Building the Commune by George Ciccariello-Maher

Author:George Ciccariello-Maher
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Verso Books

The turning point in public debates about the Quinta Crespo killings came when former vice president José Vicente Rangel weighed in on the subject. Rangel, who rose to prominence denouncing human rights abuses, torture, and massacre under the old regime, enjoys an unparalleled level of respect on the subject of state violence and can speak more openly than most. So when he published a blistering editorial in Venezuela’s most widely read newspaper entitled “Operation Massacre,” the impact was instantaneous.8 “Nothing is more dangerous for a society,” Rangel wrote, “than what occurs when the demons within police institutions—inspired by sordid conceptions of public order and state security—escape. That is, when governments lose control of them and they begin to engage in politics of their own.” The police, Rangel suggested, will inevitably step in to fill any vacuum left by the state, pointing to ten recent cases of extrajudicial killings carried out by police forces. “The way that CICPC commandos killed five Chavista militants” instead of detaining them “is unacceptable in a democracy.”

Only days after Rangel’s op-ed, Otro Beta organizers in Petare told me similar stories of extrajudicial killings by the police. They explained how former drug dealers and gang members from the barrio who had turned toward political organizing were nevertheless targeted by corrupt and violent police, citing several execution-style murders. One case, the killing of Manuel “Manolo” Mosquera in July 2014, stands out in particular. After many years of criminal activity, Mosquera had reinvented himself as a local activist, encouraging at-risk youth to follow a different path. Not long after Mosquera met with President Maduro, who praised his efforts at turning his life around, Mosquera was executed by the CICPC in what Otro Beta organizers compare to a Colombian-style “cleansing” operation.

There is an entire segment of the Venezuelan government, they explained, that sees mano dura, or hardline policing, as the only solution to violent crime, especially when the population demands that something, anything, be done. They explained how this approach, which they denounce as “fascist,” was best represented by Rodríguez Torres, then interior minister, whom Odreman had preemptively blamed for his own foretold death. But just as the Otro Beta organizers were explaining this to me, a radio program playing in the background announced that Maduro had just sacked Rodríguez Torres as a result of the political fallout of the Quinta Crespo massacre. This victory, however small, showed that Maduro—like Chávez before him—could be pushed to the left by popular power from below. However, later policing strategies, like the heavy-handed “Operation Free the People,” launched in 2015, show that the hardline approaches Rodríguez Torres had championed was not gone for good.

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