I
It happened on February 23rd. The script prepared around the supposed humanitarian aid by the warrior architects of the United States was fulfilled. The mega psychological operation was carried out to further seek consensus on the urgent need for military intervention against Venezuela and the outbreak of war on Venezuelan territory. The stage mounted on the Tachirense border with Colombia was primarily this: a large military propaganda operation.
Everyone played their part: Guaidó, Piñera, Duque, Almagro, the mercenaries, the media, the influencers. But the plan lacked, once again, a key actor: the Bolivarian people who expressed themselves mutitudinally on Urdaneta Avenue in Caracas in support of President Maduro and in rejection of U.S. intervention. Those images alone deflate any discourse that attempts to show the full support of the Venezuelan people for military intervention.
II
The facts were as follows:
A couple of GNB officials deserted, crossed the border and were welcomed as heroes by those on the Colombian side.
A situation of violent force was exerted against the Venezuelan border by civilians from the Colombian side to force a confrontation with the GBN that protected Venezuela’s territorial sovereignty there. It was the same format of guarimba applied many times in Venezuelan territory: first, images of “peaceful demonstrators” were disseminated, and then, images of the confrontation and the wounded people. This was done without a break in continuity, without showing the beginning of violence by the guarimberos, so that the account could be fabricated that GNB attacked peaceful demonstrators.
Situations of violence in the streets of Ureña and San Antonio were constructed with the same format of guarimba.
The boxes of supposed humanitarian aid were set on fire and GNB and President Maduro were held responsible for this incident.
With the “live” broadcast of these events, the propaganda operation began. The images and videos were generated with one objective: to produce on social networks a story, as outrageous as possible, starring an extremely evil and cruel president who orders to the destruction of humanitarian aid and a massacre of a defenseless and peaceful people.
That was the first phase. The second phase was then activated, with the activation of the tag #IntervenciónMilitarYa and the dissemination of graphic material openly calling for a military intervention in Venezuela.
III
To construct the story of President Maduro as a cruel man who ordered the destruction of humanitarian aid, the images of the boxes of supposed humanitarian aid burning in fire were crucial. How they caught fire and what really happened there never mattered. The GNB and Maduro were automatically and overwhelmingly blamed for this. The social networks did the rest on their own.
In addition to the aerial view of the bridge with the payload on fire and the surrounding photographs, the footage of a chain of people (including Colombian police) taking out the boxes of the supposed humanitarian aid from the payload to save them from the fire was shown. Finally, the image of the alleged humanitarian aid burned on the platform of the burning gandola.
After the activation of the #MilitaryIntervention tag, several graphic images were circulated. In some of them you can see the pictures of the boxes of supposed humanitarian aid burnt or burning in fire, with a text about them: ” Maduro Criminal. Intervention now! In another, President Maduro is seen dancing, dressed in the Venezuelan flag jacket, silhouetted on a photo of the boxes of supposedly calcined humanitarian aid, fire and smoke, with the following text written on the image: “Today Maduro murdered 40,000 Venezuelans with all the humanitarian aid he ordered to be burned. In another, one sees the image of Maduro handcuffed, with a crying face, pushed from behind by a marine pointing a gun at his head.
In addition, two other elements, one graphic and one video, were used to raise awareness about the campaign slogan. One was the image of two intertwined hands, one painted as a gringa flag and the other painted as a Venezuelan flag, along with the text “I support humanitarian and military intervention now”; the other was a video in which the text “Military Intervention Now” was written on snow, as if it had been done by a human finger, accompanied by a message that people in the U.S. were in solidarity with Venezuela.
IV
The version of Maduro as a murderous president was fabricated, from the provocateur actions, using the two stories previously developed in the installations: the repression through official security forces and the use of supposed paramilitary groups financed and armed by the government.
The first was constructed with images of the clashes between GNB and violent groups, both on the border and in the towns of Ureña and San Antonio, isolating and decontextualizing photos and videos of wounded people and photos of GNB officials firing pellet weapons. Previously, they had positioned the peaceful nature of those who demanded the entry of supposed humanitarian aid, primarily with the diffusion of two images: that of an elderly lady on her knees and with her arms outstretched in a sign of supplication, with a GNB picket line in the background, and that of a young man dressed with the Venezuelan flag as a cape, with open arms, speaking less than two meters away from a GNB public security control picket line. As on previous occasions, these images were followed by images of violence already in development. To this was added, as a legitimizing element, the video of a supposed GNB official denouncing the activation of ” armed collectives ” by orders of Maduro and that the order given was to massacre the people.
