Nicolas Maduro condemns right-wing coup underway in Venezuela

According to Maduro, “We are not facing democratic opposition, we are facing a violent, fascist, and criminal counterrevolution”

July 31, 2024 by Peoples Dispatch
Last night, Maduro addressed the right-wing coup attempt against him in a press conference (Prensa Presidencial)

Nicolas Maduro was re-elected in the Venezuelan presidential elections on Sunday, July 28, revealing the majority support the Venezuelan people have for the socialist political project of the Bolivarian revolution.

Immediately after Maduro’s victory however, the Venezuelan right-wing, supported by the US State Department, promoted a familiar script: the Venezuelan elections were somehow rigged, to the contrary of what was reported by international electoral observers on the ground. 

Violent right-wing protests have broken out across the country in what seems to be a attempted coup. Far-right mobs have attempted to block major roads, including the road next to the Simón Bolívar International Airport, and have attacked buses, police cars, and members of the country’s security forces. Protesters have even gone as far as setting fire to a hospital

Last night, Maduro addressed this right-wing coup attempt in a press conference. According to Maduro, “We are not facing democratic opposition, we are facing a violent, fascist, and criminal counterrevolution. And I will not tire of explaining it to our people and to the world.”

Below is a translation of what the President said, edited lightly for clarity:

We know this film once again by acting, because we know this modus operandi has been used for the coup d’états in April 2002 for the first guarimba [right-wing protest]; in February 27, 2004 for the actions of violence called by Capriles one day after the presidential elections; on April 14 and all subsequent weeks for the guarimba of 2014 called La Salida for the guarimba of 2017.

They are hate, revenge, violence. And I asked the noble people—the people of Venezuela are noble, very noble—do you want the guarimba and the violence to return to this town, to this city? And everybody shouted “No” with great force. Compañero Diosdado [Deputy of the National Assembly of Venezuela], comrades, go to the political command, and present yourselves.

But I saw, given that we have had seven years of peace, of being able to defeat with the Constituent Assembly the perverse and harmful guarimba in 2017. 120 days of violence and we defeated it in just one day with the popular will in the Constituent Assembly. I saw disbelief in the people and I said it to the comrades, if the people do not believe that these people have a violent plan, the people do not believe that their real plan is a so-called color revolution.

Again a conspiracy and an escalation of violence to go and kill people, to chase them, to burn their houses, to burn people alive, to beat them. Because people tend, for natural reasons, to erase bad memories from their minds and nobody is going to be reminded of them either. Moreover, when I was talking about this part, I knew it was an ungrateful part. I know, but I am obliged as head of state, as a leader, to speak to the people with the truth.

We knew the plan before, during and after July 28. They did everything possible for a violent scenario, of advanced sabotage, of public services, people’s light, etc. Before the 28th, why were the elections suspended? Yesterday, on election day, they attacked fiercely, in two strategic points, the electrical system, creating a blackout at 12 noon and at 8:00 at night.

They wanted to shut down the country, this same conspiratorial group. I am obliged to tell you the truth. I am obliged and we are all obliged to listen to the truth, to be patient, calm, and strong. Because we know this film and we know how to face these situations and how to defeat the violent ones. 

We have witnessed a series of events. I could present at this moment 100 videos of violent attacks. We could call them criminals, terrorists, handfuls of people of whom we have captured a significant number in these events. They have been captured because the videos have been kept, they have been identified, and several dozen of these people have been captured in direct flagrant offenses. Eighty percent of those captured have criminal records. Some of them are people who have recently returned on flights.

This is what the gringos sent to Venezuela, and almost 90% of those captured have two characteristics: they are in an advanced state of drug addiction, they are armed, with drugs and weapons and insanity. They confess that they are being paid $150 per day and the investigation is already underway, because a good part of them are already talking. Who are the intellectual authors in such and such a place?

Instructions have already been issued by the Attorney General’s Office to search for and capture the perpetrators, intellectuals, and financiers of these groups. In good part criminal groups, in good part drugged. Exacerbated personality and with precise orders of where to attack, what to attack, and who. 

The extreme right, that shouted fraud 15 days before the elections, said that they did not sign the agreement for the recognition of the electoral result. They said it 15 days ago, a week ago, and that they intend to take this point to start an escalation of the guarimba.

We are not going to allow it. Today they tried to set fires, and managed to do damage in some parts of the country. I was calculating, because I know this issue well and they have impacted about 10% of what they did in 2013 with Capriles, in 2014 with Machado, Leopoldo López and Antonio Ledezma, and in 2017 with Julio Borges. And all these people, 10% will have arrived.

I am going to show some things and everyone will draw their own conclusions. Are these civic, peaceful acts or are they criminal, terrorist, murderous, attacking, and destroying? Since last night, they have attacked a hundred polling stations. Today at dawn they attacked several places in the country. We do not have a video record of the moment they attacked in several places where the electoral materials were located.

