Beatrice Rangel: Times for Abduction
Latin American Herald Tribune
October 21, 2018

Former Venezuela Presidential Chief of Staff Beatrice Rangel on the new book by Orlando Avendano about how Fidel Castro has continued to sow his geopolitical seeds even after death throughout Latin America, from Venezuela, to Bolivia, to Nicaragua, to Haiti to Ecuador, Colombia and Peru.

Orlando Avendaño is a fully certified Generation Zer born and raised in Venezuela and now living in Panama.

Contrary to most of his peers who are scouting the world to find spiritual balance, Avendaño decided to concentrate on unveiling the nature of the current servitude imposed upon his country of origin.

Over the span of four years he accomplished the feat of tracing Cuba's quest to control Venezuela to the rise of the Revolution led by Fidel Castro. Mr. Castro who comes out as a craftsman in geopolitics understands that controlling Venezuela opens access to two sources of power.

One of course is energy sustainability.

The second, a shield to confront the United States.

These were the days when there was no fracking or cracking and thus the Middle East and Venezuela were coveted geopolitical awards.

And so Castro patiently set out to build a platform that would secure the take-over of Venezuela.

It took Fidel Castro about 40 years to meet this goal, but the rewards have proved to be worthwhile not only to secure the survival of one of the most nefarious regimes in the hemisphere but in terms of his legacy.

As Avendaño quite rightly describes it, the hemispheric landscape is full of dangerous boobytraps.

There is Venezuela and its collapse that is destabilizing Colombia, Ecuador and Peru.

Then there is Nicaragua which destabilizes Central America.

And there is Bolivia to secure cocaine production beyond the limits of this century.

Then comes what we could dub the revival of Port Royal. This takes the form of establishing regimes throughout the Caribbean that are corrupted enough to replicate the land of the buccaneers forsaken by a Tsunami. These regimes are espionage posts to the Cuban regime and hiding post to organized crime.

And all this happens as a consequence of the execution of a well thought out strategy and the relentlessness of a power avid leader who planned his exit strategy. That strategy secured his immortality. Indeed the plan has outlived its author.

Tiempos de Sumision by Orlando Avendaño, which was presented in the United States by the Inter American Institute for Democracy, has that and much more as it also showcases the deplorable performance of Venezuela's elites who surrendered to the tunes of a piper who led the march into the arms of Fidel. And Venezuela's commanding heights danced all the way to their own destruction.

Avendano's book heralds the ascent into decision-making circles of Venezuela's Generation Z who will most likely be the redeemers as the previous generations had their fingers in the gruesome pie.