Vzla: Night descends on Venezuela

On Saturday, December 6, 2003, President Hugo Chávez’s supporters held a march in Caracas to commemorate the five year anniversary of the administration. Among them were the motorized brigades of armed men, known in Venezuela as the motorizados de muerte (motorized death brigades). They are all members of the Círculos Bolivarianos (Bolivarian Circles), a national version of the Cuban Committees in Defense of the Revolution. Such groups are often accused of intimidating political oppoksition by force.

Arriving close to Altamira Square, a bastion of President Chávez’s opposition, some 250 of these armed men advanced and gained control of the square. A little afterwards, the rest of the demonstrators arrived who were then supposed to continue en route to another section of the capital.

It should be explained that Altamira Square became famous during the general strike against President Chávez. People who disagreed with the communist policies of the president met in the square. The protests have had a marked religious note. Perhaps to bolster his image, President Chavez often appears in public with crucifixes and bibles and even quoting passages of Our Lord. Such tactics, it should be remembered, were also used by Fidel Castro who appeared in public flaunting religious medals and rosaries before he took power.

To oppose the president’s deceptive use of religious symbols, and to galvanize Venezuelans who truly believe in God, opponents began placing statues of Our Lady in public places for veneration. They organized processions with statues and prayed the rosary together in several neighborhoods in Caracas.

Concretely, they had placed several statues of the Holy Virgin in Altamira Square. Most of the statues were those under the invocation of Our Lady of Graces. However, there were also statues of Our Lady of Fatima, Our Lady of Coromoto, Mystical Rose and Cuba’s patroness, Our Lady of Charity of Cobre.

Dreadful Desecrations

Statue of Our Lady brutally beheaded by leftists in Altamira Square.

Having taken control of the square, the pro-Chávez demonstrators began to desecrate the statues. Amidst shouts, dances and laughs, they sprayed most of the statues with red graffiti and “feigned immoral acts with and even went so far as to relieve themselves upon one of the statues.”2

One statue was “thrown on the ground, while protesters relieve themselves and spit upon it.”3 Even worse sacrilegious abominations were carried out as well, but the spirit of veneration and respect prevents a full description of them here.

One statue of the Mystical Rose “was cast on the ground and, in a ritual amidst dancing, macabre laughter and violence, one protester decapitated the Virgin with one blow from a stick.”4 “The tension in the square continued for half an hour.”5 When all was said and done, the vandals stole “one statue of the Virgin of Coromoto, one of the Charity of Cobre, a Child Jesus and a painted replica of the Mystical Rose.”6

The protestors did not even try to hide their ideological sympathies. “Graffiti saying Viva Chávez was painted on the ground and walls of the square and all along the Francisco de Miranda Avenue.”7

I'm not a Romanist, so I don't reverence the panoply of saints nor their statuary. Having said that, Roman Catholics do believe in their doctrine of the saints, and they regard statuary as important to their religious practice. Venezuela, like much of the Latin American world, is Christian of the Roman Catholic denomination. Therefore, for believing Catholics, these acts perpetrated by Chavez's goons are not just desecrations of religious statuary, they are, more importantly, a stake in the heart of Christianity in Venezuela.

In relieving themselves on the statuary, Chavez's thugs have spoken of their utter hatred of what the statues symbolize to those who believe in them -- Christian faith. That Chavez has not condemned such actions by his followers is evident from this:

On December 9, 2003, a bomb was detonated in front of a church in Los Teques, destroying several statues inside. On December 11, three statues of Our Lady were destroyed in the city of Cardón where two more statues of the Virgin were demolished on the next day. On December 15, anti-Catholic agitators attacked the bombed Church in Los Teques once again.

Who these motorizados de muerte actually are, nobody really knows. While this level of hatred of Christianity can be attributed to Marxism, it may also derive from another source which has declared war on the West and its Judaeo-Christian heritage.

It is probable that one is seeing in Venezuela the confluence of Marxism and Islamism, which the world has already seen on display at so many anti-American protests. The open desecration of religious statuary may be because of the increasing role of Islamism in Latin American politics, and of Chavez's open courting of Islamists to his cause. As evidence is this:

Mezquita Aljama de Caracas Ibrahimi Mosque ... is one of the largest in South America. Located in a rapidly changing area of Caracas, the political and economic capital city of Venzuela.

Also this:

Islam has prohibited the keeping of statues in the Muslim home. By statues is meant complete, solid figures which have not been disfigured or otherwise defaced. Their presence in a house is considered sufficient to drive away the angels, who represent Allah's mercy and His pleasure. As the Messenger of Allah (peace be on him) said, "Assuredly the angels do not enter a house in which there are statues (or figures)." (Reported by al-Bukhari and Muslim; the wording is from Muslim.)

According to the commentary of scholars, a person who keeps statues in his house is similar to unbelievers, whose practice it is to keep and venerate idols in their homes. The angels are repelled by this; they do not enter such a house and abandon it.

