News of the Restless

Do you take this man seriously when it comes to matters of leadership in Latin America? If you do, I feel sorry for you. Because Jean-Guy Allard has done some digging, and what he finds is…well, amusing:

El Diario las Américas, of Miami, a moribund paper rescued not long ago by fugitive Venezuelan banker Nelson Mezerhane, dedicated an article to Juan José Rendón, whom it called “the brains behind Hernández’s victory” — the right-wing Honduran candidate whose recent triumph remains the subject of controversy.

The periodical, traditionally linked to the CIA and the Cuban-American mafia, broke records for adulation in describing this son of a Venezuelan military officer, who does not recognize his defeat by Chavistas at the side of Henrique Capriles Radonski, as he does not plan to recognize his failure in El Salvador as star propagandist of Norman Quijano, the candidate for ARENA, the party of fascist major Roberto D’Aubuisson.

The paper described Rendón as a “psychologist, communicator and publicist, with several post-graduate degrees in Ontopsychology and Organizational Development, specializing in psychology and mass communication, strategic planning, and leadership in advertising and marketing”, who has “four honorary doctorates from various Latin American universities and recently received the flag of the United States, which was hoisted in his honor by the Congress of that land.”

What a joke: “Ontopsychology” does not exist! “It was invented to get the attention of clients,” commented a reader on a recent article on the Colombian website, La Silla Vacía (The Empty Chair). In fact, it is a woo-woo concept which serves to manipulate charlatans.

And that “ontopsychology”, Rendón claims to have learned courtesy of some scholarships in Italy.

Regarding the “four honorary doctorates”, it is not specified in which institutions he received such distinguished recognitions for his talents.

Notwithstanding the untruth of these assertions, the Miami paper continues to speak of the “thousands of campaigns” [sic] directed by “JJ” throughout his “27 years of professional career” and his “25 successfully won campaigns”. When he lost three against Chavistas.

The paper belonging to the swindler Nelson Mezerhane continues: “JJ Rendón is a disciple of the recognized scientist, Antonio Meneghetti, and of Joseph Napolitan, the father of political consultation. They categorize him as a guru in political strategy in Latin America, one of the three best in the world.”

Again, what a joke: Antonio Meneghetti is no less than the Italian who claims to have created…”ontopsychology”! And regarding Joseph Napolitan, who recently died aged 84, he is the prototype of the publicists who sell a politician as if he were a refrigerator or a toothpaste. And who got paid according to the naïveté of his clients. Rendón claims to have been his driver in Caracas. Using his car and without payment.

As if that were not enough, “Jota-Jota” also claims to have studied “Rumorology, Memetics, Cinetic Proxemics, and Leaderism”, half-invented disciplines which marvellously complete the curriculum of a fraudster.

It is said (or he himself claims) that in 1988, at the age of just 24 (he was born in 1964), the very precocious Rendón, with his cardboard references, worked as a publicist in the campaign of the now-deceased Carlos Andrés Pérez, yes, none other than CAP. It was during his second term as president of Venezuela that CAP ordered the army to shoot to kill during a popular revolt. The massacre left as many as 5000 dead or missing.

With his self-proclaimed immense talent, “Jota-Jota” was advisor to a very silly collection of politicians of the Latin American right, generally during critical elections, which they remunerated as if his back were against the wall.

So numerous were the campaigns that he asserts — with a straight face — that he directed, and of whose victories he is the father, that the “genius” Rendón receives a mark of 100% in the category of individuals whom the North Americans call “bullshitters”.

In Miami, Rendón lives alone, just like Capriles in Caracas, “listening to news 24 hours a day”, and at the same time calling himself a Zen Buddhist. He has been photographed dressed as a samurai, and collects swords belonging to those bloody medieval Japanese warriors.

Fascism is the shield of capitalism. The repressive government is the most elevated form of authentic capitalism, the dream of the oligarchs and, therefore, of monopolist corporations.

J.J. Rendón is the somewhat silly expression of bourgeois thought, for which honesty, truth, respect and solidarity are pesky values that get in the way of the full development of the human being. By publishing this dithyrambic ode to a shampoo salesman turned “brilliant strategist”, the paper belonging to Mezerhane — wanted in Venezuela in relation to the cowardly assassination of prosecutor Danilo Anderson — only confirms this statement.

Translation mine.

So we can see that our ol’ pal Jota-Jota is not only a joke, he’s a joke in the pay of a criminal fugitive, Nelson “El Turquito” Mezerhane, who is not only a fraudster himself, but also wanted (along with several other notable right-wing Venezuelan media figures, including reviled “columnist” Patricia Poleo) in the infamous car-bombing murder of Danilo Anderson, the Venezuelan prosecutor who was investigating the coup of 2002 at the time of his death.

And not only that, but Jota-Jota’s old boss, Carlos Andrés “CAP” Pérez, whose body recently gathered frost in a Miami mortuary while his estranged wife and mistress fought over where he should be buried, is responsible for anywhere between hundreds and thousands of deaths during the Caracazo of 1989. Chavecito and his army buddies never forgave CAP for ordering the soldiers to turn their guns on their own people, which is why in 1992, they launched a failed military uprising against him. They very nearly managed to kill him, and it was only last-moment fear that prevented the soldier who had CAP in his sights from shooting the old bastard. How many Venezuelans still wish, to this day, that their national nightmare had ended in that pre-dawn revolt? As it was, CAP was indicted for embezzlement and removed from office the following year…and the year after that, Chavecito emerged from jail, a national hero, to embark on a political career that ended just over a year ago with his untimely death.

Clearly Jota-Jota has no respect for the honorable dead, since he recently circulated a false tape of an actor purported to be Chavecito, claiming to have been kidnapped and still alive somewhere. Chavecito’s own family categorically deny that there is any truth to it, but the rumor still made its way through the right-wing media, just as Nicolás Maduro had been sworn in as president following his successful election. That’s the level of the dirty tricks that Jota-Jota does.

Plus, of course, there’s the international capture order out for him; he’s charged with the rape of a Venezuelan woman in Panama. Jota-Jota had the temerity to sue the president of El Salvador for $100 million just for reading out the capture order on TV, and claimed it didn’t exist. As my blog entry from a few days ago shows, the document does indeed exist, and is signed by the Venezuelan prosecutor who called for his arrest. So Jota-Jota is a fraudster even when defending himself.

And while Jota-Jota may like playing Zen Buddhist samurai and collecting medieval Japanese kitsch, the truth is that he acts more like a distinctly modern, and far less honorable, Japanese “warrior”…namely, of the mafia known locally as the Yakuza. If the Yakuza were to hire a clown as their publicist, that is.