Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López issued a statement indicating that the Bolivarian National Armed Forces categorically rejects such acts of irrational violence, while reiterating “absolute loyalty to Nicolas Maduro Moros, constitutional President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, our commander in chief,” the Russian agency Sputnik reported.

The minister stressed that the maritime incursion was planned to smuggle weapons into the country to be distributed to mercenaries in several regions, as part of a strategy to increase violence, generate chaos and confusion in the population, assassinate political leaders and provoke a coup. >The second phase of a military exercise entitled Bolivarian Shield is underway, and the Bolivarian army is extending its presence throughout the country, with emphasis on the entire coastline, with extreme air, sea and land vigilance, to detect any other elements that may attempt to enter and destabilize the nation, Padrino stated.

The Venezuelan Public Ministry has assigned two prosecutors to investigate the events, while Attorney General Tarek William Saab tweeted: “We have designated prosecutors 73 and 74 with full jurisdiction to investigate the naval incursion in Macuto, via Colombia, which sought to provoke a coup and attempt assassinations in our country.

The detainees are now in the custody of the Public Prosecutor’s Office,” adding that the suspects were carrying more than 20 rifles and other high-caliber weapons. Venezuelan authorities reported that the confrontation left eight dead, while two individuals were detained, and a number of sophisticated weapons, six vehicles and satellite telephones were confiscated.

(Source: Granma)

Party Central Committee member Julio Cesar Garcia Rodriguez, head of the office in Venezuela, described with great clarity the problematic situation: Cuba and Venezuela have established a comprehensive cooperation agreement that could serve as a universal paradigm, since it is characterized by complementarity and mutual respect based on an inclusive model of social justice. But these nations are victims of a brutal economic and media war waged by the United States government, in flagrant violation of international law.

The damage caused can be captured in alarming figures: according to published data, this hostile policy, from April 2018 to March 2019 alone, caused Cuba losses of over four billion dollars; and Venezuela has witnessed the U.S. appropriate 30 billion in assets and impose an oil embargo extended to third countries.

García noted, in his synthesis, other elements defining the context in which Cuban professionals work in the land of Bolivar: increased political, economic and diplomatic sanctions, in combination with actions of electronic, cybernetic and psychological warfare; and repeated attempts to destroy civic-military unity and create a climate of ungovernability.

Within this adverse environment, last year cooperation recorded undeniable successes: 75,394,559 medical consultations and care for 106 million patients provided; 26,465,000 examinations in high-tech Comprehensive Diagnostic Centers, and services provided to 11,841,064 patients in comprehensive rehabilitation centers.

The performance of the Cuban Medical Mission alone shows the perfidious nature of the U.S. slander campaign against this honorable work, which at this stage, among other achievements, surpassed projections for surgeries, performing 68,589 major surgeries, and 51,661 ophthalmological surgical procedures – a significant contribution to meeting the goal set by Fidel and Chávez in the Sandino agreement, reaching six million operations in Latin America and the Caribbean. All of them provided free of charge.

Close attention was paid to victims of the economic war victims, through a specific program offering services at 407 mission centers, where

3,065,711 persons were assisted.

Significant results were achieved in other spheres, but no complacency was evident during the meeting, and the debates, animated by the principles of Bolivar, Marti, Fidel, Chavez and other heroes who dreamed of true, definitive Latin American independence, focused on the search for scientific answers to a question: How best can we serve the homeland of Bolivar?

The field of action was evident in projections made for this year, during which the country’s constitutional President, Nicolás Maduro Moros, has said will see Venezuela allocate 76% of its battered budget to social investment, and in the majority of programs in which Cuban collaborators work.

A bilateral decision has been made to seek alternatives to overcome the empire’s attacks in sensitive areas, including efforts to revitalize the Barrio Adentro community health and sports missions; strengthen the Diabetes Patient Care Program, which currently has a presence in all 24 states; prepare 48 new Bolivarian apiary cores; reduce the illiteracy rate to 2% through Mission Robinson; and contribute to food self-sufficiency and the promotion of a new agro-productive culture with an impact in the country’s 24 states.

The review had a top level panel of experts serving as jury, including Aristóbulo Istúriz and Carlos Alvarado, Venezuela’s vice-president for Social and Regional Socialism, and People’s Power Health Minister, respectively, who explained the strategic lines of development policy being implemented by the Bolivarian government this year, recognizing and thanking Cuba for its support in making these goals a reality.

Since the free community health mission Barrio Adentro was launched in Venezuela, some 700 million medical consultations have been provided.

