It’s been less than two weeks since I published “In Venezuela, Maduro’s Biggest Test Yet,” in which I repeated my 2017 argument that Maduro is not inept, “but rather a brilliant strategist and political operator. I would not underestimate him even in the face of this newest test.” As I predicted, Maduro would attempt to steal the election and seems to have passed the test with flying colors, despite what the journos report as low morale among the party faithful.
And as is my usual, I also predicted that there will be blood. There are 25 dead since the election, which pales in comparison to the 165 killed in 2017 protests that shook the government. This round of protests seems to have been subdued already. Watching what little action there was stirred up my old feelings from 2017, when I thought there was a chance. And I internalized all over again why I gave up hope.
I had to roll my eyes at a couple recent articles in the Times. They are part of a genre that analyze what worked in historic dictatorships that fell, from Philippines to Poland. They highlight how this or that strategy of nonviolent resistance worked in bringing down the strongman. The problem with these analyses is a selection bias that ignores all the places where that didn’t work, where nothing worked, where dictators remain in force.
The authors are more informed than I am about the current situation and history. But I am not bound by journalistic ethics or whatever biases come with elite educations. I can float an idea too politically incorrect for a respectable newspaper.
When I say there will be blood, I’m not just talking about the aftermath of another stolen election. I’m referring to when chavismo finally falls, whenever that is. It won’t be peaceful.
When I watched the scenes from Caracas, I bristled at the same tactics as last time. Young men suiting up in homemade body armor to throw rocks or maybe molotov cocktails as security forces and colectivos shooting live rounds. Then at night rounding them up for jail. And the opposition leaders are demanding vote tallies. It’s an astounding exercise in futility.
What would it look like if the people were really turning the tables? I imagined snipers picking off colectivos, the goon squads who serve as the first line of defense in intimidating, assaulting and killing protesters.
The colectivos are not official government employees, so optically more palatable, and they are the first line of defense for the regime. In thinking about how to pick them off, I realized you don’t do it during chaotic civil unrest. You catch them when they’re off guard. You assassinate them. And thinking along that line, how it would be organized, I recalled “Los Pepes” from the Pablo Escobar saga in Medellin: the vigilantes who went after Escobar’s allies.
Instead of Iron Curtain dictators or LatAm caudillos, what if Maduro is more like Pablo Escobar? Consider the amount of money he controls, or the likelihood of spending the rest of his life in prison. He has been indicted in the U.S. for drug trafficking, with an eight-figure reward for his capture. The regime’s kill count dwarfs the Medellin Cartel, although on a much longer timeline.
The more I thought about it, the more I thought toppling Maduro is like killing Pablo. So, just for a thought experiment, here is a look at what Los Pepes did in Medellin, quoted from “Killing Pablo” by Mark Bowden (read my review). Imagine this in Venezuela, subbing Maduro for Pablo and colectivos, PSUV chiefs and money men like Alex Saab for the others.
After the frustrations of the first six months, the manhunt needed to shift gears. If Pablo stood atop an organizational mountain that consisted of family, bankers, sicarios, and lawyers, then perhaps the only way to get him was to take down the mountain…
What was needed was some extralegal muscle, some hands-on players who didn’t mind crossing the lines of legality and morality that Pablo so blithely ignored. The drug boss certainly didn’t lack for bitter enemies, but they had no commonality. They ranged from some of the wealthiest and most powerful families in Bogota to rival street thugs in Medellin and Cali. What if someone were to give them a push, some organization, some money, some intelligence, some training, planning, and leadership…
In January, one day after the terrible bookstore bombing in Bogotá, La Cristalina, a hacienda owned by Pablo’s mother, Hermilda, was burned to the ground. Then two large car bombs exploded in the El Poblado section of Medellin in front of apartment buildings where Pablo’s immediate and extended family members were staying. A third bomb exploded at a finca owned by the drug boss, injuring his mother and his aunt. Several days later, another of Pablo’s country homes was torched. All of these acts were against the law, and they targeted individuals who, while related to Pablo, were not themselves considered criminals. No one was killed or even seriously injured, but the message was clear…
In the weeks following the bookstore blast, bodies of Pablo’s associates began turning up all over Medellin and Bogota. Sometimes they were victims of Los Pepes, sometimes of the Search Bloc. Some of his closest partners had already managed to give up. On October 8, Pablo’s brother Roberto and “Popeye,” Jhon Velasquez, had surrendered and were promptly locked up at Itagui, the nation’s conventional maximum-security prison…
Los Pepes added new life to an effort that seemed to be going nowhere. A formidable array of enemies were now closing in around Pablo. The effort up until now had been devoted to finding Pablo himself and, in effect, to plucking him off the top of his mountain of financial, legal, and organizational supports. Now the tactics had shifted. Officially and unofficially, Pablo’s enemies had begun to take down the mountain…
