with numerous sources to reconstruct the
plans for the attacks on Venezuela.
Trilogy: 3 planned attacks on Venezuela, with help from foreign
countries
With the support of neighboring right-wing countries, Venezuelan
military defectors planned to launch three military uprisings against
the Venezuelan government on or around Christmas Eve, according to O Globo.
The official name of the operation was Trilogia (Trilogy). One attack
targeted Venezuela’s Bolívar state on the southeastern border with
Brazil. A second attack was planned as an amphibious invasion, and a
third was to take place near Colombia’s border.
Two of these three planned attacks failed, as only one of the groups
carried out the orders as planned.
Brazil-backed insurgents crossed into Venezuelan territory and, on
December 22, attacked the 513 Selva Mariano Montilla infantry battalion
in Venezuela’s Bolívar state, located roughly 230 kilometers from
Brazil’s northern-most state Roraima, near the border of the two countries.
A total of 16 Venezuelan military deserters participated in the attack
on the Mariano Montilla barracks, killing a Venezuelan soldier and
wounding another.
They stole weapons, including 112 rifles, 120 grenades, three rocket
launchers, three machine guns, 10, bazookas, and 10 ammunition boxes,
according to another O Globo report
<https://oglobo.globo.com/mundo/ministro-acusa-brasil-de-envolvimento-em-ataques-bases-militares-na-venezuela-24154923>.
In a parallel operation, Brazil-backed insurgents also attacked soldiers
in the Venezuelan city of Santa Elena, near the border. But this
operation ultimately failed.
Unnamed sources told O Globo the ultimate goal of the operation was to
build a more heavily armed “superior force” to carry out larger and
larger attacks against Venezuela’s government, kicking off a protracted
violent insurgency in southern Venezuela, on the border area with Brazil.
Brazil’s, and Guaidó’s, complicity in the attacks
These attacks on Venezuela had the backing of Brazil’s far-right
government, led by President Jair Bolsonaro, a fascistic demagogue who
came to power following a US-backed parliamentary and legal coup that
forced Brazil’s center-left Workers’ Party from power.
Bolsonaro has pledged to purge, imprison, and exile leftists
<https://theconversation.com/bolsonaro-wins-brazil-election-promises-to-purge-leftists-from-country-105481>,
and has staunchly defended his country’s previous military dictatorship,
while heaping praise on the murderous junta of US-backed Chilean
dictator Augusto Pinochet
<https://apnews.com/3506a62c508e43dcb9687866687c9a8c>.
Before and after the attacks on Venezuela, according to O Globo, there
were “high-level communications” between Brazil’s Foreign Ministry and
the coup regime of Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó.
Guaidó, who the United States has been trying to forcibly install as the
head of state of Venezuela, had been recognized by Bolsonaro as the
supposed “president” of the country although he was never elected to the
position.
Guaidó and Bolsonaro had met and publicly demanded the ouster of
Venezuela’s elected, UN-recognized President Nicolás Maduro
<https://thegrayzone.com/2019/08/06/interview-venezuelan-president-nicolas-maduro/>.
#Brasil
<https://twitter.com/hashtag/Brasil?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>
Nos reunimos con el Presidente @jairbolsonaro
<https://twitter.com/jairbolsonaro?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw> para
continuar fortaleciendo la ayuda humanitaria, evaluar la situación
en nuestra frontera común y establecer compromisos como parte de los
próximos pasos para lograr la libertad de Venezuela.
pic.twitter.com/b06GcRJfaw <https://t.co/b06GcRJfaw>
— Juan Guaidó (@jguaido) March 1, 2019
<https://twitter.com/jguaido/status/1101427021882765312?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>
According to O Globo, most of the coup-plotters who participated in the
botched military uprising hid in Venezuela. Many were subsequently arrested.
Yet five of the insurgents crossed back over into Brazil and hid for
several days among the Taurepang indigenous community in Roraima state.
Members of this community informed the Brazilian government, which then
decided to rescue and officially grant refuge to the Venezuelan
defectors on December 26.
