Montaner in Venezuela. "In honor of Carlos Alberto Montaner"
By: Luis Beltran Guerra G. - 26/05/2023
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Mariana del Carmen González, a Venezuelan living in Madrid, is invited by a group of compatriots to a tapas restaurant on Gran Vía, having heard that she knows for sure the past and future of the country. Some, the majority, convinced that the regime will continue, which undoubtedly hits the soul and wrinkles other things, since living in exile is not easy!
A few minutes after the first sip of a 2013 Sentis Negres red, the Venezuelan gives each of the 23 fellow citizens present 2 and a half pages, letter size, warning them that this would be her dissertation, which she has titled “Montaner en Venezuela”. . Within a few minutes she has emptied the glass twice, already noticing the effects on her face when one raises her elbow.
I have met Carlos Alberto Montaner twice, adds the speaker, the first through his fantastic works and the second at the presentation of the book by my good friend Luis Beltrán Guerra G, Juan Rivas, El Repitiente, at the Interamerican Institute for Democracy , created and directed by the highly admired Carlos Sánchez Berzain, who has all the merits to share political responsibilities in Bolivia, his homeland.
Montaner has just published his memoirs, entitled "Without going any further", which we read, finding in each paragraph experiences of the democratic Cuba of Carlos Prío Socarrás, of the years of Fulgencio Batista and the first years of the reign of Fidel and Raúl Castro, but also of the current ones. Perhaps, Montaner did not forewarn that writing about Cuba he included Venezuela, a country for which, as I have been able to appreciate in his conversations and now in "Without going any further", he expresses deep gratitude for the providence of the government of Rómulo Betancourt, in the face of the communist dictatorship's persecution of Cubans who had taken refuge in the Honduran embassy, to assume diplomatic protection until obtaining safe-conduct for their first exile. Among them, Carlos Alberto.
Given the concern of those present, Mariana takes another sip of the Sentis Negres, for which she is convinced of the intelligence of the Venezuelans, she is sure that they would understand her position, based, as she warns, on the deductive methodology that leads her to the world of the coincidences, way to be convinced that there are very few differences between the Cuba and the Venezuela of the past and present:
1. In Cuba there was a conspiracy against Batista and in Venezuela in relation to Marcos Pérez Jiménez,
2. Fulgencio escapes one morning, the same with regard to Marcos,
3. Under the rectory of Batista, Andrés Rivero Agüero is elected President, qualified as fraudulent, similarly, the election process of Nicolas Maduro is named,
4. The US had proposed a civic-military junta, which Batista did not accept, in Caracas the junta was constituted,
5. Among the circumstances for the escape of Fulgencio, as in that of Marcos, the conspiracies within the Armed Forces are noted,
6. Batista rightly imagined that, having been overthrown by a military coup, he would be dragged off by the mobs or shot by the rebels of the Sierra Maestra, and as far as Venezuela was concerned, there were no mountains, but an outraged people, a circumstance that led to to Llovera Paéz, "rough corduroy" from Pérez Jiménez to tell him "Marcos, let's go, what a neck does not sprout",
7. Young Venezuelans, not to mention an entire generation, of the most prepared, tried to emulate Fidel Castro, converting some mountains, for example, El Bachiller hill, into the Sierra Maestra,
8. The Cuban "revolutionary offensive" is copied by Hugo Chávez, decades later, because for the fate of Venezuela the fierce struggle in the first democratic five-year period, presided over by Betancourt and which will continue in the successive period of Raúl Leoni, broke all the virulent initiatives of Castrocommunism at that time and of which as a corollary is the message attributed to Don Rómulo "Tell Fidel Castro that when Venezuela has needed leaders, it has not imported them, it has given birth to them"
9. The fierce revolutionary ended the productive apparatus in Cuba, breaking it, as happened in Venezuela with the Bolivarian revolution,
10. The terrible adventures of the G-2 in Cuba, the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR) and the militias, for an important conglomerate of Venezuelans, operate freely in Venezuela,
11. In Caracas and other important cities, as in Cuba, there has been the conviction that the end of the communist regime has been and is near. In Cuba the same thing happened and is happening,
12. Venezuelans, convinced today, like Cubans, both yesterday and today, that the government is sustained by the support of Moscow,
13. The Cubans dreamed, as in Venezuela in recent months, of a US intervention, but Kennedy arrived at the White House determined not to lend his army or his air force to oust a USSR satellite from power, not However, installed a stone's throw from Florida,
14. One of the characteristics of all revolutions is to name things again, as if the past did not exist or contaminate the future, which has happened in Cuba and Venezuela and
15. The Cubans have gone like the Venezuelans to San Judas Tadeo to help put an end to the disaster, since both consider him "the saint of difficult causes."
