El Nacional continues to report despite the military takeover of its facilities
“We will continue to report”. El Nacional, an emblematic newspaper in Latin America in which several generations of intellectuals coincided and which has fed news and opinions to the country despite Tyrians, Trojans and revolutionaries, has not cut the umbilical cord that unites its readers despite the takeover military ordered by chavismo.
“You took away a building from us, but you did not take away our most important tool: our free thinking,” underlines Jorge Makriniotis, its general manager, in the main information on its website, which also includes all the coverage of what happened in the last few hours, since a deployment of troops from the Bolivarian National Guard (GNB) executed the “executive embargo” decreed by a judge and ordered by Diosdado Cabello, number two of the revolution.
The internal and external repudiation of the military intervention of El Nacional did not prevent Chavismo, and especially its number 2, Diosdado Cabello, from boasting about their latest attack against the free press in the last few hours.. “The newspaper was bankrupt by its owners years ago, in the seized building there are neither workers nor equipment,” said the vice president of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) ironically..
El Nacional stopped being published on paper three years ago, like a good part of the printed press in Venezuela, suffocated by economic persecution and the lack of paper imposed by the regime. “It is a military takeover, without any valid legal procedure. Some officers showed up, took the building, removed all the people with an arbitrary order, approximately 60 people who were evicted with long weapons. They were peaceful people, who did not represent any threat. It's like a robbery,” denounced its editor-in-chief, Miguel Henrique Otero, who has been in exile in Madrid since Cabello placed the newspaper at the center of his target.
The general manager of 'El Nacional', Jorge Makriniotis. EFE
The witch hunt lasted for six years, since El Nacional replicated the information published by Madrid's ABC in which Leamsy Salazar, Cabello's former bodyguard who fled to the United States, accused him of having ties to drug trafficking.
Less than a month ago, the Civil Cassation Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ) ordered the payment of more than 13 million dollars as compensation for the “moral damage” committed by the newspaper against the head of the radical Chavista wing, who from his media platform on television, he attacks opponents, activists, journalists and members of civil society every week.
“The value of the building has nothing to do with the compensation, it is an arbitrary figure that they have no way to justify,” Otero said..
“It is one more step towards the liquidation of the free press in Venezuela,” protested the National College of Journalists of Caracas.
“In this fight for democracy, El Nacional defeats the dictatorship that usurps power in Venezuela. The regime keeps the newspaper building, but El Nacional will continue to have hundreds of thousands of readers. Let's support El Nacional!” cried the writer Moisés Naím.
In this file image, a woman holds a copy of the newspaper 'El Nacional'. AFP
The invaders could not get hold of the historical archive of the newspaper, “which is protected and outside the facilities. We lost material goods, we did not lose history,” said Ana Isabel Otero.
The list of intellectuals who not only wrote for the newspaper, but also formed part of it, is so long that it would not fit in this chronicle.. From its founders, the writer Otero Silva and the poet Antonio Arráiz, continuing with Uslar Pietri or Simón A.. Consalvi, to the last generation of writers, such as Karina Sainz Borgo. “The regime embargoes the place where I learned to write and read,” complained the author of “El tercer país”.
“The censorship, the denial of paper, the purchase of media by front men, the persecution of journalists and their managers was not enough. That’s why we must put pressure with the international community, nobody trusts the dictatorship,” summarized the president in charge, Juan Guaidó.
Precisely the United States, one of the key countries for the future negotiation, also expressed itself with maximum forcefulness, in the mouth of Julie Chung, undersecretary for the Western Hemisphere: “The responsibility for this violation falls directly on the regime”.