How is the Venezuelan strongman and his team preparing Venezuela for a long-time dictatorship? They are doing it in many ways: creating laws that are completely against the constitution, taking away from the elected governors and mayors to give them to "councils" they claim are the people but will become in reality PSUV tools, spending hundreds of millions of dollars in permanent propaganda and attacking the very few media outlets that are still critical of the regime (I will go back to this last point in another post, specially on a "paper" written by long-time Chávez apologist Weisbrot).
One of the key points now is to make sure Venezuelans get used to the concept of "civico militar". They are repeating that more and more. If you google a bit, you will find most "civico militar" refer to Venezuela's military regime.
"Military is good.
Military men save Venezuela.
Venezuela without the military is lost.
Chávez is the jefe supremo.
Chávez's friends are the ones to help you."
So it goes. This is not so difficult to put through as Venezuelans, spite of the 40 years between 1958 and 1998, was ruled in the XX century only by military strongmen. In the XIX century Venezuelans were ruled by civilians only for 7 years. Venezuelans don't even know how much the military have taken hold of their country. A third of all 350+ municipios are called after military caudillos and many of the states.
Take the irrational idolatry many Venezuelans feel towards a mythological Simón Bolívar. Take the century-long use of that Bolívar image by Venezuela's military. Add to that the fact Chávez is a military man and almost all the big jobs he has are occupied by military men or by guys from the extreme left plus a couple of younger gun-totting men as minister of agriculture.
And now Chávez announced the creation of 10 military districts in "border areas". More will be created close to urban areas. The regime claims it is to help the people...always the people...Of course, the regime is going to say now "look, the opposition does not want us to help the people". Well: how come the military need to do this in Venezuela? What has happened after 12 years of Chávez's rule that we need this? Only in Cuba and in Burma do they have such a role...and in China before it abandoned its dictatorial attempts to become socialist during Mao's time for just fake socialist dictatorship with one-party system.
In the last map you see in dark green the states with a governor who is also a military man, mostly a coup monger. The only one with the yellow spot has passed over to the opposition, sort of. The ones in light green are ruled by governors with a very close relative being a military coup monger (Barinas' governor is Chávez's brother, Falcón's governor's relatives are military). The state with the green G is ruled by a man who was a guerrilla during democratic times. The states in yellow are the ones "ruled" by the opposition (even if the regime has taken away almost all competences).
The alternative parties have to go out, not tweet from their cozy homes, but actually go out to places all around Venezuela and tell people this is not normal, that the military are taking over Venezuela's future. The military should never take a bigger role than any other sector of society. Otherwise, a country is lost.
