“The matter was more confirmed than an official denial.”
Julio Cortázar
William Izarra* was serious when he said it, he is a man one has to believe. The revolution’s priority is to maintain a media hegemony. To assault power is to assault the media. Yesterday, April 11th, we were able to taste most of the concoction. For example, on the State-controlled TV channels, those it has bought and those which it has appropriated, only one point of view was expressed: the official truth. They twisted events to fit their needs, and even in the written press, very little about alternative points of view could be found, in contrast with earlier years. We return to One Hundred Years of Solitude. There were no deaths here. There was no resignation. Despite the demand for a resignation that was universally registered by the media and transmitted to the country by the then-commander of the High Command, a man who is loyal to Hugo the Eternal One, there was no demand for a resignation, but instead a coup d'état. The bloody act of February 1992 was not a coup d'état, it was a rebellion that expressed the feeling of the masses, but on the other hand, according to the spokesmen of revolutionary hegemony, the army’s refusal to go out and apply the Ávila Plan on April 11th 2002, in other words, to massacre a popular, multitudinous and unarmed manifestation, was an act of high treason against Hugo, the Eternal One.
“There were deaths and there is impunity,” said the spokesmen for the Eternal One on the TV channels, and if impunity exists it does because the police at the service of empire and of the traitorous opposition haven’t been sufficiently punished, they haven’t been condemned for the three deaths they are being charged for, the only deaths that matter, the only ones that died on that day. Paradoxically, the only dead that exist are the dead that are accounted for by the truth of the imponderable one. You can all see the narrator, on an imposed TV and radio broadcast, as he rewrites history.
Despite the fact that a great deal of documentation on the events exists, despite the fact that there are photographs and video footage which register over 90 gunmen shooting against an unarmed demonstration, under the inaction and complicity of the National Guard who only acted to protect those gunmen and to shoot tear gas accurately at the lungs of one or another member of the opposition, despite the preambles of the congressmen, administration functionaries and mayors advocating the shedding of blood, asking people to come down from the hills with sticks and knives and with guns to eliminate the counterrevolution that was marching towards the Government Palace, despite testimonies and sustained arguments, the Magnificent One’s parrots reiterate: “That didn’t happen.”
“We need a commission to clarify the events further,” says congressman Luis Tascón. A commission loyal to the revolution that will confirm its actions, that will fortify the official truth, because once the official truth is fortified they’ll be able to continue their implacable persecution and vengeance against those who dared to demand that the Eternal One resign.
The revolution doesn’t rest, it doesn’t pause, it will pursue and punish its detractors for ever. The official truth is the God of Vengeance. Yesterday was full of its noise, its distortions. At first they said they were celebrating, then they corrected themselves, they commemorated the gunmen of Llaguno Bridge who, according to the truth imparted by the Eternal One’s media hegemony, are heroes who were defending themselves from the oligarchic aggression of one million people.
And they never cease humiliating others. The remaining TV channels and radio stations that are independent from the Ineffable One’s designs were assaulted by the imposed Presidential TV and radio address, by the voice of the Eternal One himself who repeated, a thousand and one times, not only his lies, but also his threats; he exhibited the muscle of his anger, the promise of punishment and his eternal rule. He once again humiliated those who marched on April 11th 2002, he disqualified them, he resorted to the wisdom of the psychiatrist Vice President, in order to diagnose the insanity of the protesters: he exposed them: they didn’t die, they went crazy. There were no deaths, the dead can only be those on our side, the dead are revolutionaries, the rest didn’t happen, they don’t exist and they won’t exist. His vengeance continues, his machinery demolishes any other truth that is not the Eternal truth that is consubstantial with the Eternal One.
However, yesterday, those who despite the lists of fear implemented by the cynical congressman Tascón**, despite diminishing safety, despite possible and real consequences faced by those who are opposed to the official standard, people took to the streets, few of them, they weren’t many, but there were enough, to manifest their pain, to exhibit their documented point of view, and above all to demand justice, not vengeance – an act that vilifies – and to persevere, despite the opportunist tsunami and the diverse gazes of inaction, so that the truth might be established: not the truth of the Eternal One and his Attorney General, nor the truth of the opposition. Only the truth endorsed by an impartial commission.
Truth, not propaganda. Respect and memory, not distortion and disqualification. It will be an uneven, difficult transit, but one day the official truth will come crashing down like the foul-smelling make-up of a syphilitic king and will reveal its chancres.
According to Ecclesiastes, there is nothing Eternal under the sun. Hugo, the Eternal One, is tenacious and denies this. His hegemonic little parrots assault the media and human fear and they repeat the slogan “After an 11 comes a 13.” I would recommend they take a look at this assertion chosen randomly: in the face of the fraudulent truth of the dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez and the trickery of Laureano Vallenilla, a January 1st, 1958 and then a 23rd dawned.
What can he do, his hands were stained with blood, even when he washes them the stains will always remain visible, just as they were stained on that dawn of February 4th 1992 and they have been seen since then, just like that commissary minister: red, very red.***
Translator’s notes:
Photo by Israel Centeno, April 2007, Caracas.
* William Izarra is the national director of the Centers for Ideological Formation and Deputy Minister for Foreign Relations with the Middle East, Asia and Oceania.
** In 2004, congressman Luis Tascón created a list of the millions of voters who signed a petition for a recall referendum against Hugo Chávez. The Tascón List has since been used to exclude people from public sector jobs and from government funding in education, business or health sectors in Venezuela.
*** In November 2006 Venezuela’s Minister of Energy Rafael Ramírez gave a political speech to employees of the state-run PDVSA oil company, where he claimed that PDVSA was “roja, rojita,” or, completely loyal to the revolution. He said that employees who did not agree with revolution would be removed from their positions. Red is used as an iconic color for the Venezuelan government, and Minister Ramírez’s phrase has become an official government slogan since his speech.
{ Israel Centeno, israelcenteno.blogspot.com, 12 April 2007 }
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