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Imported repression: How Cuba taught Venezuela to quash military dissent
Source: Reuters
Imported repression: How Cuba taught Venezuela to quash military dissent
Imposing surveillance, fear and repression, Cuba helped Venezuela revamp its armed forces and military intelligence service. Reuters reveals how two agreements, undisclosed since 2008, let Havana remake Venezuela's security apparatus.
By ANGUS BERWICK in CARACAS Filed Aug. 22, 2019, noon GMT
In December 2007, Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez suffered his first defeat at the polls. Although still wildly popular among the working class that had propelled him to power nearly a decade earlier, voters rejected a referendum that would have enabled him to run for re-election repeatedly.
Stung, Chávez turned to a close confidant, according to three former advisors: Fidel Castro. The aging Cuban leader had mentored Chávez years before the Venezuelan became president, when he was still best known for leading a failed coup.
Now, deepening economic ties were making Cuba ever more reliant on oil-rich Venezuela, and Castro was eager to help Chávez stay in power, these advisors say. Castro’s advice: Ensure absolute control of the military.
Easier said than done. Venezuela’s military had a history of uprisings, sometimes leading to coups of the sort that Chávez, when a lieutenant colonel in the army, had staged in 1992. A decade later, rivals waged a short-lived putsch against Chávez himself. But if Chavez took the right steps, the Cuban instructed, he could hang on as long as Castro himself had, the advisors recalled. Cuba’s military, with Castro’s brother at the helm, controlled everything from security to key sectors of the economy.
Within months, the countries drew up two agreements, recently reviewed by Reuters, that gave Cuba deep access to Venezuela’s military - and wide latitude to spy on it and revamp it.
-snip-
Imposing surveillance, fear and repression, Cuba helped Venezuela revamp its armed forces and military intelligence service. Reuters reveals how two agreements, undisclosed since 2008, let Havana remake Venezuela's security apparatus.
By ANGUS BERWICK in CARACAS Filed Aug. 22, 2019, noon GMT
In December 2007, Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez suffered his first defeat at the polls. Although still wildly popular among the working class that had propelled him to power nearly a decade earlier, voters rejected a referendum that would have enabled him to run for re-election repeatedly.
Stung, Chávez turned to a close confidant, according to three former advisors: Fidel Castro. The aging Cuban leader had mentored Chávez years before the Venezuelan became president, when he was still best known for leading a failed coup.
Now, deepening economic ties were making Cuba ever more reliant on oil-rich Venezuela, and Castro was eager to help Chávez stay in power, these advisors say. Castro’s advice: Ensure absolute control of the military.
Easier said than done. Venezuela’s military had a history of uprisings, sometimes leading to coups of the sort that Chávez, when a lieutenant colonel in the army, had staged in 1992. A decade later, rivals waged a short-lived putsch against Chávez himself. But if Chavez took the right steps, the Cuban instructed, he could hang on as long as Castro himself had, the advisors recalled. Cuba’s military, with Castro’s brother at the helm, controlled everything from security to key sectors of the economy.
Within months, the countries drew up two agreements, recently reviewed by Reuters, that gave Cuba deep access to Venezuela’s military - and wide latitude to spy on it and revamp it.
-snip-
Read more: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/venezuela-cuba-military/