And if this had happened in Venezuela? By Atilio A. Boron

Blog Atilio Boron

Last weekend news agencies informed the attack suffered Sunday February 23 on Aída Avella, the presidential candidate of the Unión Patriótica for the next elections to be held in Colombia on May 25. Avella was accompanied by the candidate to senator of that political force, Carlos Lozano, while driving in a caravan through the Department of Arauca, bordering with Venezuela. Suddenly her car was attacked by two hired assassins from a powerful motorcycle firing high caliber weapons while Avella and Lozana as well as the guards traveled in the armored car.


Fortunately there were no fatal victims; if the killers had achieved their objectives Avella would have been the third presidential candidate of Unión Patriótica to be killed and one more, probably with Lozano included in the list of about 5 000 militants of the UP killed by the right wing Colombian forces in government and outside of it.

The UP arose through a negotiation between the FARC and the government of President Belisario Betancur in the early 80s. The agreement was made in 1984 admitting the incorporation to the Colombian institutional scene of a party force that allowed the progressive incorporation of the guerrilla to the political legality of the country.

That is how the UP was formed presenting candidates in all posts in play. But this initiative opened the doors to hell and both the paramilitaries as drug traffickers and even security forces of the Colombian state took advantage of the appearance of cadres and left wing militants –be they or not guerrilla fighters – to perpetrate an unprecedented political genocide eliminating all those who had trusted the agreement with Betancour and believed in rights and will to end the armed conflict that had finally settled in Colombia. As a result of this blood bath two presidential candidates presented by the UP in 1986 - Jaime Pardo Leal y Bernardo Jaramillo Ossa – were killed and joined the list of 8 congress members, 13 deputies, 70 council members, 11 mayors in addition to the thousands of militants disappeared or killed in this bloody operation. This tragic history is not too well known but constitutes the undercurrent situation of the difficult negotiations held in Havana between the Colombian government and FARC whose members and followers ask, in the light of these cruel lessons of historical truth, if the situation today is different.

But the objectives of these lines is not to describe this horrific chapter of Colombian history but to emphasize the infamous manipulation of the right wing press – in Argentina as in the rest of the world – that silenced the attack on Avella while headlines covered eight columns of lies and trick photographs of the incidents and deaths unleashed by the tentative coup in Venezuela. I invite readers not only to think how an alleged “free and independent” press that manipulates and misinforms if the attack had been against Henrique Capriles in Venezuela.

The screams of SIP, of CNN, of NTN24 and all radio and television chains as well as written press would have been thunderous. And the Vargas Llosa, Montaner, Krauze and company would have overwhelmed us with their diatribe of condemnation of a “Chavist tyranny” and criminal hounding of its opposition. But nothing happened because Colombia has a media and political armor from the empire and its regional buddies. The news, in limited cases where it was printed was limited to a small note in internal pages in some dailies or a brief radio or television flash. Of course, Colombia is a vital piece for the imperial chess game in the region: for a reason its Minister of Defense, Juan Carlos Pinzón, prepared a detailed 55 page document directed at his counterparts in the Pentagon and White House, including the director of the CIA, John Brennan with whom they will meet this Friday. Written in perfect English to help the work of the hosts was an error given to the press by an official of the ministry. It allowed proving, among other things, that Bogota ratifies its total submission to the strategic demands of the United States and the need to strengthen cooperation between both countries taking into account the serious “potential threats” that for the region represents governments such as Nicaragua, Venezuela, Russia and Iran. That is why an attack like the one perpetrated on Avella is not news while the outrageous actions of the Venezuelan opposition is a noble crusade of some patriots wishing to put an end to the contemptible tyranny. To achieve this supreme objective it throws off any limit or moral scruple. As unbelievable as possible the Nobel Peace Prize occupying the White House goes so far as to demand that President Maduro set free the seditious elements: in other words no to demonstrations that protest peacefully but by those who want violence conspiring to overthrow an legitimate elected government (if this were done in the United States they would spend the rest of their lives in a prison of maximum security!) while it unjustly jails the Cuban anti terrorists and the prisoners in Guantánamo jailed like ferocious animals deprived of their most elemental rights of defense and a fair trial. About all this the “free and independent” press has said not one single word.