I assume, says Mariana, that you are professionals, because that was my requirement when I agreed to lead the meeting, but I am surprised to see you lost, as if you did not understand the interpretation we have made regarding Montaner's remarks. I suppose you know the inductive method that postulates the formulation of laws based on the facts that are observed, but also the deductive method, according to which the conclusions are a necessary consequence of the premises, that is, when the first ones are true and deductive reasoning is correct the conclusion will necessarily be true.
Syllogisms are a perfect example of the deductive method:
Premise 1. Venezuelans are Caribbean.
Premise 2. María is Venezuelan. Conclusion: Maria is Caribbean. What I want to lead them to, says Mariana del Carmen, is to consider that Montaner's remarks are premises, precisely, for drawing conclusions regarding the situation in Venezuela. In short, what happened and is happening in Cuba has happened and is happening in our country. That is the premise to define the fight.
Mariana del Carmen, when asked by Cecilia Vicentini, regarding recommendations, advises not to rely on generalities, since it has always been more favorable to go for the specific. If, for example, you compare Montaner's assessments, you will undoubtedly consider them concrete, at least in what has happened and is happening in Venezuela. A good comparison could probably be with the latest statements by the United States envoy for Venezuela, Elliott Abrams:
1. The crisis in the South American country is difficult and dangerous,
2. The dictator cannot continue in power when elections are called. Professor Ageda de Rivas interrupted by saying that “neither the rounds of economic sanctions, nor an embargo on crude oil, have managed to bring down Maduro. On the contrary, they have rather affected the lives of Venezuelans, as the doctor of economics from Harvard, Francisco Rodríguez, affirms”. Mariana continues with Abrams' assessments:
3. The measures have a direct effect, because we make it impossible for those sanctioned to travel or carry out financial transactions
4. If the sanctioned person is used to coming to Miami, if he has an apartment or savings, something more frequent than it seems, that is over,
5. Russia has been crucial for Maduro to endure the sanctions,
6. We believe that the real figure is 25,000 Cubans and 3,000 who work in intelligence, even teaching torture and even preventing coups d'état,
7. Cubans are the central nervous system of the regime,
8. Russia is very important, since the psychological and political value for the regime, of having a large country behind it, gives Maduro confidence that he can stay in power,
9. The other important reason is Rosneft (of the Russian government), to which Venezuela owes a lot of money (US 8,000 million in 19). Ageda interrupts again asking about the road map, but Mariana chooses to continue, saying
10. The road map must propose a transitional national unity government, which will lead the country to new elections for the return to a democracy,
11. Finally, for Abraham, neither Washington nor the opposition leaders themselves have taken decisive steps regarding a military intervention, despite the fact that the option will continue to be on the table.
Twelve bottles of wine have been consumed, 6 from Remes and the rest from Bodegas Palacio Especial Reserva. Mariana, who has controlled consumption a bit, adds 2 more observations from Montaner:
1. One referring to the “dialoguero”, a pejorative adjective, to refer to the dialogues between Bernard Benes, a Cuban banker in exile in Miami, with Fidel Castro, regarding the partial opening of prisons and
2. The other refers to the expectation that arose as a result of the Spanish transition, to the death of Franco, possible for many Cubans, once the Soviets loosened the reins. It is up to you whether or not to include them in that world of similarities between Cuba and Venezuela, which the author of "Sin ir ir más faras" leaves us, but also of "Las raíces torcidas de América Latina (2001)".
The meeting ends in sorrow. Despair reigns. Someone says we will have Maduro until at least 2024, when, as he himself points out, there will be presidential elections.
Mariana del Carmen senses that she is hated.
We are sure that if we met Montaner again we would tell him "things in Venezuela and Cuba remain the same." And he would answer us “worse”.
Comments welcome.
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