we have been here before
WANTED : a right-wing traitor to do the evil empire's bidding
Washington helped to engineer what would today be classified as a regime change operation in 1908, installing Castro’s vice president and former comrade-in-arms, Juan Vicente Gómez, in the presidential palace while Castro was seeking medical treatment in Europe.
Gómez, who immediately invited Washington to send gunboats to “stabilize” the situation, would rule the country as a dictator until his death in 1935. He likewise invited Matos, the wealthy banker who led the so-called “Liberating Revolution” backed by foreign capital, back to Venezuela to take charge of its foreign relations.
The Gómez dictatorship was known for its brutal repression, which included shutting down Venezuela’s universities for a decade in retaliation against student protests, and the systematic use of murder, disappearances and torture methods borrowed from the Spanish Inquisition to quell all political opposition.
Political opponents were imprisoned without trial and, in many cases, slowly starved to death in the infamous La Rotunda prison of Caracas. Thousands of them were worked to death on chain gangs used to construct highways and lay railway tracks. Tens of thousands more fled into exile.
Nicknamed “The Catfish,” Gómez became infamous internationally.
Time magazine compared his repression to that of Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin: “The secret police of Germany, Russia and Italy are notable organizations. They fade into insignificance before those of Dictator Gómez.”
In his 1941 work “Inside Latin America,” American author and journalist John Gunther provided a chilling portrait of the Venezuelan dictator: “The Catfish was—let us not gloss over the fact—a murderous blackguard. He made use of tortures of inconceivable brutality; political prisoners, of which there were thousands, dragged out their lives bearing leg irons (
grillos) that made them permanent cripples, if they were not hung upside down—by the testicles—until they died. Others became human slime, literally. Gómez was quite capable of choosing one out of every ten by lot, and hanging them—
by meathooks through their throats!” (Emphasis in the original.)
Gómez’s savage repression, along with his vehement anti-communism and hatred of trade unions, went down well with Washington and the US oil companies, which were to emerge as the dominant force in Venezuela following the drilling of the first well in 1912 in the Maracaibo Basin. Within little more than a decade, Venezuela would emerge as the world’s largest oil exporter and second largest producer, trailing only the US.
Washington’s aims encompass far more than Venezuela, amounting to a drive for the recolonization of Latin America and the subordination of the region to US profit interests and preparation for world war.
www.wsws.org
watch it happen
comrade stalin
moscow
