Coup plotters planned on assassinating the Venezuelan president and installing a de facto government.
A coup plot against the Venezuelan government has been foiled, with both civilians and members of the military detained, President Nicolas Maduro revealed Thursday in a televised address.
Those involved were being paid in U.S. dollars, and one of the suspects had been granted a visa to enter the United States should the plot fail, Maduro said.
Venezuela’s president stated that the coup plotters already had a “transitional” government and program lined up once the plan, which included bombings on the Miraflores Palace and the teleSUR offices in Caracas, as well as assassinations of members of the opposition, Maduro and others, was carried out.
Maduro explained that a video of masked military officials speaking out against the government had been recorded, which was set to be released after the planned assassination was carried out.
Venezuelan Minister of Defense Vladimir Padrino Lopez stated via his Twitter account that the armed forces remain loyal to the constitutional government.
“The Bolivarian National Armed Forces remain resolute in their democratic beliefs and reject coup schemes that threaten the peace of the republic,” said Padrino.
According to Maduro, one of the suspects was already under surveillance and had been suspected of plotting against the government during last year’s violent demonstrations, but was not charged. Nevertheless, he continued plotting against the democratically-elected government.
The four-stage plan involved creating an economic assault on the country, creating an international debate around a supposed humanitarian crisis, a political coup involving officials who would turn on the government, and finally a military coup that would lead to the installation of the transitional program.
Maduro stated that the plot, which was scheduled to coincide with anti-government demonstrations planned for the one-year anniversary of the start of violent, opposition-led demonstrations
Maduro called on the Venezuelan people to be on alert and prepared to maintain peace in the country in the face of continued attempts by sectors of the right wing who seek to overthrow the democratically-elected government.
Below is a timeline of how the coup plotters hoped their plan would play out provided by TeleSUR Engish, Anatomy of a Coup.
January 6-8: Coup plotters planned to conduct nationwide operations aimed at creating unrest in the streets. Queues outside commercial stores such as supermarkets were set to be among the primary targets, where operatives hoped to set off violence. Elsewhere, various groups planned to engage in other activities aimed at fomenting destabilization in the streets.
January 9-February: Over the weeks, plotters hoped the country would descend into a state of turmoil, paving the way for the violent overthrow of the Maduro administration.
February 3: Officials at the U.S. Embassy in Caracas tried to bribe people in strategic positions to participate in a coup, said President Nicolas Maduro at the time.
February 12: The coup was scheduled to begin this day. Chavista and opposition rallies commemorating Youth Day were slated as the first targets. Coup plotters planned on attacking the marches to provoke panic in the streets. Then, strategic sites across the capital were to be bombed in a series of coordinated attacks, carried out using a Tucano attack aircraft. The Tucano is a small, highly maneuverable military aircraft manufactured in Brazil, though the U.S. military has purchased a handful for counterinsurgency operations. The sites targeted for bombing included public transport, government offices, mass media and open areas, such as the grandiose Plaza Venezuela. The full list of targets included:
– teleSUR headquarters (east Caracas)
– Headquartes of the Military Intelligence (DIM)
– Plaza Venezuela
– Metro station Zona Rental (center of Caracas)
– Ministry of Defense (center of Caracas)
– Caracas municipality building (west)
– Miraflores palace (national government and presidential headquarters)
– Public Prosecutor’s office (center of Caracas)
Members of both the opposition and the government – including Maduro – were expected to be assassinated during the ensuing chaos.
Amid the turmoil, media outlets would be forced to broadcast a statement announcing the collapse of the government.
February 13: The coup government was expected to be firmly in control of the country and free to begin rolling back Venezuela’s socialist revolution.
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4 Comments
Decades ago I first became very interested in Latin America. As a result, I was open to meeting and getting to know people from Latin America who were living in the U.S. Reasonably, this seemed like a good and accessible way to learn more about this area, and I went on to specialize in Latin American studies at a university. It took me a while to realize that most of the people I was meeting from Latin America were not “average.” They tended to be people with some wealth and privilege in education, business, similar places. I was not coming into contact with low-wages workers, or even the very modest middle class that I would come to know years later living in Latin America.
Cuba was often the first area that opened to me because there were so many Cubans that came to the U.S. The visceral hatred of Fidel, the revolution, etc. was understandable, these were people who had lost their privileged status. About a week ago I was talking to a Cuba woman in a gym who is 60, so she goes back to those days. Yet, her outlook was very different. She was not a “reader” or academic, but had lived her long enough to observe much about the world, the U.S., Cuba, Miami, and so forth.
She was, to say the least, very disenchanted with so-called American democracy, U.S. foreign policy, the statements of Marco Rubio, and she was not anti-Cuba. She was in her statements strong but reasonable.
The world is changing, and Chavez, Correa, Morales, and a number of other contemporary Latin American thinkers and writers are key, including Fidel and Raul Castro whose commentaries and actions are, I think it is fair to say, remarkable. Why this is opposed by the U.S. leadership class in many instances is understandable. I have now matured, lived in Latin America for many years, done much more research, and, naturally, seen and experience a lot more.
I trust nothing or little that I find in the mainstream media about the world, and especially about Latin America where I have had first-hand experience. If it were not for living in Latin America, speaking Spanish, and the internet, the perspective I would have and knowledge that I would have would be worthless and completely distorted. Paul D.’s comments below can be multiplied countless times over.
One of the countries I lived and worked in is Nicaragua. I have a neighbor who is, perhaps, to the right of the Tea Party, but otherwise is a fairly decent person and we get along pretty well as long as we don’t discuss anything substantial. Yet, he once told me that my mind had been poisoned by living in Latin America. First-hand experience meant nothing in our earlier conversations when we tried to talk about current events. Fox News is undoubtedly one of his main sources of information. In some ways, he has a good mind in terms of verbal arguing, memory, and stamina. Possibly he could best me in a debate, but his view is so ill-informed and biased that he is mostly impossible to talk to about anything of substance. He has taught me much about a certain way of viewing the world in the United States.
The highest profile leaders of the Venezuelan opposition backed the 2002 coup – Leopoldo Lopez and Henrique Capriles. Maria Corina Machado signed the infamous Carmona decree. There is a video of Lopez and Capriles participating in the “arrest” of a Chavista minster during the coup.. I’ve had trouble positing links in comments so I’ll leave you to look it up. I’ve cited it a few times in my articles.
if people are aware of that then the opposition’s denial start to look vastly less credible. Moreover the US directly perpetrated the 2004 coup in Haiti. Getting “independent verification” will have to come with movements in the USA and Canada strong enough to impose transparency on their own governments, forcing them to come clean about past crimes – and prosecuting the officials involved. That’s a tall order, no doubt. However, in the short term it is easy to explain why the Maduro gov’s allegations are anything but far-fetched.
As for Venezuelan expats in USA and EU they tend to be a privileged group. Over 90$ of expat voters voted opposition in 2013.
Can this be corroborated?
The problem is, the Venezuelan right is constantly accusing the Bolivarian/PSUV government of making up fabricated coup plots.
Here in Pittsburgh, we even have a Venezuelan writer living in so-called “exile” with the help of a misguided humanitarian organization who wrote, the form of a novel, a thinly veiled accusation that even the 2002 coup attempt was a fabricated conspiracy of the Chavez government.
So while it is entirely credible, we need some kind of independent verification.
I second this motion.
The military man in question may have been set up in the same way many ‘lone wolf’ terrorists are in America.
Though we shall see.