Juan
Guaidó is the product of a decade-long project overseen by
Washington’s elite regime change trainers. While posing as a
champion of democracy, he has spent years at the forefront of a
violent campaign of destabilization.
by
Dan Cohen and Max Blumenthal
Part
4 - Birthing the “Generation 2007” regime change cadre
The
“real work” began two years later, in 2007, when Guaidó
graduated from Andrés Bello Catholic University of Caracas. He moved
to Washington, DC to enroll in the Governance and Political
Management Program at George Washington University, under the
tutelage of Venezuelan economist Luis Enrique Berrizbeitia, one of
the top Latin American neoliberal economists. Berrizbeitia is a
former executive director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF)
who spent more than a decade working in the Venezuelan energy sector,
under the old oligarchic regime that was ousted by Chávez.
That
year, Guaidó helped lead anti-government rallies after the
Venezuelan government declined to renew the license of Radio Caracas
Televisión (RCTV). This privately owned station played a leading
role in the 2002 coup against Hugo Chávez. RCTV helped mobilize
anti-government demonstrators, falsified information blaming
government supporters for acts of violence carried out by opposition
members, and banned pro-government reporting amid the coup. The role
of RCTV and other oligarch-owned stations in driving the failed coup
attempt was chronicled in the acclaimed documentary The Revolution
Will Not Be Televised.
That
same year, the students claimed credit for stymying Chavez’s
constitutional referendum for a “21st century socialism” that
promised “to set the legal framework for the political and
social reorganization of the country, giving direct power to
organized communities as a prerequisite for the development of a new
economic system.”
From the
protests around RCTV and the referendum, a specialized cadre of
US-backed class of regime change activists was born. They called
themselves “Generation 2007.”
The
Stratfor and CANVAS trainers of this cell identified Guaidó’s
ally – a libertarian political organizer named Yon Goicoechea –
as a “key factor” in defeating the constitutional referendum. The
following year, Goicochea was rewarded for his efforts with the Cato
Institute’s Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty, along with
a $500,000 prize, which he promptly invested into his political
network.
Friedman,
of course, was the godfather of the notorious neoliberal Chicago Boys
who were imported into Chile by dictatorial junta leader Augusto
Pinochet to implement policies of radical “shock doctrine”-style
fiscal austerity. And the Cato Institute is the
libertarian Washington DC-based think tank founded by the Koch
Brothers, two top Republican Party donors who have become aggressive
supporters of the right-wing across Latin America.
Wikileaks
published a 2007 email from American ambassador to Venezuela William
Brownfield sent to the State Department, National Security Council
and Department of Defense Southern Command praising “Generation
of ’07” for having “forced the Venezuelan president,
accustomed to setting the political agenda, to (over)react.”
Among the “emerging leaders” Brownfield identified were
Freddy Guevara and Yon Goicoechea. He applauded the latter figure as
“one of the students’ most articulate defenders of civil
liberties.”
Flush
with cash from libertarian oligarchs and US government soft power
outfits, the radical Venezuelan cadre took their Otpor tactics to the
streets, along with a version of the group’s logo, as seen below:
Source, links:
Source, links:
Comments
Post a Comment