A LETTER TO THE ORGANIZATION OF AMERICAN STATES ON THE VENEZUELAN TRAGEDY.

BRUTE FORCE IS DRAGGING VENEZUELA DOWN.

This is the English translation of a letter sent today to member countries of the Organization of American States, OAS. I have little hopes that they will consider it, although I am prepared to go there and give more details on what I deal with in the letter. Thanks to Mr. and Mrs. W. K. for this excellent translation.

March, 2009

Ladies and Gentlemen:

Venezuelan society is rapidly approaching generalized violence, maybe even outright civil war, given that Hugo Chávez has organized armed militias where he has fostered hatred and resentment against the other half of the population that does not agree with his régime. For increasingly unexplainable reasons a certain organization has remained in total silence before Venezuela’s political and social deterioration, and before Hugo Chávez’s continuous violations of the Inter-American Democratic Charter, a document that ought to be that organization’s guide for everything concerning the political behavior of its member governments. If that silence continues, if you do not take measures to influence the Venezuelan situation, you will share the responsibility for whatever might occur in our homeland.
The gravity of our situation is such that Hugo Chávez must be prosecuted and jailed for the numerous felonies committed against the Venezuelan body politic. Although it is not up to you to prosecute him criminally, you can still apply the necessary pressure so that the régime will moderate its aspirations to outright dictatorship, its violations of the nation’s laws and its reprisals against political dissent. Hugo Chávez must be put on trial for the following reasons, among other things:

1. For having refused to defend the constitution that was in force at the moment of assuming the presidency, for having deemed it to be moribund, only to then violate the new constitution of 1999 systematically (they wrote a preamble and made more than 60 subsequent corrections, without this being duly approved by the Constituent Assembly);

2. For having received foreign money, specifically from a bank in Spain, for his 1998 electoral campaign, and after being elected president in 1999.

3. For buying an airplane without having the money to do so, thus violating the nation’s laws;

4. For raiding the Fund for Macroeconomic Stabilization in order to pay salaries and bonuses, in complicity with the then Minister of Finance.

5. For raiding the international monetary reserves in order to utilize the money for his political projects, in complicity with the deceased president of the Central Bank of Venezuela and his Ministers of Finance;

6. For using money belonging to Venezuelans in order to finance the presidential campaigns of Ollanta Humala in Peru, Cristina Kirchner in Argentina, Evo Morales in Bolivia, the Farabundo Martí Front in El Salvador and Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua;

7. For allowing the highest level of governmental corruption ever seen in Venezuela since the time of the Monagas brothers (19th Century), including the well-known cases of ministers such as Tobías Nóbrega, judges of the Supreme Court such as Luis Velázquez Álvaray, in addition to bureaucrats, bankers, contractors, intermediaries, high rank military officers, relatives, members of congress, foreign mercenaries, Hollywood artists, an entire menagerie that has ransacked Venezuela’s public treasury with the greatest of impunity;

8. For having transferred Venezuelan oil, and cash belonging to the Venezuelan people, over to his ideological friends in the region, including, among others, Fidel Castro, Daniel Ortega, Evo Morales, Néstor Kirchner and Rafael Correa;

9. For having squandered some eight billion dollars in weapons purchases, instead of using that money to solve our people’s social and economic problems;

10. For having collaborated actively with Colombian FARC terrorists and for having given special privileges to terrorist leaders such as Rodrigo Granda, Raúl Márquez and defender Piedad Córdoba. Granda obtained Venezuelan citizenship.

11. For having aligned himself openly with Hamas and Hizballah, both international terrorist organizations;

12. For having aligned himself with the planet’s most notorious terrorist leaders, Mugabe in Zimbabwe, Castro in Cuba, Ahmadinejad in Iran, Kim Il Sung in North Korea, Gadaffi in Libya, and the genocidal president of Sudan;

13. For having appointed, as ambassadors to the highest levels, people of questionable moral character, such as Francisco Arias Cárdenas, who had even accused him publicly of genocide, only to then adulate him in order to obtain the position.

14. For trying to make it impossible for governors and mayors, who had defeated him electorally, to perform their duties, and for going to the extreme of violating the constitutional articles concerning decentralization, with the complicity of a servile armed force, who has turned its back to the country. At this moment arbitrary expropriations are taking place throughout the country; sugar mills, sardine packers and rice distributors;

15. For having prostituted the Venezuelan armed forces, using for this purpose the moral and physical cowardice of a corrupt group of high rank.

16. For having destroyed the professional management of Petróleos de Venezuela, turning this company into an organization for the subsidized importation, purchase and delivery of food;

17. For having arbitrarily forced obligatory simulcasts of himself on the country’s television and radio broadcasters for almost 3000 hours during the first decade of his abuse of power;

18. For having dragged the name of Simón Bolívar though the mud, as he used it as a symbol for his régime, a destroyer of freedoms.

19. For trying to indoctrinate our children ideologically and for trying to change the history of our country in order to aggrandize his own image.

20. For converting the Venezuelan presidency into a symbol of indecency, intolerance and disrespect toward those who do not approve of his authoritarian behavior.

The Organization of American States must not remain silent before the Venezuelan tragedy. This is a demand by millions of Venezuelans and Latin Americans who love freedom and democracy.

Gustavo Coronel
Venezuelan