Caracas Chronicles blogger Francisco Toro (aka “Quico”) has long been among the most measured and balanced opponents of Hugo Chavez and his successor Nicolas Maduro. And his criticisms of the Venezuelan opposition are frequently as stinging as his denunciations of chavismo.
In fact chavista extraordinaire Calvin Tucker, who sometimes comments here as “Zin,” has cited some of those criticisms to bolster his case against the Venezuelan government’s opponents.
But the latest outrages in the Venezuelan National Assembly have moved Quico to a more radical position.
[T]he opposition bloc brandished a poster, a POSTER, written with the words “Coup d’État to Parliament.” Let’s all remember that opposition representatives are not allowed to speak in Parliament since last week, thanks to [assembly president] Diosdado Cabello’s
responsible use of his mandatetyrannical decision.What ensued, conveniently out of the media glare, was an all-out physical assault on opposition MP’s, resulting in a bleeding Julio Borges, a María Corina Machado kicked while on the floor with a possible broken nose, a beaten Ismael García, a beaten Nora Bracho, an Américo de Grazia with a possible fractured leg.
Although the opposition and the pro-government members blamed each other for the brawl, clearly it’s the fascistic refusal of Cabello to allow opposition members to even speak, and their response with the banner, that triggered the violence.
In a susequent post Quico writes:
Venezuela’s democratic movement is being violently shoved into the kind of underground resistance it never envisioned for itself, never sought, isn’t well prepared to take on, and never actually wanted. The contrast with the now-in-power far-left’s gleeful embrace of clandestine subversion against a new, liberal, indubitably democratically elected regime in 1961-1962 is vast and telling.
Even as I write that, I have only the foggiest notion of what the 21st century version of “going to the mountains” might actually look like. Discovering that, it seems to me, is the task that this generation faces.
But the strategy we’ve pursued so far – contesting the regime’s power through the regime’s institutions, acting as if we believed them to be minimally independent and fair – has clearly run its course. It only flatters the institutional apparatus of what’s now clearly an old-school dictatorship. We need to think up something different. And if tonight’s mass beating doesn’t convince you, probably the arrests coming in the next few weeks will
This I know: We didn’t choose this path. We’ve spent over 14 years resisting it, working night and day to think up ways to fight an undemocratic regime through democratic means. Even today, even now, with a mountain of evidence making it patently obvious that there’s no room left at all in the regular channels for institutional contestation, some of our leaders hope against hope that there’s some sense left in filing one last amparo in the Supreme Tribunal.
It grieves me to say it, because I have steadfastly resisted this conclusion over the years, but there isn’t. We didn’t choose clandestine opposition. The government chose it for us. And that’s where we are.
Several commenters at Caracas Chronicles disagree with Quico, and I’m not sure he’s right. He doesn’t offer a plan for what he has in mind, although he does not advocate violent resistance. But coming from him, as opposed to some more strident government opponents, it’s worth noting.