They destroyed machines, destroyed electoral materials, and tried to harass CNE headquarters in several places in the country. In one of them, in Coro, this group of delinquents entered. They have captured almost everything, we have already identified them by video, and all the security forces and Special Forces are looking for them for their capture and prosecution. Severe prosecution.

We must respect the law and the right to peace in Venezuela, which is the result of a plan that I have been denouncing. They did not participate in the elections to strengthen democracy, to seek votes. They participated in organizing these comanditas [mob groups] and used the electoral campaign to attack targets. 

This is an escalation of violence that will lead them to their golden dream: to seize power in Venezuela. On the one hand, it presents a face, a smile, a marketing. On the other one hand, it presents a little old man there who can hardly speak or walk, but underneath is the plan and behind this plan are the gringos. They have always been there before, during and after the coup d’état of April 11, 2002, and all the guarimbas before.

Made in USA. And this plan was worked out by them. I know it well. I denounced parts of this plan to use the electoral process to destabilize Venezuela again and to harm you.

We are not facing fundamentally—although there are several oppositions—a group of opponents who want a democratic, peaceful alternation, and respect for the Constitution in the institutions. But this special group is an extremist, radical, fascist right-wing group. We are not facing democratic opposition, we are facing a violent, fascist, and criminal counterrevolution. And I will not tire of explaining it to our people and to the world.

And let’s see the commanding groups they created. Let’s see the attack on the headquarters of the National Electoral Council in Coro. How they enter, destroy, burn, kick. 

We have told the militancy of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, of all the Great Patriotic Pole, not to fall into provocations, because their objective is that by storming the headquarters there would be a confrontation and, well, a bloodbath.

Now you understand what I was talking about. I have avoided a bloodbath in Venezuela and I will continue to avoid it. And the Bolivarian Revolution is the only guarantee of peace and stability in this country. Now you understand more, don’t you? Here in the world we have, we are going to see the attack and the burning of the house of the PSUV. 

We have to draw conclusions and conscience, conscience, conscience. We have the images of the assault, destruction and burning of machinery and electoral material at the CNE headquarters. In Coro, these people moving in are the people who are grabbing what belongs to us. We have a large amount of audio, video, and content, showing these people burning the headquarters, the CNI, and trying to burn other places. They burned the electoral material, they burned the vehicles, and the people have already been captured.

They were under the effects of drugs, most of them were armed with guns, and they declared that they sent people to burn the CD and were paid. Some entered hooded using the mental drug that the hoods had, but they have all been identified. They are all going to be captured in the course of the night. At dawn, they will say they are politically persecuted and the government of the United States, the OAS, the UN, and the UN High Commissioner will come and say freedom for these political prisoners.

And we know the material perpetrators have also attacked here in Caracas and in Los Teques. It has cost us so much to recover the Metrobus units, the construction of new public transportation. One of the commitments we assumed as the cost to fix and make beautiful the Trans Caracas stations, that line, Metrobus. And they came with all their hatred, their desire for revenge, their irrational violence.

Let’s set it to full screen. Put it at the beginning from scratch. Full screen all on Armed Forces Avenue. It is a flower among the ruins that has just been inaugurated from scratch. Full screen on Fuerzas Armadas Avenue, precisely near Las Flores station, they came in to destroy what was just inaugurated. We have just re-inaugurated the whole system.

We just injected 226 units into Greater Caracas. They attacked. Did they break their windows? Of course, because they hate public transportation. What do you call that? Democracy, opposition. What do you call it? What can we call this?

Who are they hurting? That is the original plan. The original plan to use the electoral process to organize again a force and come with violence and its objective is a violent overthrow of the Bolivarian Revolution and the establishment of a fascist government in Venezuela. We also have images of that State, because there is an image that I did not want to believe, that came to me from the people of Guanare.

Men and women of Guanare made a statue in homage to the Indian Coromoto, which I visited two or three times. And these mobs went and toppled the statue. We have captured this group and have the plates of all of the motorcycles and vehicles. What do you call this, gentlemen? I call this racism, racism, racism, which is the basis of fascism placed in the minds of these people. Fascism and fascist violence, revenge, racism, contempt for national values. We are going to see this image so that you can see how they tear down, destroy, and then humiliate the Indian Coromoto through the streets of Guanare, like the eyes that are taking the Indian Coromoto.

It is a vital symbol of Venezuelan nationality. The Indian Coromoto, the Virgin of Coromoto. What do the parish priests say, what do the bishops say? What does the Catholic Church say, what do the people of Guanare say, what do the people of Portuguesa say? I have ordered to make a superior statue and soon I will go with the people of Guanare to replace it with honor and dignity and to pay homage to the Indio Coromoto, to the great cacique Coromoto.

