CENTRAL AMERICAN "DESTABILIZATION" EXPERT ARRESTED IN VENEZUELA: TERRORIST ACTIONS IN CENTRAL AMERICA LINKED TO SOUTH AMERICA ... AND TO MIAMI AND WASHINGTON
BELOW: An article, by Annie Bird, about "destabilization" ("a polite word for terrorism") efforts across the Americas.
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CENTRAL AMERICAN "DESTABILIZATION" EXPERT ARRESTED IN VENEZUELA: TERRORIST ACTIONS IN CENTRAL AMERICA LINKED TO SOUTH AMERICA ... AND TO MIAMI
By Annie Bird, Rights Action co-director, annie@rightsaction.org, July 2010
On July 1, 2010, airport authorities in Caracas detected a man attempting to use a false passport to enter Venezuela after deboarding a flight that originated in Guatemala.
The man turned out to be Salvadoran citizen Francisco Chavez Abarca, subject to an Interpol arrest warrant for assisting former CIA agent Luis Posada Carriles in executing a series of tourist hotel bombings in Cuba, in which one Italian tourist was killed. He was arrested, and extradited July 7, 2010 to Cuba, where he will undoubtedly face charges related to the 1997 bombings.
Chavez Abarca acknowledged to authorities that he formed part of a network dedicated to destabilization efforts in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. He claims the network was created in the late 1980s by the former CIA agent Luis Posada Carriles, and continues to receive direction from Posada Carriles in Miami through a Guatemalan national Daniel Barrundia.
According to press reports, Chavez Abarca told authorities that the purpose of his trip to Venezuela was to meet with government opponents who were hiring him to create plans to destabilize the upcoming congressional elections in Venezuela, such as 'actions' against one political party that could be blamed on another party.
Information provided by Chavez Abarca led to the arrest of Alejandro Peña Esclusa, an opponent of the Venezuelan government, on July 12, 2010. The Venezuelan intelligence service reported finding bomb making materials in his home.
CENTRAL AMERICAN "DESTABILIZATION" (A POLITE WORD FOR TERRORISM) NETWORK
According to Cuban investigators, the network of paid assassins and "destabilization" experts to which Chavez Abarca belonged was reactivated early last year, and met in May 2009 in San Salvador with two Cuban Americans linked to the Cuban American National Foundation, who paid them for their services.
Destabilization, as the term is used in Latin America, generally refers to violence and intrigue aimed at undermining governments or political processes. "Destabilization" campaigns in Central America have appeared to have been on the rise over the past several years, so reports of a reactivated network in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras seems to make sense.
Though Central Americans have tragically come to expect violence to ratchet up during elections, as a means of intimidating voters and drumming up calls for hard liners who may be perceived as capable of controlling crime, as governments that are not identified with the radical right wing began taking power in 2006, destabilization efforts appeared to extend beyond elections.
During the lead up to the November 2007 presidential run off in Guatemala, a sudden rash of attacks on buses terrified the nation, and a broad sector of the population and of political observers believed this to be a ploy to drive voters toward the hard line, right wing, former general Otto Perez Molina, and away from the eventual victor, the more progressive, intellectual Alvaro Colom. The bus terror continued into Colom's presidency reaching as many as 30 bus drivers killed within a few weeks.
When that situation was controlled, the infamous Rosenberg scandal, another apparent destabilization attempt, appeared.
Most recently Guatemala experienced massive insecurity during the removal of an organized crime-connected Attorney General, that culminated in the placing of four severed human heads in strategic locations around Guatemala City.
Apparent "destabilization" also grew in El Salvador after the FMLN party assumed the presidency. Levels of brutal public violence rose markedly, culminating in the killing of 20 people in concurrent attacks on two public buses, three were shot in a machine gunned bus while 17 were killed in the incineration of the other bus.
THE HONDURAN COUP AND THE LOBBY FOR A US INVASION OF VENEZUELA
The military coup that ousted elected president Maunel Zelaya could be seen as a maximum expression of "destabilization." Though the sectors involved in the Honduran coup extended far beyond the organized crime networks that undertake "destabilization" campaigns, it is interesting to note that the Honduran coup president, Roberto Micheletti, described visits and talks by the currently detained Peña Abarca as an important factor in the decision to undertake the military coup.
Alejandro Peña Abarca has been a promoter of the theory that Venezuela is providing refuge to leaders of the FARC Colombian guerilla movement; a key demand of the Cuban American lobby has been putting Venezuela on the list of nations that support terrorism. Interestingly, just four days after Peña's arrest, on July 16, Colombia claimed to have encountered new evidence to support the assertion that Venezuela provides refuge to the FARC and convoked an emergency meeting of the Permanent Commission of the OAS to review the matter on July 22, 2010.
WHO IS LUIS POSADAS CARRILES?
Luis Posada Carriles was born in Cuba, but moved to Florida in 1961 from Mexico after leaving Cuba following a stint in Cuban prisons after the 1959 revolution.
He helped to organize the failed 1961 US/CIA orchestrated Bay of Pigs invasion. Though the invasion failed, he established a lifelong friendship with fellow Cuban ex-pat Jorge Mas Canosa, founder and president of the Miami based Cuban American National Foundation.
He was then trained at Fort Benning, Georgia, and became a CIA agent based in Miami in the heart of the Cuban American community.
In 1968 he moved to Venezuela and became a naturalized Venezuelan citizen, and head of the Venezuelan secret service, also founding a private detective agency. Suspicion exists in many circles, from the CIA to the Cuban intelligence service, that Carriles was involved in cocaine trafficking, a plot to kill Henry Kissinger, and even in the assassination of President Kennedy.
CIA declassified documents report that in 1976 the CIA broke formal relations with Carriles. Later that same year he orchestrated the terrorist bombing of the Cuban civilian airplane in which 73 people were killed, and was convicted of the atrocity in Venezuelan courts. In 1985 he escaped from Venezuelan prison in an operation he claimed was financed and planned by Jorge Mas Canosa.
From 1985 to 2005 he lived in Central America, working first for Major General Richard Secord in US Colonel Oliver North's operation, exposed through the Iran Contra hearing. He then became a security advisor to the Guatemalan government, and was shot in an assassination attempt. He then established himself in Honduras, and coordinated bombings in Cuba, including the 1997 tourist hotel bombings.
In November of 2000, Carriles was arrested in Panama City with 200 pounds of explosives with which he intended to assassinate Fidel Castro during the Ibero- American conference held in Panama City. He was convicted and jailed, but released with a presidential pardon in 2004.
Under the shadow of the existing extradition requests from Cuba and Venezuela, he entered the United States illegally in 2005 and was arrested for immigration fraud. He was released on bail, and in 2007 in a currently contended sentence the immigration related charges were dismissed. He lives in Miami with no restrictions, though another immigration fraud related trial is scheduled to begin this year.
It has been reported that in 2006 the US ambassador to Honduras requested that Honduran president Manuel Zelaya grant Carriles Honduran citizenship as the Honduran constitution prohibits extradition of its citizens; and that Zelaya's refusal was an initial source of tension between Zelaya and the United States.
While the so-called "cold war" is over, the ideological and geo-political thinking that underlies the US sponsored and orchestrated "war on communism" continues. Militarily and economically powerful conservative sectors from Canada to Argentina, with strong links to Washington and Miami, continue to connive and scheme about how to attack, weaken and hopefully undermine and defeat any progressive movement in the Americas, particularly those governments that are in a position to bring about long needed, progressive economic and social reforms.
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