(Granma)

“And your lie, even if it is repeated a thousand times, will never be true,“ reads the second sentence of a message sent last week by Luis Almagro, Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS), to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

The open letter was the irate response, dressed up as reason, of the former Uruguayan foreign minister following Maduro’s accusation that Almagro was a CIA agent and was conspiring with the Venezuelan right wing to subject the country to sanctions and the resulting regional isolation, on invoking the Inter-American Democratic Charter of the OAS.

Immediately replicated by the media, from The New York Times to local newspapers, in their coordinated uproar aimed at ousting the Maduro government, the message is a tirade written in short, direct sentences; an epistolary style that traditionally served to launch the defense of irrefutable truths, underpinned by the dramatic tone of vindication that comes with a statement in the first person.

If we ignore for a moment the accusations against Maduro, the glossy résumé brandished by the OAS Secretary General – in which he refers to himself as a champion of “the principles of freedom, honesty, decency, public integrity,…democracy and human rights” – presents us with a revolutionary Almagro, begging the question as to how, with such a record, he managed to become the head of the most anti-democratic multinational organization on the continent.

Dispensing blessings to dictatorships and coups, the model architect of the best manuals on interference, diplomatic snares, mercenarism and instigation, the OAS has undertaken to defend, based on its history, the fact that the institution is headquartered in Washington. What better place to run what has been deemed the “Ministry of Colonies”?

The burden of history weighs heavy, and actions lay bare the real intentions that this message intends to mask. Evidence abounds of the warm relations between Almagro and those he defines in the letter as “my people;” a privileged circle that includes the likes of former Colombian President Álvaro Uribe and several Venezuelan deputies, although the ideas of these “may not be yours nor mine,” he notes in a show of impartiality in his message to the Venezuelan president.

In the letter, he prefers not to mention names, while he generalizes his outcry for the release of so-called political prisoners; this although a photo of him happily posing with Leopoldo López, the instigator of the renowned guarimbas (violent street demonstrations), which led to the deaths of 43 people, has been widely circulated.

As one who throws up a smokescreen, he considers it would be a “folly” for anyone to carry out a coup d’état against Maduro, while his office regularly receives Venezuelan deputies who call for foreign military intervention in their own country, demand regional isolation by invoking the Inter-American Democratic Charter and seek to force Maduro out of office, before the time limits established by law.

“You have an obligation to public decency to hold the recall referendum in 2016,” orders Almagro, knowing full well that if the referendum is held after the year is out, and they manage to oust Maduro – which remains to be seen –chavismo would remain in power as the Vice President would take over and serve out the last two years of his term.

Ultimately, the truths according to the Uruguayan appear to be the only realities, absolute and irrefutable. He has repeated them so often that no doubt he believes them, with no room for others.

From now on, all the claims of those supported by the secretary, and the “exemplary” organization he represents, will be the only truths, the democratic, and just ones, those which his revolutionary OAS will give its blessing to. It does not matter how these are put, or what the facts show. The important thing is that these “truths” are spoken.

It is true, for example, that on Wednesday, May 18, in Caracas, there was a peaceful march by the opposition. Henrique Capriles said so, and this was echoed that same day by Ramos Allup: “No one shall separate us from the peaceful and democratic path.”

The brutal beating of a young policewoman by violent youths, images of which were shown around the world, was staged by government infiltrators. This was what members of the opposition Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD), and Capriles himself, rushed to say.

What an arrangement the government must have had with “its agents,” as they have all already been arrested and stated that they were paid by President of the National Assembly (AN), Ramos Allup’s head bodyguard.

Coromoto Rodríguez, alias “Commissioner Coromoto”, came to fame during the dictatorship of Carlos Andrés Pérez, also serving as his head bodyguard at the time. He was an exemplary disciple of another “commissioner” – Basilio – the alias of Luis Posada Carriles during his time spent as a torturer in Venezuela, from whom Coromoto learnt the bloodiest persuasive techniques.

This head bodyguard of the “peaceful and democratic” president of the National Assembly, paid for the premeditated beating to be public; but that’s what the government says, and not the others. Who is telling the truth? Apparently you should ask the OAS.

Of course, there are too many coincidences. Jorge Rodríguez, leader of the revolutionary United Socialist Party of Venezuela and mayor of the Caracas municipality of Libertador, had repeated many times that Coromoto was guilty of the torture of his father, assassinated in 1976, and was the first to reach the Livia Gouverneur university residence, ravaged by violent opposition groups that same Wednesday when the policewoman and four other officers were beaten.

