Venezuelan military for the people

Venezuela's “anti-imperialist and anti-oligarchic” armed forces are one with the people against foreign and internal aggression, the defence minister said on Monday.

General Vladimir Padrino addressed a gathering in Caracas to mark 12th years of the National Bolivarian Armed Forces Strategic Operations Command, founded by late president Hugo Chavez to increase coordination between the services.

Commanders and service people of the Army, Navy, Air Force, National Guard and Bolivarian Militia were joined by delegates to the Todos Somos Venezuela (we are all Venezuela) international solidarity conference.

Gen Padrino lauded the Civic-Military Union launched by Chavez following the short-lived April 2002 coup – which was defeated by a combination of civilian protests and an uprising from the middle and lower ranks of the armed forces.

“Chavez said we would change the concept of the armed forces to an integrated force for peace,” he said.

“It is not possible for the military to grow on one side and the people on the other,” he said, adding that 19th-century colonial liberation leader Simon Bolivar “recognised the army must be with the people.”

“Defence is not just a matter for the armed forces, it is a matter for all the homeland.”

Gen Padrino said Chavez “injected the values of humanism into the armed forces.”

Without that, the recent four-month rampage by opposition “terrorists” would have resulted in “more than a thousand deaths like we saw in 1989” – when the government of Carlos Andres Perez put the army on the streets to shoot down anti-austerity protesters.

“More than ever I feel proud to be Venezuelan,” he said. “Venezuela has become a reference point of dignity and respect in the world.”

After the speech army commander Major General Jesus Suarez told the Morning Star he was not so much preoccupied as “occupied” – busy – with the threat of military action from the US.

“We are a single united fist of the high command around our commander-in-chief, the President of the Republic Nicolas Maduro, the worker president, son of Chavez,” he said.

He said the armed forces, through the civic-military union, where teaching the people “how to defend the homeland, for the task of integrated defence.”

Gen Suarez said the strategic command had two fundamental elements “the armed struggle and the regular struggle.” In the political battle, “we have to place ourselves beside the people,” he added.

“When the enemy sees us united, and instead of just the five to 10 per cent in uniform, we are the 95 per cent of patriots who defend the homeland, we will be impregnable – and thus invincible.”

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