Stalinismo tropical / Teodoro Petkoff

Tropical Stalinism

This year the government’s celebration of the events of April 2002
 had a precise objective: to destroy the figure of general Raúl Baduel. The vast amounts of hot air spent during those days, Yo El Supremo’s superfluous speeches broadcast on required TV and radio bulletins, the liturgy of Puente Llaguno and general García Carneiro’s intervention, all had a guiding thread: to demonstrate that Baduel had nothing to do with the president’s return to Miraflores Palace and that this “Hero of the Revolution” is actually nothing more than a traitor.

The procedure recalls the manipulations of history that took place in the Soviet Union during Stalin’s era and which always ended, after a certain amount of time, not only with the death but also the disappearance from history of the people Stalin condemned. It would begin with a campaign of insults against the “enemies” that covered them in mud, in order to then, once they were sufficiently destroyed politically and morally in the eyes of the citizenry, not only execute but also erase them from history with impunity. Stalin dedicated himself with zeal to destroying in this manner the entire Bolshevik elite who led the revolution of 1917. In this manner the great leaders of the Bolshevik assault, along with thousands of old revolutionary fighters, were erased from history, including Kamenev, Zinoviev, Bukharin and finally Leon Trotsky himself. The slaughter had a quality that could seem comical if it hadn’t been such a tragedy: each time Stalin liquidated a member of the communist directorate of 1917, that individual was eliminated from the photographs where he appeared as a leader. So every year the official photographs had to be retouched.

Fidel Castro has also been given to these types of exercises, although with less amplitude than what was done in the USSR. There is a famous photograph of Castro with Carlos Franqui, the director of Radio Rebelde in the Sierra Maestra mountains and later one of the first dissidents, standing to his right. After Franqui left Cuba, he too was taken out of the photo.

This constitutes one of the profound differences between a democratic conception of life and a totalitarian one. A democratic vision of history assumes contradictions. No one would think of erasing general Manuel Piar from our history. A totalitarian regime, on the other hand, is proud of projecting a monolithic image. Both the part relating to past history, of which it claims to be a descendant, as well its own, cannot present fissures or contradictions, and much less positions countering the leader.

We continue to be perplexed by the effort to copy practices that are not just aberrant but frankly stupid, such as the notion of writing history to please the chief. But, on the other hand, if this Stalinist campaign against him demonstrates anything, it’s the importance of having the name Raúl Baduel.




{ Teodoro Petkoff, Tal Cual, 21 April 2008 }

Contragolpe de Baduel / Teodoro Petkoff

Countercoup by Baduel

Coherence is one of Raúl Baduel’s virtues. His speech yesterday is absolutely coherent within the context of his institutional career. The citizen Raúl Baduel who yesterday assumed the defense of the Constitution, rejecting Chávez’s reform, is the same general Raúl Baduel who in April 2002, also in defense of the Constitution, was the decisive factor in the defeat of the coup and the return of the president to Miraflores Palace. And he is the same general Raúl Baduel, commander of the Army and later Minister of Defense, who always maintained his institutional role, expressing his disagreements through regular channels, without ever breaking away from the discipline and obedience that bound him to his hierarchical superior. It is the same general Raúl Baduel who, when he handed over his ministry last summer, gave a historic speech where he already announced his differences with the Chavista project, which were reaffirmed in his words yesterday. Baduel is a democratic officer, not a coup plotter and his conduct cannot be judged with the reigning view among certain sectors who intend to make impatience a policy, and who have scolded him for not speaking out earlier. He spoke when he needed to, free from the disciplinary constriction imposed on him by his condition as a soldier. Precisely because he is a professional – which is what a member of the Armed Forces should be – and not a politician, he didn’t use the military tribune for political plans, which in his case would have been a coup plotting plan.

Faithful to himself and to his civil and democratic convictions, committed, as we can see he continues to be, to a project of social change, yes, but unavoidably democratic, he drove home his declaration by calling on Venezuelans to use the path of the vote to defeat Hugo Chávez’s self-perpetuating and neo-totalitarian aspirations. He called on people to vote NO in the referendum. He spoke for the National Armed Forces, of course, but as a part of the country, not as a guide for them, so they might reflect alongside millions of Venezuelans who hold in their hands the power to prevent Hugo Chávez’s reactionary and proto-totalitarian project from consolidating itself, by defeating it in the referendum.

The impact of his speech is measured by Chávez’s reaction. First he placed his usual worshipers, the deputies of his power, to try and refute Baduel, and later on he dusted off two of his former Ministers of Defense so they could babble a few trivialities against Baduel. It will be useless. The rejection of the Constitutional reform is a stream of gunpowder.




{ Teodoro Petkoff, Tal Cual, 6 November 2007 }