If the presence of statues in the home is anathema, then that of statues in the public square is even more so; for, they signify that the country is one in which the divine will not present itself. Moreover, the statuary is representative of a theology that Islamics consider false and to which they do not want people to adhere or return.

Case in point is former Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar's reason for destroying the Buddhas of Bamiyan:

"It has been decided to break down all statues/idols present in different parts of the country.  This is because these idols have been gods of the infidels, who worshipped them, and these are respected even now and perhaps may be turned into gods again.  The real God is only Allah, and all other false gods should be removed."

Where some Christian denominations use statuary, Islam employs calligraphy.

One might argue that Muslims have not destroyed the Pharaonic statues in Egypt or elsewhere, and that the Taliban were aberrant in this respect. However, what needs be considered is that the Muslim states which objected to the Taliban's destructive act did so on historical grounds regarding them as national treasures. In other words, they chose to ignore the religious belief out of which the statues were created. Moreover, the statues that were destroyed in Venezuela have no attached cachet of history. They are what they are, easily available. More significantly, they are symbols of a religious tradition adhered to by the majority in Venezuela and with which Islam has declared itself in conflict.

Another possible clue is this:

...Hundreds and possibly thousands of agents from rogue Arab nations are working hard to help President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela take control of South America's largest oil industry and create al-Qaeda-friendly terrorist bases just two hours' flying time from Miami.
...
Exhorting his countrymen to return to their "Arab roots," Chavez has paid state visits to Libya, Iraq and Iran and signed a series of mutual-cooperation treaties with the rogue governments whose operatives now are flooding into Venezuela. There they can blend into an ethnic Arab community estimated at half-a-million.
...
Meanwhile, Iraqi VIPs, moving under the protection of Chavez's secret police -- the Department of Intelligence Security and Prevention (DISIP) -- came to the attention of Venezuela's regular military when government agents tried to use air-force planes to fly five of Saddam Hussein's agents into the interior of the country. Military pilots requested special clearances before allowing the Iraqis onto the C-130s.
...
...In the wake of claims by former presidential pilot Maj. Juan Diaz Castillo that Chavez contributed $1 million to al-Qaeda, police sources in Caracas tell Insight that a highly fanatical cell of Islamic activists already is operating from a sports complex in the old downtown section of the capital protected by armed units of the Circulos Bolivarianos.

Undercover police officers report that the group has ties to a Hezbollah financial network operating from the Caribbean island of Margarita under Mohammed al Din, an important Chavez backer and a close friend of hard-line MVR deputy Adel el Zabayar Samara, a key link between Islam and Latin America's radical left.

The Caracas cell is involved in recruiting Venezuelan Arabs for terrorist indoctrination and military training at isolated camps in the country's interior and on islands off the coast, according to intelligence officers who claim that members of al-Qaeda are hiding out in Margarita. They say these members include Diab Fattah, who was deported from the United States for his possible connections with the Sept. 11 hijackers. Four Venezuelan officers investigating terrorist activities on the resort island were killed in 2001 when Chavez moved to dissolve DISIP Section 11, which had targeted radical Arabs.

A 40-hectare estate on the sparsely populated peninsula of La Guajira near the border with Colombia is another suspected training base for Islamic terrorists. Equipped with highly modern communications systems, including satellite dishes and parabolic antennae, the complex belongs to an Arab-owned company called Jihad, which is registered as a home-appliance dealership.
...
Chief among them is Marco Aurelio Garcia, a hard-line Marxist with close ties to Cuba and Colombian narco-guerrilla organizations, who is slotted for a top job in the foreign ministry. He already has used his influence to secure delivery of more than 500,000 barrels of oil to Venezuela to help Chavez get through the most critical moments of the strike. One of Aurelio Garcia's closest contacts is Mohammed Latifi, a powerful figure in Tehran's ruling circles who proposes an international oil boycott of the United States and is connected with terrorist networks.

Finally, one may not discount that

Chavez's links to Middle East terrorists may be more indirect but US officials note that Venezuela is providing support--including identity documents--that could prove useful to radical Islamic groups. U.S. News noted that Chavez's government has issued thousands of  "cedulas," the equivalent of national ID cards, to people from Cuba, Colombia, and Middle Eastern `countries of interest' like Syria, Egypt, Pakistan and Lebanon that host foreign terrorist organizations.

All of this is significant in that it delineates the presence in Venezuala of a body of people with whom Chavez has formed an alliance and who have motive, rooted in ideology, for these acts of desecration.

The Marxist-Communist denial of God and the Islamic rejection of Judaeo-Christianity have led to the destruction of churches and religious iconography wherever either gain ascendance. In Venezuela, both Marxism and Islamism are on the rise and bringing darkest night to the country. Chavez's failure to speak out against the destruction of Romanist religious statuary speaks not only to the self-serving nature of his masquerade with Bible, crucifix, and Scripture quotations, but also to his consent to the descending night.

H'tip to EPG for the link.