Conspiradores y lacayos / Freddy Núñez

Conspirators and Lackeys

The students have turned out to be a very strong dose of democracy for the autocrat. In a thorough display of human misery, he imposed a 4-hour mandatory TV and radio broadcast to call them peons of the empire paid by the CIA. In his delirium there are only conspiracies, coups, and assassinations. Frankly, he’s become ridiculous. Chávez is a lackey and lapdog of Fidel Castro in his effort to turn that floating prison into our “sea of happiness.” The Lieutenant Colonel has been divorced from reality by his megalomania and his courtiers. The truth is simple, the regime can’t win an election in any university, public or private, and it’s evident that the buying of consciences has failed there. Eliminating freedom of speech and syndicates, destroying university autonomy, forcing citizens to wear a red uniform, these are attempts to imitate an old, shameful and failed model. Chávez is the antithesis of a civilized and modern leftist government. To saturate the country with all types of propaganda promoting the cult of his personality, grotesquely abusing his power to decree mandatory TV and radio broadcasts in order to force us to listen to his lies and manipulations, sowing hatred, stimulating resentments, these actions graph a human being who will never be a model for the creation of the mythological “new man.”

Being a leftist means having independent standards, assuming the right to think and act in complete freedom, not believing that anyone can own the single truth. Not accepting dictatorships of any type. Being a leftist makes it impossible for one to be a part of a mob that, dressed in red, stammers the nonsense spouted by the “boss.” This isn’t a banal act, perhaps nothing reflects the regime’s goal more clearly. T-shirts, hats, jackets, guayabera shirts, cars, even red underwear, all express the intent of putting a uniform on people, while official propaganda dyes their neurons red. The “revolution” is a factory of political eunuchs.

It pained me to hear the Chavista students in the National Assembly repeating the same rusted and empty litanies that throughout history – and appealing to the common good – have served to fill many countries with pain and misery. In this country, where ignorance and poor memory are part of the national identity, young people need to research the truth about Cuba; what’s happening in Iran with the government of the fanatical Ahmadinejad; who that tyrant named Mugabe is; and what might be the situation of a hereditary socialist government like the one in North Korea. They shouldn’t blindly assume the clichés the Lieutenant Colonel repeats even in his sleep. When a regime achieves a society’s silence, out of complicity or fear, a collective lack of will-power installs itself, the libertarian spirit is killed, life becomes a sleepwalk, a red pain in the ass that numbs the brain and the soul. On the steps of the University of Havana a young woman said to me: “Please, let’s not talk about politics, tell me about life in other countries. As you know, if you don’t belong to the Party here you can never travel. All information is exclusively official, and the only books to be found are the ones allowed by the government.” Venezuelan youths don’t want or accept this. Nor do old Venezuelans.




{ Freddy Núñez, Tal Cual, 20 June 2007 }