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<div id="print-page"> <b><big><big>Venezuelan Guarimbas: 11 Things
the Media Didn't Tell You
</big></big></b>
<p class="print-submitted">Feb 16th 2015, by Tamara Pearson and
Ryan Mallett-Outtrim </p>
<div class="print-content">
<div class="subtitle" style="text-align: justify;"><span>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.</span> </div>
<div class="txt_newworld">
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span>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</span> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span>1. Despite constant
harassment and attacks, the national guard were peaceful</span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span>(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.”</span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span>“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.</span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span>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 <a
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yONBN1fIYeM">video </a> shows
the GNB negotiating with guarimberos, before giving them a
short workshop on human rights and releasing them.</span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span>2. There was amazing,
unusual police restraint</span> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span>(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</span> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span>3. Beautiful cities were
turned into rubbish dumps, and the Chavistas cleaned it u</span>p</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span>(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:</span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span>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.</span> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span>4. While the media
claimed government crack down on free speech, the violent
opposition attacked journalists</span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span>(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:</span> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span>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</span> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span>5. The psychological
effects of constant fear and destruction</span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span>(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.</span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span>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?</span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span>6. Who was responsible
for the death toll</span> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span>(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.</span> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span>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?</span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span>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.”</span> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span>7. What the origins of
the violence were</span>
</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span>(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.”</span> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span>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.</span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span>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.</span> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span>8. How dodgy the private
media's sources were</span> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">(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.<br>
<br>
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.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">9. Human rights were denied</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span>(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.</span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">10. Scarcity was exacerbated</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span>(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.</span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span><span>11.</span> <span>People
still organized, despite it all, and continue to do so.</span></span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span>(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.</span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span>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.</span> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span>Elias Sanchez, PSUV
youth activist told teleSUR, "We're in a permanent
struggle, advancing more every day."</span></p>
</div>
</div>
<hr class="print-hr">
<div class="print-source_url"><strong>Source URL (retrieved on <em>17/02/2015
- 9:02am</em>):</strong> <a
href="http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/11211">http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/11211</a></div>
</div>
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415 863.9977
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