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Venezuela INTERNAL SECURITY AND PUBLIC ORDER
Threats to Internal Security
In the early 1990s, Venezuela demonstrated comparative domestic
tranquility by Latin American standards. It did not exhibit the
severe disturbances of leftist guerrilla insurgency and widespread
drug trafficking so evident in neighboring Colombia. Generally
speaking, threats to internal security could be cited as follows:
the activities of radical leftist student groups and political
parties, the expansion of drug trafficking and domestic drug abuse,
and popular discontent resulting from economic constriction
restructuring.
Venezuela has had a number of small radical leftist student groups
and political parties (see
Political Parties
, ch. 4). Although the
parties achieved little support among the electorate, student
groups attracted a more activist membership that sometimes
exercised disproportionate influence among the university
population. Student demonstrations always had the potential to
erupt into violence, whether their inspiration was domestic--
student privileges or other parochial concerns--or foreign, as in
protests against United States foreign policy. Although university
students eventually became the political and technocratic leaders
of the country, the general public has shown no inclination since
the reestablishment of civilian democratic rule in 1958 to look to
student leadership as a political vanguard. In more general terms,
the Venezuelan consensus in favor of social programs has long had
the effect of diluting the appeal of violent leftist ideology. By
the early 1990s, the collapse of socialist regimes in Eastern
Europe had also had an effect in this regard.
The expansion of illicit drug production and transportation
appeared to have the potential to disrupt Venezuelan internal
security significantly in the 1990s. As the decade began, most
illegal drug activity in Venezuela resulted from a spillover effect
from Colombia, the world's leading distributor of cocaine.
Venezuela's long Caribbean coastline and large expanses of sparsely
populated territory made it attractive as a transshipment point for
cocaine products in transit from Colombia to the United States. The
gravity of the security situation along the western border was
brought home to the Venezuelan public during the presidential
election campaign of late 1988, when the media publicized an
incident that took place on October 29 near the town of El Amparo
along a tributary of the Rio Arauca. What was originally reported
as an ambush of Colombian guerrillas by Venezuelan troops
eventually turned out to have been the inadvertent murder of
sixteen Venezuelan fishermen. The revelation that security forces
had mistakenly fired on peaceful residents, then apparently
attempted to cover up their error, caused a political furor. It
also highlighted the increasing confusion along the frontier that
resulted from the activities of drug traffickers and Colombian
guerrillas. The overreaction of the Venezuelan forces also
suggested that they were not properly prepared to deal with the
situation.
Although Venezuela's role in the international drug trade was
limited in 1990 to the transshipment of drugs and precursor
chemicals, there were signs that this role was expanding. In
November 1989, authorities made the largest cocaine seizure in the
country's history, taking 2,220 kilograms in transit through
Valencia. It has been estimated that 130 tons of cocaine and
basuco (semirefined paste) entered the country during
1990. There was no evidence that Venezuela was a major drugproducing country in 1990, but some marijuana was grown along the
Sierra de Perija, in the northwestern part of Venezuela along the
border with Colombia. The National Guard has carried out
eradication programs in the area, with financial and material
assistance from the United States.
The Perez administration appeared to take seriously the threat of
increased drug activity. In July 1990, the president raised the
National Drug Commission to the status of a cabinet ministry. In
November of the same year, the governments of Venezuela and the
United States signed a bilateral agreement to restrict money
laundering by Venezuelan banks. Some elements of the FAN assisted
law enforcement agencies in counternarcotics efforts; the navy, in
particular, stepped up its interdiction activity in conjunction
with the coast guard. As in other countries, however, the effort
has been hampered by judicial, and possibly political, corruption.
In September 1987, a penal judge of the Supreme Court was arrested
and dismissed after he ordered the release of seven drug
traffickers in return for a bribe of 10 million bolivars (for value
of the bolivar--see Glossary). At the time, the justice minister
publicly claimed knowledge of 400 other similar cases of
corruption.
The riots in Venezuelan cities following President Perez's second
inaugural in February 1989 shocked many Venezuelans and made
headlines across the world. Many observers described these
disturbances as a precursor of further violence in heavily indebted
Third World nations. The riots began in response to government
austerity measures that included a jump of almost 100 percent in
domestic gasoline prices and a 30 percent increase in public
transportation fares. In less than a week of rioting and looting,
some 300 Venezuelans died and some 1,800 were wounded. The army
reinforced police forces in the capital and elsewhere in order to
restore order. The riots, which were marked by widespread looting,
apparently expressed the frustration of the Venezuelan urban poor
with its lack of economic progress. The disturbances had been
preceded by a week of student demonstrations, some of which had
resulted in violence.
Disturbances of a similar character but more limited scope erupted
in February and July 1990. The February riots followed student
protests in Caracas, scheduled to mark the one-year anniversary of
the 1989 riots. Police contained the looting and sporadic violence.
President Perez called in National Guard and air force units to
reinforce the police in the eastern port cities of Barcelona and
Puerto La Cruz, where rioting was more intense. Scattered violence
in July followed another increase in bus fares. The most serious
disturbances took place in Maracaibo and Maracay. In both
instances, university students were reported to have been the
primary instigators of the violence.
As of 1990, Venezuela had only one insurgent/terrorist group, the
Red Flag (Bandera Roja--BR), and it was largely inactive. The BR,
a splinter group of the Movement of the Revolutionary Left
(Movimiento de la Izquierda Revolucionaria--MIR), continued the
armed struggle against the democratic system after the MIR put down
its arms in 1969. In the early 1980s, the BR staged a number of
terrorist actions--kidnappings, bank robberies, and airline
hijackings. Counterstrikes by the police and army eventually
eliminated BR's urban capabilities and drove the remnants of the
group into the Colombian frontier region, where some members
reportedly still operated, perhaps in association with Colombian
guerrilla groups.
Data as of December 1990
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