More incriminating video from the Venezuelan coup

VTV journalist Ernesto Villegas shows a video clip taken by a Peruvian reporter team during the firefights of April 11, 2002 in Caracas. In it, in the background, you can see a Metropolitan Caracas police officer taking off a red beret (falsely identifying him as a Chavista) and swapping it for the white helmets worn by the cops.

Recall that the force was, at that time, under control of an anti-Chávez mayor, Alfredo Peña. Recall, also, that the media was full of stories about how “Chávez ordered the Bolivarian Circles to fire on unarmed opposition marchers”! Recall, too, that the media–Venevisión particularly–falsified the events of that day in a big way, showing a group of men firing from Llaguno Bridge. They were, in fact, defending themselves and their fellow Bolivarians on the bridge–against the Metropolitan Police, who were shooting at them from on top of a riot truck below. The opposition march never got within five city blocks of the bridge, and the shooters’ handguns only had a range of three, if that. The only thing within that range was, you guessed it, the cops. Who, as the accused men later steadfastly insisted, were not acting as authorities of law and order, but as shock troops for the coup which was underway at the time. They were shooting at unarmed Bolivarian demonstrators, gathered on the bridge, which was just a short distance down Urdaneta Avenue from two government buildings: Miraflores, and the White Palace. The objective of the police and their allies, the rooftop snipers, was clear–to kill and terrorize, and thus clear the road so the oppo marchers could storm the palace.

And, as we can now see from the video above, there was an additional motive: to frame the innocent Chavistas and present them as the guilty party of that day. Looks like that frame is finally falling apart.

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2 Responses to More incriminating video from the Venezuelan coup

  1. Utpal says:

    If Obama and Chavez seriously start negotiating about a future of normalization of relations, the latter should insist on releasing all the relevant US documents about the coup, especially the communications of Shapiro. That should help clarify matters a lot about what was happening …

  2. Utpal says:

    More from Canal Sur, if you haven’t seen this already:
    http://www.radiomundial.com.ve/yvke/noticia.php?22996

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