Livia Gouverneur, after whom the residence is named, was a student who died in 1961, at the hands of people of the ilk of that same torturer.

But judging by the repetition of arguments in the effort to fabricate truths, whatever they are, in the eyes of the OAS the opposition’s demands are fair. The recall referendum process must be accelerated, over and above any law.

That’s why they collected “three million signatures,” as Capriles first claimed on television; “two million six hundred thousand,” as he later said; before finally stating “we handed in one million 800 thousand signatures to the National Electoral Council because we did not have time to audit them all.”

“These we audited well, name by name, signature by signature,” he added to this absolute truth, so “convincing” that not even the names of the deceased, minors, foreigners, and the missing or defective fingerprints that have already appeared among the signatories, can damage it.

It is in this context that the truth is debated, stretched on all sides. But the mainstream media, which rents its services to the international right wing, conscious of its strength, knows well Goebbels’ principle and assumes its reactionary and forceful role against the Bolivarian Revolution.

On Venezuela at least, the local and foreign right wing should establish some kind of balance, to ensure they stretch the truth just on one side; they wouldn’t want for so many pulls, so many contradictions, to mean the truth becomes too twisted and ends up appearing a string of barefaced lies that are of no use to them, nor to Almagro himself, in his “new and savior” vision of the decayed and unsalvageable OAS.

(Granma)

Maduro condemned the media campaign against his government, led by ultraconservative press outlets in Spain, including the dailies El Mundo and ABC, who recruit Venezuelan opposition members to slander their homeland.

In this sense, he stressed that the government of the South American nation will undertake a counteroffensive to ensure the truth gets out to the peoples of the world, and to assert its national sovereignty. Maduro also called for strengthened solidarity among sister nations to curb the constant media attacks against Venezuela.

We have seen 17 years of constant struggle and we know the means of interventionism, Maduro said, denouncing the alleged incursion into Venezuelan airspace of a Boeing 707 E-3 Sentry aircraft, “which has all the mechanisms for electronic espionage.”

“A scenario of violence is being mounted in Venezuela in order to justify foreign military intervention,” Maduro warned.

He reiterated that the preservation and protection of the social conquests of the Venezuelan people is the fundamental task of the Bolivarian Revolution.

“We are exclusively dedicated to addressing all the issues affecting our peoples and to preserving the social gains, the fundamental achievements: employment, pensions, public education, public primary health care, Barrio Adentro,” the President noted.

Maduro highlighted the Bolivarian National Economic Agenda as a means of combating the economic war the country is suffering. He emphasized the active and enthusiastic participation of the people, through the Local Production and Supply Committees (CLAP), which seek to supply food products directly to Venezuelan families and stimulate local production.

He added that there are now over 10,000 CLAPs throughout the country and that these will join other measures and programs, such as Farmapatria and the free health care system, to meet the basic needs of the population are met.

Regarding the recall referendum the opposition is currently collecting signatures for, Maduro noted that the process must be conducted according to the Constitution.

“Let’s think about defending the Constitution, in defense of the people. Again they have tried to use a democratic resource to further their own interests,” Maduro said, explaining the various steps that need to be follow in order to arrive at a recall referendum on the president’s term.

(Granma)

The media destabilization campaign, he said, is in consonance with what President Nicolás Maduro has denounced regarding plans to distort the political situation and portray his government as a bloody dictatorship.

Rodríguez, also the former secretary of the Union of South American Nations (Unasur), insisted on the need to report the Maduro administration’s declarations and its commitment to advancing the Bolivarian project.

He noted the treacherous idea of some politicians calling for a foreign military intervention, which is indicative of the impotence felt by the Venezuelan oligarchy and the United States, given the failure of their attempts to destabilize the country.

(Granma)

Gerardo Hernandez, Ramon Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando Gonzalez and Rene Gonzalez have been in Venezuela since last Monday to show their gratitude to this nation for the constant support to their cause.

They were arrested in 1998 in the United States and then sentenced to long terms in prison for preventing attacks against Cuba, planned in US territory.

Yesterday, The Five visited Sabaneta, in the state of Barinas, where they went to the house where late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was born.

According to the antiterrorists, setting foot on the land where Chavez was born was a debt, because the Bolivarian leader demanded their immediate release from prison at every international platform.

Besides the house, transformed into the Initial Educational Center, The Five planted a tree and called it “We Came Back.”

After the planting, Barinas’ Governor Adan Chavez said the gesture represented the victory of freedom.

Seeing them free was a dream of commander Chavez and today, it has come true, he said.

(Prensa Latina)