Trump's War In Venezuela Could Be Che's Revenge

Che Guevara had a dream. After decades of chasing the American Empire into guerrilla street fights from Guatemala to the Congo, Che dreamed of drawing that dreadful beast into an unwinnable quagmire on the graves of its first victims in the heart of Latin America, the treacherous mountain forests of Bolivia where the Conquistadors first struck it rich with Indio silver. Che dreamed of revenge for centuries of violence, of rape, genocide and colonialism. He dreamed of creating another Vietnam in the Western Hemisphere that would spread across Uncle Sam's indentured colonies and liberate his people, all of his people, from Tierra del Fuego to Tijuana and beyond. Che chased this Quixotic dream into the rugged highlands of Bolivia in 1966 where he got more than he bargained for. Less than a year later he would be dead at the hands of a CIA death squad. But his dream remained, festering just beneath the flesh of a thousand banana republics.

Flash forward to a half century later. Just a few jungles north-west of Che's grave, in the embattled nation of Venezuela. May 1st, May Day in this year of our lord Satan, twenty-hundred-and-nineteen. Everything should have gone perfectly. Everything was in place for Washington's latest Latino coup de tat. After softening up the oil rich left-wing pariah state with decades of crippling sanctions and economic sabotage, the stage was finally set. Uncle Sam's latest camera-ready caudillos, Juan Guaido and Leopoldo Lopez, a couple of scrumptiously fuckable brown choir boys who appear to have been hand plucked from Manudo by the School of the Americas had secured the loyalty of a score of Venezuelan power brokers from the Supreme Court to the Presidential Guard. The night before, Guaido announced his final triumphant putsch in the form of a march to his master's house at the American embassy in Caracas. A profound publicity stunt in which the entirety of Nicholas Maduro's fiercely loyal army would join him in overthrowing their own democratically elected government. His Employer in Chief seconded the motion vis a vis Twitter. It all should have gone perfectly, like a thousand times before.

To say it didn't would be an understatement to say the least. To say the most, Guaido's latest recital of counter-revolutionary puppet theatre became the geostrategic equivalent of Donald Trump shitting his tux on prom night. Guaido's little victory march turned into a laughable pity parade, with Kid Pinochet joined only by a handful of rent-a-thugs in military cosplay. His calls for open revolt fell on deaf ears in all but the toniest barrios of the capital where the entire spectacle was epitomized by the sight of bougie rioteers in Dolce Gabbana, chucking Molotov cocktails. The Supreme Court and the Presidential Guard may have played hooky but the peasants didn't. Upon word of Uncle Sam's latest plan to pervert their nation, even Maduro's enemies flooded the streets in rallies for his defense and, more importantly, the defense of the Bolivarian Revolution. If it wasn't for the cowardly actions of one role-crazy tank driver in Tienanmen mode, the whole flopped coup may have been a virtually bloodless affair.

Naturally, the Administration Who Couldn't Shoot Straight excepted defeat with all the honor and modesty of the Bad News Bears. Trump's troika of tyrannic twats, Mike Pompeo, Elliot Abrams and Lucifer's favorite mental midget, John Bolton, went berzerk scrambling for excuses to explain their complete and total humiliation at the hands of a porno-stashed ex bus driver nearly universally despised by his own people. It was Russia! It was, it was China! No! Hezbollah! No Cobra Kai! John Kreese himself coaxed Maduro off the tarmac with a hardy pep talk and told him to sweep the leg. Yeah, that's it. No! It was those wily Cubans again, just like in Grenada. According to Satan's push-broom, half their goddamn army blocked a sure thing without firing a bullet. Stealthy motherfuckers, those Cubans. Like goddamn ninjas, not one naked eye saw them coming or going. Anything, any excuse, any explanation other than the simple fact that Trump got punked and shit the bed. How did this happen? Latin American coups are supposed to be America's last growth industry. We use to overthrow another democracy every other week back in the Dulles days. What have we become? What went wrong?

The most painfully obvious reason, at least to anybody outside the swamplands of the Beltway, is that the American Empire has become a joke and Trump is the punchline. Lets face it, somebody should, after Ahmed Chalabi and the boys from Tel Aviv convinced the indispensable nation to hand half the Middle East over to Al Qaeda in a doggy-bag we became a little less indispensable. But aside from the inevitable decline of the west, the best answer for why the Bolivarian Republic couldn't be flipped like Honduras or Ukraine is the simple fact that it is indeed a republic, a democracy who's foundation predates even Maduro's far more honorable predecessor, Hugo Chavez, with the creation of the grassroots council communist experiment of the Barrio Assembly of Caracas in 1991.

Over a decade later, this movement was consecrated with its own popular revolution, not with the election of Chavez but with his defense in the streets during America's most successful or rather least unsuccessful modern Venezuelan coup attempt in 2002. Revolution is the original direct democracy. Once a people have fought and bled for a republic or any cause for that matter that they can call their own, it becomes very hard, even with state reinforced poverty, to convince them to sell it up the river for a song, especially if the lyrics are in English. This is why Cuba still stands firm as a viable anti-colonialist boogeyman after decades of Yanqui skulduggery. If anything, Trump made Maduro more powerful, which leaves him with all out war as his last option.

This is where Che comes in again. That's right, dearest motherfuckers, full circle time. Chances are, Trump is simply flexing his flabby glamour muscles for those decomposing fossils back in Little Havana. But if Bolton has his way, and never count that sick fucker out, every bluster will end in a ground war and a ground war in Venezuela would be a complete and total unmitigated disaster for the world's last superpower, an Iraq sized black hole in the heart of Bolivar country. This disaster however could be an unexpected gift from the devil himself to Latin America's flagging anti-imperialist left, from the fearsome collectivos to the resilient Shinning Path. Che spoke at length about the strategic value of creating two, three, many Vietnams to sap the American Empire of its resources across the Third World. With Afghanistan, Syria and possibly Iran, a costly war south of the border could be the final Vietnam that Che dreamed of and died for in Bolivia. Trump's war in Venezuela could be Che's revenge.

Call me a communist, dearest motherfuckers(we actually prefer Kropotkinite-American), but I can't think of a more fitting end for a more despicable Imperial experiment. Death by greed on the stoop of Potosi, in the dark heart of where it all began, with Che's wicked laughter hanging like cigar smoke above the ruins. I hate war, but with any luck this could be America's last.



Peace, Love & Empathy- CH



Soundtrack; songs that influenced this post

*  Every Body Here Hates You by Courtney Barnett
*  Police Truck by Dead Kennedy's
*  Tough Enough by Ex Hex
*  Fake Empire by the National
*  Comeback Kid by Sleigh Bells
*  Ahead by Wire
*  North American Scum by LCD Soundsystem
*  Mousetrap by Some Velvet Sidewalk