"The
smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit
the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate
within that spectrum." – Noam Chomsky
By
Manmeet Sahni
Part
3 - Constructed Reality
The most
recent protests in Venezuela started in 2016, when the opposition-led
National Assembly attempted to impeach Maduro before calling for a
referendum.
Maduro's
government has made frequent calls for dialogue with the opposition,
which the opposition has repeatedly turned down. In 2016, the
opposition-led National Assembly tried to impeach Maduro illegally –
they had zero support from legislative bodies.
Then, in
October of 2016, the opposition called for a coup against Maduro when
the Supreme Court ruled to suspend the presidential recall referendum
due to suspected electoral fraud in the first phase of the process.
The opposition then launched a series of anti-government protests,
further exacerbating the crisis.
Mike
Prysner, a documentary filmmaker with teleSUR who reports from the
ground in Caracas, told Renegade Inc about the protests: "What
happens is that the 'guarimbas' (armed opposition groups) follow the
peaceful protests and when they come near police, they insert
themselves in between the two.
"They
then push and push and push until there's a reaction – and they
have cameras and journalists on hand to record the reaction, so it
looks like the police are being aggressive.
"We
were once filming a protest and a group of guarimbas challenged us.
If we'd said we were with teleSUR, at the very least they would have
beaten us and taken our equipment, but we told them we were American
freelance journalists. They need Americans to film them and publicise
them, so we were accepted."
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