Long live the great Cacique Coromoto, we are going to defend Coromoto! Look at the hatred. They have hatred imbued with a madness of violence. Look how they are dragging our great Cacique Coromoto. What is this called? Opposition? What is this called? It is the order they gave yesterday to shout fraud and give the order of general violence.

I call for no one to be manipulated, and those who engage in violent acts will face the law. All these captured personnel, people drugged with weapons, violent and delinquent people, everything will be judged according to Venezuelan law and the full and absolute weight of the law will be applied.

The Nazis chasing the socialists are symbols, right? They have also tried to topple statues in homage to Commander President Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías, and they managed to topple the iconic one. They attacked and a group of them received orders to go and film the overthrow of the statue of Commander Chávez in Plaza Bolívar.

Chávez de La Guaira, Plaza Hermosa, built by General García Carneiro. What do the people of La Guaira think? Which of the images do we have? The one of La Guaira? 

I have given the order to the police, civil and military authorities of La Guaira. We will go to the people of La Guaira, and thousands of us will go to pay homage to Commander Chávez and vindicate him in the face of these fascists and criminals. This inexplicable aggression. Likewise in Mariana, the images coming from the State of Carabobo, also of these violent criminal groups that went to attack our Commander Chávez, the Commander President, the best President Venezuela has had in at least 150 years.

You can see fire there, can’t you? These people are prepared to govern Venezuela, these people are prepared to take the reins of Venezuela. If they come to have political power in Venezuela, what would they be able to do with the people? On the Friday before the elections, they were marking the house of street chiefs and community chiefs, marking the house and telling them Sunday night we are coming to kill you.

The world has to open its eyes to the whole planet. Social movements, leaders. The world’s ultra-right has staged a coup d’état against Venezuela. It intends to redo April 11, to redo the guarimbas of April 14 and 17. As the people say, every 11 has its 13, but now there will never be April 11 again. 

Here in the Plaza de Bolivar there is also a group already identified. They have already captured ten of that group, they are talking, they were very drugged, and some were armed. A passerby walked by and they shouted “he is a Chavista” and chased him. They beat him to a pulp. A group of other people arrived, and the Lord saved him. They are already giving him medical attention. I must meet him and see him now, later.

It reminded me a lot of how they burned people alive in 2017. I told you I have a clear conscience because I said it in San Cristobal, in Guanare, in Cumana, here in Caracas, in Maracaibo, in Cabimas. I told you, compatriots, do you want again the guarimba, the violence?

We are facing a criminal organization. The Colombian drug traffickers put in a lot of money with drugs to activate these criminal groups, and I call on the people to be alert —a thousand eyes, a thousand ears—and to act preventively in the face of these violent comanditas. 

In this video we are in the Lugo neighborhood, a neighbor of Ruperto Lugo. A boy was left with his car and the comanditas said he was a national policeman so stopped him and burned his car. What a sacrifice of a boy, a worker, to have a car. What contempt and hatred for the humble people, for the worker, for the policeman. We are going to see this image. This is criminal. I have sent for this boy to meet him and protect him and replace his car.

Do you see what they do to life? Do you? 

We are going to show as much as we can because I have an announcement to make right now. What I am waiting for are images of the shopping center, an image of the collection center is arriving, the CLAPs of food for the people, for you, for your family. They set fire to it. It is not new, they have already done it in the past, in a more difficult moment when there were shortages due to the economic war, they went straight to burn the collection centers so that there would be no CLAPs to take to the family. 

There is the force of the CLAP, there are the people of the militia, and there are the grassroots people. I am receiving another video, and we must show the attack on the recently inaugurated five-story vertical gymnasium on the main avenue of La Guaira that was left today. What it does is to attend to the Simon Bolivar Orchestra system, to the sportsmen, there is a dance center, there is a cultural center, five floors and the boys can go there to spend their afternoons and evenings training.

They have proceeded to burn mayors’ offices, to attack the public power. This is very typical, of what they call the revolution, of the colors designed by the gringos. They intend to bring to Venezuela street and highway blockades, burnings, and people drugged and armed.

The mayoress here was a working woman of the people and besides, this is a public building that serves the people here. Attention people, please come out to defend your right to peace. Let’s see, there it is then, the fascist in its criminal action. The mayor’s office burned yesterday.

This calls for a redoubled action. Venezuela woke up in peace. We had peace before, during the electoral process. Last night began like a movie. There were more than 15 cameras of international media, broadcasting live from the Andres Bello High School, because they were planning to assault and watch live the assault of an emblematic electoral center in the city of Caracas.

That could not be dispelled, but it was broadcast even by channels such as Bloomberg, which is an economic news channel. Mr. Bloomberg, a multimillionaire Democrat from the Democratic Party in the United States, wanted to be a presidential candidate last time, but Biden beat him and they never broadcast anything live.

