On January 20, 2020 Nicolas Maduro at the XX Meeting of the Intergovernmental Commission of the Cuba-Venezuela Integral Cooperation Agreement reaffirmed the colonial status of his government stating, “I’ve told our older brother and protector, Raúl Castro Ruz, and he agrees. And it has been discussed in this mixed commission and we agree. The ambassadors are practically part of the Council of Ministers, the ambassador of Cuba has open doors in each ministry to coordinate, to move forward.”
Dictators Nicolas Maduro and Raul Castro together.
This is an important statement, but also an understatement, that should not be a surprise to observers of the situation in Venezuela.
In 1992 Hugo Chavez was involved in a failed coup against the government of Andres Perez. Pardoned by Perez’s successor, Rafael Caldera, in March 1994 Hugo Chavez made his way to Cuba later that same year where he was received by Fidel Castro as a hero not a failed coup plotter.
Hugo Chavez in 1994 visited Fidel Castro in Cuba
President Caldera, who pardoned Chavez, handed power over to him in 1999. Together with Fidel Castro, as a mentor, Chavez began the process of turning a flawed democratic order into the regime it is today.
Maduro’s statement on Monday, was just echoing what Hugo Chávez had already stated on more than one occasion.
In 2000 President Hugo Chávez upon receiving Cuban collaborators announced that “Cuba is the sea of happiness. Venezuela is going there.”
In 2007 Chávez had declared that Cuba and Venezuela were a single nation. “Deep down,” he said, “we are one single government.”
Commander Ramiro Valdes with President Hugo Chavez
In February 2010 Ramiro Valdés Menéndez, then age 77, was hired “as a consultant for that country’s energy crisis” but his expertise is not in energy. Valdes was the Vice President of the Council of State and Minister of Communications in the Cuban government. His role in Communications was figuring out in 2007 a way to muzzle the internet, what he called a “wild colt of new technologies.”
President Nicolas Maduro with Commander Ramiro Valdes
Commander Ramiro Valdes, founder of the Castro regime’s feared Ministry of the Interior, head of the organization between 1961 and 1968 and was viewed by some as “the No. 3 man in the Cuban hierarchy.” He is the architect of Cuban totalitarianism’s repressive apparatus and assisted Chavez and Maduro in building the Venezuelan version.
On Friday, January 17th, the Casla Institute, an organization that promotes democracy and the rule of law, in their annual report documented that Cuban officials run Nicolás Maduro’s “repressive apparatus” in Venezuela. This has meant the methods of torture used by the Maduro regime have incorporated “innovations” provided by Castro agents to increase Venezuelan victim’s suffering,
Nicolas Maduro with Dagoberto Rodríguez, Raul Castro’s man in Caracas.
Attorney, human rights defender, and executive director of the Casla Institute,Tamara Suju, over Twitter revealed that Maduro was still dissembling on the extent of the Cuban Ambassador’s existing role in Venezuela:
“The ambassador of the Cuban dictatorship is already an integral part of the Operational Strategic Command of the Bolivarian National Armed Forces (CEOFAN) and makes decisions. No one from the island enters or leaves without him knowing. All missions and Cuban militia report to him. Dagoberto Rodríguez is the ‘Boss’,
Below is the video of Nicolas Maduro (in Spanish) from Monday, January 20, 2020.