Published at: 18/09/2024 10:00 PM

(Puppets, 9-10-37 + El Nacional, 9-9-73 and 14-11-84)

At various times in our contemporary history, it has been possible to document the existence of Nazi-Fascist movements in Venezuela. The first of these was visibly identified with the vandalism of a group of supporters of the Spanish Franco regime:

• On October 9, 1937, a group of black shirts, members of the pro-Falangist political group National Student Union (UNE), robbed the offices of the weekly FANTOCHES, brutally beating the comedian, poet and playwright, Leoncio Martínez, who almost ended his life.
• The unrestrained fascists were led by a young man named Rafael Caldera, and in their wake they destroyed all the facilities, leaving Martínez almost dying on the floor.
• The democratic fighter, Leoncio Martínez, had published, by then, a series of cartoons and anti-fascist reports, denouncing, among other things, the death of the young Venezuelan militiaman Oscar Pantoja Velásquez, who fell defending the republican ranks in Madrid, against Francisco Franco's gorillas.
• A victim of the aftermath of this savage beating, Leoncio Martínez died prematurely a few years later, on October 14, 1941, after continuously publishing his weekly magazine full of fine humor, political satire, and complaints against the factious who emerged in several cities of the country.
• That day of the assault on FANTOCHES, all of Caracas saw Rafael Caldera giving the fascist salute arm in arm along with 20 other members of the UNE, while they sang one of the hymns of the Spanish Falange: “Face to the Sun”.
• Any connection with the “Kristallnacth” (Night of Broken Glass), carried out against Jewish communities by Nazi stormtroops**, ** and **** that occurred between November 9 and 10, 1938, is no mere coincidence.
• Soon after, another young man, Rómulo Betancourt, organized the first paramilitary assault bodies (armed gangs of AD), whose violent actions were reflected in all the newspapers during the coup d'etat of October 18, 1945 against the constitutionally elected president, Isaías Medina Angarita. The armed gangs of AD, constituted as a special apparatus for sabotage, vandalism and violence, operated under the orders of Betancourt and Carlos Andrés Pérez until 1969.
• These visible faces of fascism gave rise to 40 years (1958-1998) of State policies, during which period other organizations inspired by the Falangist movement and/or variants of Copei were born: Tradición Familia y Propriedad, Primero Justicia, Voluntad Popular and Vente Venezuela, whose faces are visible today.
• On the occasion of some interviews given by Dr. Caldera to deal with the lurid issue of police abuses committed by the Betancourt government, he stated the following: “Torture is one that is applied for a long time, and therefore should not be given the name of torture to blows to the stomach, beatings with hoses, blows, smacks, slaps and electrical currents; nor should prisoners be held in handcuffs on a chair or ice cookers for fifteen days, or being backfired or beaten in the head”.

THE CONTEXT:

• Leoncio Martínez “LEO” is considered to be the humorous conscience of Venezuela during the decades of the 20s, 30s and 40s of the last century. A Voltaire of journalism who knew how to break with his pen the vices of the system of a society full of racial, social and political hatred. From his FANTOCHES gallery, he launched the first campaign of the Anti-Fascist Struggle known in the history of the country, which led to a severe beating inflicted by representatives of Creole Nazifascism, which housed conspicuous representatives of the feudal oligarchy of the time. He was born in Caracas on December 22, 1989 and died there on October 14, 1941, after having established a chair of good humor as a weapon of joy, an impregnable instrument against the monsters of the violence of the powerful against the poor. LEO is, without a doubt, the father of political humor in our land.
• Those were the days of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) and the subsequent World War II (1939-1945), when the forces of the Nazi-Fascist Axis (Italy, Spain, Japan and Germany) set their sights on Venezuela's strategic position, energy resources and privileged geographical location.
• The Venezuelan coast was the scene of the sinking of more than 74 oil tankers and 4 German submarines.
• Nazi-Fascist political and cultural associations of various kinds appeared on the mainland, including the UNE, which later became Electoral Action, and later transformed into the Independent Organized Electoral Committee (Copei).
• From those ultra-right groups, which sang the hymns of Hitler and Mussolini, to the armed bands of AD, to Tradición Familia y Propriedad, and so today we have different nomenclatures with the same signs of visceral hatred against Bolivarianism: First Justice, Popular Will, Vente Venezuela and the like. The monster changes its skin but not to proceed.
• Neoliberal capitalism has generated new expressions of the violence of the ruling classes in the face of social transformation movements promoted by new revolutionary forces.
• This has always existed with social inequality. They are expressions that are based on the need for an individualistic order, not collective, and even less so a communal one.
• They belong to privileged sectors of society, subservient and genuflexed, under the orders of the State Department and the CIA.
• They are small neofascist groups, who are waging a war of fear and hate against the Bolivarian Revolution and its continental projection, the one that jeopardizes their stupid privileges.

Mazo News Team