In February 1993, Los Pepes began killing in earnest. On the 3rd, the body of Luis Isaza, a low-level Medellin cartel manager, was discovered in Medellin with a sign around his neck that read, “For working for the narco-terrorist and baby-killer Pablo Escobar. For Colombia. Los Pepes.” Four other low-level cartel workers were found murdered in the city that day. The next day two more were found murdered, two men known to be Pablo’s business associates. There were more bodies the next day, and the next, and the next, up to six people a day. It was a controlled bloodbath, because all of the victims had one thing in common—Pablo Escobar. Among them was a former director of the Policía Nacional de Colombia who had been publicly linked to the Medellin cartel. On February 17, one of the dead was Carlos Ossa, the man thought to be financing Pablo’s day-to-day operations. Ossa, who was shot several times in the head, had taken over the duties of a man who had disappeared after taking over for another who had also disappeared. On the same day Ossa’s body was found, a government warehouse burned to the ground, destroying Pablo’s collection of seventeen antique and luxury cars…
As the murders and fearful surrenders mounted, Los Pepes publicly offered cash rewards for information on Pablo and his key associates, and began broadcasting threats against the drug lord’s family. Just a few weeks after surfacing, the vigilante group had spooked Pablo more than anything the government had been able to do…
The bloodbath continued. On February 28, the younger brother of a man who had handled real estate transactions for Pablo was kidnapped and killed, and the next day the realtor, Diego Londoño, turned himself in, claiming Los Pepes had also tried to kill him. That day Pablo’s brother-in-law, Hernan Henao, was killed by the Search Bloc when they raided his apartment in Medellin…
After another of Pablo’s car bombs went off in Bogotá on April 15, killing eleven and injuring more than two hundred, Los Pepes exacted swift revenge, blowing up two fincas owned by Pablo’s bankers. Pablo’s lawyers also became targets…
On April 16, police found the tortured body of Pablo’s most prominent lawyer, Guido Parra, along with that of his eighteen year-old son, Guido Andres Parra, stuffed in the trunk of a taxi in a deserted area near an Envigado country club in Medellin…
Three of Pablo’s best-known attorneys, Santiago Uribe, José Lozano, and Reynaldo Suarez, publicly resigned from his service. Lozano made the mistake of secretly continuing the work, for which he was shot twenty-five times in downtown Medellin as he walked with his brother, who was badly injured. In July seven other lawyers who had worked for Pablo or the cartel resigned (Uribe for the second time) after Los Pepes again publicly threatened “potential harm or murder.” No one doubted that they meant it…
The death squad was killing off the secret white-collar infrastructure of Pablo’s organization, targeting his money launderers, bankers, lawyers, and extended family, as if using the very charts that Centra Spike and the CIA had painstakingly assembled over the previous six months…
By the end of June many of Pablo’s relatives had fled the country or were trying to. The United States used all its influence to deny them safe havens. In early July the president of neighboring Peru announced that his country would not allow Pablo’s relatives to enter, even as tourists. Meanwhile, Pablo’s brother Argemiro and his son, as well as his sister Luz Maria and her husband and three children, were discovered in Costa Rica, where they were officially deported and flown back to Medellin.
When Nicholas Escobar, a nephew, and his family were traced to Chile, the embassy prevailed on the government there to evict them. They appealed through Chile’s courts, which bought them a few weeks. The effort to expel Nicholas, who was the son of Pablo’s incarcerated brother Roberto, spilled into the Colombian press, and the embassy found itself criticized for “harassing” Colombian citizens…
On July 14, a prize stallion owned by Roberto Escobar was stolen, its rider and trainer shot dead. The stud, named Terremoto, or Earthquake, was worth millions. The horse was found three weeks later, tied to a tree just south of Medellin, healthy but neutered…
The toll of the hunt was terrible, but the police could afford to lose more men than Pablo could. By the summer of 1993 the once powerful Medellín cartel was in shambles. Pablo’s old fincas stood empty, looted and burned. His old palatial estate, Nápoles, was now a police headquarters. Many of his former allies had abandoned him, offering to trade information about his whereabouts in return for government acquiescence in their own drug trafficking. But the man himself was still at large, moving from hideout to hideout, trying to hold together his crumbling empire, still setting off bombs, still sowing terror…
By all accounts, finding and killing Pablo Escobar was facilitated and expedited by the work of Los Pepes. Such an effort would obviously look different in Venezuela. You’re not the government. You’re not the police. Venezuela is increasingly becoming a surveillance state under the tutelage of Cuba, and organizing much of anything may be a tall order.
But in not being the government, you enjoy some of the advantages Escobar had. You’re less bound by rules. You enjoy public support (as Escobar did in Medellin). You already know who the players are, you don’t need to spend months compiling organizational charts.
If this seems extreme, or a ridiculous comparison, you probably haven’t read about the Pablo Escobar saga. I’d start with Bowden’s book. There is are also several television series, including a popular one on Netflix. But I don’t think it captured the feeling of desperation and helplessness in the Colombian government. They were where the Venezuelan people are now.
I don’t believe they’ll oust Maduro with any noble pressure campaign. We could be looking at a generation of the same migration waves and state criminality that have become the norm.
Expat Chronicles 