Posted on 12/06/2004 6:03:42 PM PST by marron
Miami.- The ties between the president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, and the extremist Tupamaros goes back to 1980 when the president was still an army officer, according to Alberto Carías, the "ideological leader" of this organization [as published in the "The Miami Herald"]
Carías – who admitted that his organization took the name of the Uruguayan guerrilla group that operated in the seventies, told the newspaper that he and his men fought in the coup d’etat of February 4, 1992 by Chavez against the democratic government of president Carlos Andrés Pérez.
The "Herald" published today an extensive interview with Carías about the fears that have risen among those opposed to Chávez for his recent appointment as subdirector of security for Caracas…
The new mayor... Juan Barreto, named him to the post, with the mission to restructure the Metropolitan Police, controlled until October 31 by opposition mayor Alfredo Peña. The newspaper said that his appointment to many meant putting the wolf in charge of the sheep.
Carías was a member of the extremist Red Flag, an urban guerrilla group dismantled in the early seventies. He was arrested in 1978 for a terrorist attack on a church and for suspicion of having killed a policeman.
The "Herald" recalled also that Carías was an advisor to the Salvadorian guerrillas in the eighties and that he is now the leader of the Tupamaros, an organization that does not hide its ties to the Colombian guerrillas and which presents itself as Chávez’s armed right hand.
“We are a guerrilla force. We have taken off our masks, but we have not hung up our weapons", said Carías, considered the “ideological leader" of the group.
President Chávez has denied having ties to the Tupamaros and publicly has asked them to leave the defense of his government to the armed forces.
"Our weapons are to protect the constitution and a president who has been ratified three times by the people, to defend the people, and especially the dispossessed", said Carías.
Barreto considers the group as "a legally constituted party" and has given Carías the job of reorganizing the Metropolitan Police and "putting it in the service of the people”.
The presence of the Tupamaros, "guerrillas in the shadows", as Carías describes them, has awakened suspicion for having violent members, associated with other similar groups, such as the Carapaicas, "as well as a rural pro-Chavez guerrilla group known as the Bolivarian Liberation Forces", said the "Herald".
Carías also told the newspaper that the group had "a fluid communication" with foreign guerrillas such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). "But I can’t say anything more about that", he said.
It just gets better every day. That, combined with today's new "content law", that allows Chavez to shut down any newspaper that takes sides against him, just for the cherry and whipped cream topping.
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