O Globo noted that Venezuela’s foreign-backed right-wing opposition
expressed “relief” at Bolsonaro’s decision to protect the Venezuelan
soldiers who had carried out a violent attack on their homeland.
Venezuela’s actual government, on the other hand, harshly condemned the
Bolsonaro administration for its decision to legally protect the
coup-plotters, stating that it was “setting a dangerous precedent of
protection for people who committed flagrant offenses against peace and
the stability of another state.”
Venezuela has formally requested the extradition
<https://twitter.com/TarekWiliamSaab/status/1212816087433318400> of the
five defectors protected by Brazil, but the far-right Bolsonaro
administration has dismissed Caracas’ requests
<https://oglobo.globo.com/mundo/governo-brasileiro-vai-ignorar-pedido-de-nicolas-maduro-para-entregar-suspeitos-de-atacar-bases-militares-24157232>
on the grounds that it does not recognize Maduro’s legitimacy.
Brazilian media confirms what Venezuelan government said
The O Globo report confirms public statements by Venezuelan government
officials after the December 22 attack.
Venezuela’s communication minister, Jorge Rodríguez, declared that the
defectors not only had support from the government of Bolsonaro, but
were also trained in paramilitary camps in Colombia.
Estos criminales fueron entrenados en campamentos paramilitares
plenamente identificados en Colombia, y recibieron la colaboración
artera del Gob de Jair Bolsonaro
— Jorge Rodríguez (@jorgerpsuv) December 22, 2019
<https://twitter.com/jorgerpsuv/status/1208851511666790401?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>
The Venezuelan intelligence services tracked the infiltrators’ movements
from Brazil, through Peru, and into the Colombian city of Cali, where
they received training.
Venezuela’s foreign minister, Jorge Arreaza, wrote, “From Peru they
enter Colombia and they receive support also from Brazil. This is a
coup-mongering strategy of triangulation by the governments of the Lima
Cartel
<https://thegrayzone.com/2019/07/05/canada-adopts-america-first-foreign-policy-us-state-department-chrystia-freeland/>
to produce violence, death, and destabilization in Venezuela.”
Desde Perú entran por Colombia y reciben apoyo también en Brasil. Es
una estrategia golpista de triangulación de gobiernos del Cartel de
Lima para producir violencia, muerte y desestabilización política en
Venezuela. Denunciamos a estos gobiernos ante el mundo. ¡No pasarán!
— Jorge Arreaza M (@jaarreaza) December 23, 2019
<https://twitter.com/jaarreaza/status/1208900081321226240?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>
The coup plotters also entangled local indigenous communities in their
violent operations, recruiting accomplices from the native groups on the
border area between Venezuela and Brazil.
Nine members of the local Venezuelan indigenous community were involved
in the attacks, according to O Globo, and all were arrested for their
role in the botched coup attempt.
Tensions between Venezuela and Brazil remain at a boiling point.
However, Maduro has hesitated to sever all ties with the powerful
neighbor in order to preserve trade between the countries.
Unilateral US sanctions on Venezuela have already killed tens of
thousands of civilians
<https://thegrayzone.com/2019/10/11/life-resistance-venezuela-ben-norton-us-blockade/>
and made it difficult to import food into the country. Venezuela still
relies on food from Brazil’s massive agricultural sector to help feed
communities near the border. The imports are especially important as
Washington attempts to sanction Caracas’ CLAP food distribution program,
which feeds seven million families.
Venezuela’s government has managed to fend off the violent infiltration
and subterfuge by its powerful neighbor. But thanks to a media blackout,
the plot remains unknown to almost everyone in the US, except perhaps to
those who helped hatch it.
Ben Norton is a journalist, writer, and filmmaker. He is the assistant
editor of The Grayzone, and the producer of the Moderate Rebels
<http://moderaterebelsradio.com/> podcast, which he co-hosts with editor
Max Blumenthal. His website is BenNorton.com <http://bennorton.com/> and
he tweets at @BenjaminNorton <https://twitter.com/BenjaminNorton>.
--
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