We have seen this movie, I denounce it before the world and before all the people of Venezuela and call for the most powerful reaction of repudiation to these criminal acts carried out by criminals of the comandita. There will be justice. There will be action. There has been aggression against officers of the Bolivarian National Armed Forces, officers, and professional personnel of the Bolivarian National Police.

Gunshot wounded personnel. A National Police woman was surrounded by bullets, wounded and beaten, and was rescued by in Caricuao. She is out of danger. She is being operated to remove the bullet that a group of delinquents put in her. Lieutenant Colonel Fredy Perez Almenar, commander of 131 Falcon, was also wounded with bullets and blunt objects.

Major Salas, second commander of the South in Aragua, was wounded by gunfire, and first sergeant, Torrente Blanca Wilfredo, was wounded by a gunshot in the neck. The commissioner of the Bolivarian National Police, José Luis Contreras, was wounded by a gunshot to the groin. And so on. We were discussing a set of guidelines to put an end to this.

I say that more or less 10% of what they did in the past has diminished their capacity for action, but they do damage. I say to the people of Venezuela: have nerves of steel, calm, sanity, and maximum civic-military-police mobilization to defend peace in the streets — 269,000 streets of the country —more tranquility and work, 47,000 communities, more work, more tranquility.

And to all the teams in the streets, communities, VT, the social force of the CLAP, the Bolivarian National Militia, the Popular Force to defend peace, and all our people: we call on you to declare ourselves in permanent action and vigil to put an end to this insurrectional attempt of violence and coup d’état.

Since last night we have been following up by induction, including everything that had to do with the elections. The announcement of the scrutiny by the electoral body, the only one authorized to make elections in Venezuela. With tranquility, suddenly came the order to attack in some places in Venezuela extremely strange people, people who are not even from the area where the acts of violence started.

And what we say to Venezuela and the world is that this was the real plan of the opposition. In truth, the electoral issue is not their forte. They wanted violence from the very first moment. That is why we see these expressions of hatred, we see these expressions of fascism that go to attack human beings, just because they are walking down the street.

We have already seen this movie, and [we need] maximum popular mobilization, maximum popular mobilization to defend peace. I told you. The time has come to defend peace in the streets, street by street, and the absolute support in union and fusion of the military forces, the Bolivarian National Armed Forces and the police forces of the country. What country will not be damaged anymore?

We are in the second semester, a decisive semester for all those who invested in merchandise, in an economic activity, to have its fruit. We are not going to allow them to damage the country’s economy again, to do social damage and even more to do physical damage. There we have, for example, the mayor of the municipality of Obispo in Barinas, he was with his son in his car and they tried to kill him.

This reminds me a lot of the scenes of the coup d’état in Bolivia when they grabbed a female mayor, remember? And they covered her with paint and humiliated her. And later when they captured those who did that, the coup d’état was reversed, then those who did it cried, cried. We are going to see it in all this. Justice has to act in the same way. We have an image of the police module that serves the community of California del Este de Caracas.

There is the police module. They assaulted it and then set it on fire. And what does that module of officers do there 24 hours a day? Protecting the community, supporting, assisting, and serving the community. We are going to see it and they are financing this. They want to be the one that moves Venezuela by publishing all these images because they are financing this, they want to put their hand on our homeland, but let me tell you that we are millions and one voice and we are going to defend Venezuela, our right to peace, to tranquility and we are going to beat them again, we are going to beat them again.

And our triumph that we are talking about, the triumph of peace, stability, dialogue, understanding, we are of one face and we put our face in the street together with the people. That is why we also have the burning in urban Cali. I am not saying that the people who are going to govern Venezuela do want to reach political power. If they want to sit on this chair to unleash a civil war, a bloodbath, to unleash a hunt against any citizen who walks here or there, to disregard the mayor’s office, the mayor, to disregard institutions.

There is a Constitution here. You have already tried several times to violate it, to impose violence, and several times we have won. Who is behind this? Capriles answers. Who is behind this? Ramos Allup answers. Who is behind this? It is the devil, the demoness who wants to dress up as Santa, the demoness who wants to put on the veil of a saint.

Who wants to be behind this? The monk is having a party with the destruction, with the violence, with the guarimba, with the physical burning in the world. The world is astonished, as all the ultra-right is on the offensive, as I was telling Celso Morin, my friend, former chancellor of Brazil, advisor to President Lula. All the so-called syndicate of the world’s ultra-right wing of fascism sees Venezuela as the jewel in the crown to put their hand on it.

And behind it imperialism. There has always been imperialism, always, always with its false diplomacy of deceit. Every time they come with a smile but underneath what they bring is the dagger or a bomb.