The second was made up of confusing and imprecise photos and videos of civil confrontations in the streets of San Antonio and Ureña, accompanied by verbal accounts in which the reading of the images is conditioned, affirming, without anything in them to prove it, that they are Chavista armed groups. In addition, isolated and decontextualized photos were disseminated of men dressed in black and hooded, carrying on their left arm a bracelet with the Venezuelan tricolor flag, aggressively displaying firearms in broad daylight in the street.
V
Juan Guaidó marked the discursive line for the activation of the slogan #Intervención MilitarYa with a tweet in which he informed the international community of his decision to keep all options open against the Venezuelan government, using the same expression used by Donald Trump to militarily threaten Venezuela. In addition, other twitts of influencers defined the discursive line. Three examples suffice.
One, by Miguel Bosé: “Maduro, you bastard, we knew that you are an incompetent, ignorant, phony, dictator, puppet, corrupt, narco, coward, criminal, but now we know that you are the criminal killer of the Venezuelan people. May God curse you and strike you down. And soon!
Another, by Natalia Bedoya, a well-known tweeter at the service of Álvaro Uribe and Iván Duque: “Those who criticize the intervention in Venezuela that they propose? That Venezuelans continue dying of hunger or that they continue asking Maduro not to murder the demonstrators?
And another, from a minor tweeter: “The Butcher’s Dance. Unlimited cynicism. Maduro dances with Cilia while denying humanitarian aid and killing the people. Can this man be rational? There was no tyrant in the world who dances over the dead as Nicolas Maduro does.
VI
The propaganda operation developed other elements, mainly aimed at moralizing the opposition social base, demoralizing the Chavista social base, beginning to install in the imagination of the opposition social base the images of what would be the victorious moment.
In this line of the story is the following:
The image of Juan Guaidó clinging to the door of a truck supposedly loaded with “humanitarian aid,” surrounded by people who cheer and applaud him.
Videos of GNB officials defecting, crossing the border and being received as heroes by those on the other side.
Images of Colombian police heroically arriving to protect the defenseless demonstrators that supposedly were attacked by the GNB.
In this regard, special mention should be made of the video of a GNB tank and a truck transporting soldiers, advancing along a street in Táchira surrounded by people marching and singing the national anthem. There the story of what would be the moment when the FANB breaks, disobeys President Maduro and stands on the side of the people fighting for freedom and democracy was visually constructed. Such a thing has not however been achieved, but its visual construction as war propaganda content has.
Finally, in this discursive line, a tweet is added that said the following: “Military intervention would attack the strategic sites,” accompanied by a video in which bombs are seen falling in super specific points without doing any other damage than the precise destruction of a target. The video is from military tests. That was also developed in the previous campaign as part of the contents to promote the social acceptance of war.
VII
We must insist on pointing out that everything that was constructed symbolically and discursively was achieved thanks to the execution of operations that can only be described as mercenary military. The violence in the streets of San Antonio and Ureña, the supposed Chavista paramilitaries hooded and exhibiting firearms in the street and in the light of day, the violence in the border bridges, the burning of the boxes of supposed humanitarian aid, the human costs, the desertions of GNB officials. Everything was planned and executed as a military operation to generate the materials used for propaganda purposes.
Yesterday, the idea was to make popular support for the military intervention visible throughout the country, in a public way, with people on the street, with protests and/or violence. That goal was not achieved.
Facing the war scenario under construction, propaganda continues to advance in the preparation of a portion of the Venezuelan population that is in favour of a war in Venezuela, and to continue reinforcing internationally the matrix of opinion on the need for military intervention in Venezuela.
It is clear that the architects of the plan have not achieved the consensus they seek, either within Venezuela or in the “international community”. But the propaganda operation was carried out and its impact will continue to be developed with a view to other scenarios to come.
Translation by Internationalist 360°
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