One of the surprises of the madurista offensive against part of their own mafias has been the adoption of the orange pants, handcuffs and shackles as a sambenito. The line of former Madurista officials looked like a Dutch sports team as they got off the bus that took them to court.
Most of my compatriots express an apathetic and almost amused Creole sneer at the madurista gesticulations and their orange justice farce. This, it seems to me, is a symptom of a much deeper and more insidious evil: the general acquiescence in the face of all-encompassing power. The reverse of this moral feeling is despair of justice, something, by the way, long before the Chavista era. Nothing, however, as suggestive as the string of defendants and their orange overalls.
The clumsy televised parody of a public ministry adhering to the laws that acts in observance of the safety of citizens, delivers the essentials of the failure of the republic.
Brutally uncouth as the presentation of the cast of defendants before the court has been, she nevertheless invites us to examine once again the Bolivarian emblems, their liturgies and their possible relationship with the archetypal psychology of the regime.
I cannot remember the precise moment of this first quarter of a socialist century in which the addresses from the Miraflores Palace decided to replicate that Yankee shield that shows something like a hyper-realistic view of the White House.
Not content with the gigantography of Bolívar bembón, that historical falsification that presides over the Ayacucho or Junín or Boyacá Hall, the Bolivarian revolution attached to Maduro’s lectern a sketch of the Venezuelan government headquarters and a sign that reads “Palacio de Miraflores”. This does not even allow us to insinuate that the little sign evokes that of the gringos because the truth is that it is shamelessly copied. Why did they do it?
It is possible, I tell myself, that they have taken seriously the “empty meaning” of Ernesto Laclau, the Buenos Aires Goebbels of the neopopulisms of our America. If I have understood Laclau’s neo-jargon, there comes a moment in the life of our peoples when the empty meaning is filled with something substantial. The good new revolutionaries call this “resignification.”
Let’s see how Maduro redefines the sign of The White House! More lavish in interpretations is the orange panties of the former teammates. It must be disconcerting for the anti-imperialist left in the region to see the fight against corruption turn orange like in an episode of Orange is the new black.
It is understood, however, and by putting yourself in the shoes of Dr. Jorge Rodríguez, that in the absence of any justice, it is well to imitate its universal uses, at least those that spread the cinema and platform series.
Precisely for this reason, I find it more disconcerting that the head of a mafia of 44 Chavista deputy ministers and general managers whom the government accuses of diverting 21 billion petrodollars, has not been arrested. Far from it: his current whereabouts are a mystery.
Tareck El Aissami, the former oil minister, has vanished into the “thin air”, just like the witches of the moor in Macbeth. Perhaps he is incommunicado and under interrogation in one of the regime’s Lubyankas. However, and judging by the luck that usually befalls Venezuela’s oil super-ministers, El Aissami could just as well be at this very moment in Bimini, buying himself a Panama hat, like Dr. Hannibal Lecter, to go for a walk around the boulevard before dinner in an open-ended scene.
The truth is that no one has seen El Aissami since he resigned from office. Until now, no human rights activist has had the idea of demanding that Jorge Rodríguez give public assurances about the former minister’s life.
Nor has any pre-candidate from the so-called democratic opposition done so. Although it is clearly in the interest of his theoreticians to know the truth behind this colossal embezzlement, all the more criminal since Venezuela is starving.
The harsh raid against El Aissami’s men has apparently also had its effect on the minds of opposition politicians. Apparently, the dictatorship has also silenced them around the most gigantic looting of the assets of the Venezuelan nation that we have news of. But to talk about it on the eve of primary elections would only be unnecessarily complicating things.
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