Both sides in Venezuela's ongoing political crisis have sought the support of the country's generals, and Washington has made public and overt appeals to military officials, both to gather intelligence and to encourage defections.
Members of Venezuela's Bolivarian Militia attend a pro-government rally on May 1, 2019, in Caracas.
The Venezuelan military is widely viewed as the key bloc keeping Maduro in power, and for now the command appears to be sticking with him despite a string of desertions and reports of minor uprisings within the ranks.U.S. officials have asserted that Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez was among a core group of Maduro aides in talks with the opposition, an allegation the Venezuelan government rejected.
Experts said the reasons have to do less with ideology than with the evolution of Venezuela’s armed forces as a lucrative partner in a government that doles out financial and other benefits and sundry perks to its military partners. Military officers have been been linked to industries as wide ranging as the oil sector, mining, the food import business and drug trafficking.
“The military is very self-interested,” said David Smilde, a sociology professor at Tulane University and expert on Venezuela at the Washington Office on Latin America, a research and advocacy group. “They have huge economic interests and are very compromised in the corruption and human rights abuses. They want things to continue as they are.”
Switching sides would be unthinkable for many steeped in Chavez’s depiction of the United States as a kind of evil empire. This week, as Guaido was proclaiming the final phases of what he calls “Operation Liberation,” he was accompanied by his longtime political mentor, Leopoldo Lopez, who had been under house arrest for inciting violence in 2014 electoral protests. Lopez said that military officials had freed him from house arrest.
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