{"id":2447,"date":"2017-05-18T16:30:33","date_gmt":"2017-05-18T16:30:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/armando.info\/?p=2447"},"modified":"2017-05-18T16:30:33","modified_gmt":"2017-05-18T16:30:33","slug":"general-vivas-against-oblivion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/armando.info\/en\/general-vivas-against-oblivion\/","title":{"rendered":"General Vivas against Oblivion"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

On \r\nApril 7, 2017, Brigadier General \u00c1ngel Omar Vivas Perdomo got up before dawn. \r\nOne thousand 138 days had elapsed since February 23, 2014, the last time he \r\ncould leave his house in the neighborhood of Prados del Este, in Caracas. Three \r\nyears, one month and thirteen days with the torture of knowing that as soon as \r\nhe set foot on the street he would be arrested by order of President Nicol\u00e1s \r\nMaduro. Three years, one month and thirteen days doing the same as always after \r\nbadly sleeping a few hours in the early morning, with the certainty of knowing \r\nthat one day, his executioners would handcuff him.<\/p>\n\n\r\n\n

Vivas \r\nleft his room, walked to the guest room of his big house and took the Bible as \r\nsoon as he stepped through the doorjamb. From the window of the room an \r\nintricate and wooded patio is observed, where the general spent most of his \r\nforced confinement, taking care of a small vegetable and fruit garden, and a \r\npiece of sky. At that time it was not clear yet. The general drew the curtain \r\nand repeated the routine well known to his wife Estrella Vitora: open the Bible, \r\nread its pages and find in its passages explanations to the condemnation of \r\nliving under siege without believing that a crime has been committed. \"That \r\nmorning my husband told me that he had asked God to stop the injustice of living \r\nharassed. He was already tired of this situation,\" recalls Vitora many days \r\nafter her husband was taken into custody.<\/p>\n\n\n

Vivas \r\nfinished praying and climbed the small wooded hill to tend the garden. He was \r\nhappy because all the sacrifice required during the severe drought that hit \r\nVenezuela from 2014 to 2016, watering the garden in the middle of the night \r\nbecause at that time the water flow was stronger, bore fruit. After a failed \r\nharvest, he had harvested 65 kg (143 lb) of tomato and 27 kg (59.5 lb) of fresh \r\nblack beans, reduced to 18 kg (39.5 lb) when dried. It was an irony. General \r\nVivas had to feed a troop in the midst of the terrible scarcity that plagues \r\nVenezuela, but could not go out to sell the harvest in neighboring \r\nsupermarkets.<\/p>\n\n\n

\u201cThe first time I visited \u00c1ngel in prison, he said, 'They grabbed me like a lamb, Estrella'.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n

There \r\nin that garden, where he also planted pepper, scallion and pumpkin, he spent \r\nmuch of the day away from his sentence. It was also the way to make the back of \r\nhis house useful, an overgrown patio ending in a wall of earth, limiting with a \r\nstreet of Cumbres de Curumo neighborhood, nearby Fort Tiuna, the main military \r\nfortress of Caracas. General Vivas and his wife, meticulous to obsession, \r\nthought that, down there, down the mountain, or perhaps by rappel from a \r\nhelicopter, men could arrive in the middle of the night to take them prisoners. \r\nSometimes they asked the people who spontaneously came to take care of them - \r\nwhen their case went around the world - to go through the small forest. The \r\ncollaborators found the bushes less dense, as if someone had cut them, batteries \r\nand empty cans of sausages. Today, Estrella Vitora is sure that they were being \r\nwatched from there. \"And look,\" she says with a slight click of teeth, \"they \r\ntook him the way we least expected. The first time I visited \u00c1ngel in prison, he \r\nsaid, 'They grabbed me like a lamb, \r\nEstrella'.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n

A Man with a Rifle<\/h2>\n\n\n

On \r\nFebruary 23, 2014, Vivas submitted a vignette that went around the world. With a \r\nspiked AR15 assault rifle and a pistol in his belt, he resisted a search warrant \r\nfor his home. That day, a section of the quiet street named Maracaibo, in Prados \r\ndel Este seemed the prelude to the dressing room of a pop figure. Everyone \r\ncheered on Vivas, who was pacing from side to side showing his \r\nweapons.<\/p>\n\n\r\n\n

His \r\nattorney, Jos\u00e9 Mar\u00eda Zaa, remembers very well that unusual day. Vivas had called \r\nhim when they came looking for him. The officials were following an order from \r\nPresident Nicol\u00e1s Maduro. The day before, February 22, 2014, at the height of \r\nthe protests commanded by leaders Leopoldo L\u00f3pez, Mar\u00eda Corina Machado and mayor \r\nof Caracas Antonio Ledezma, the head of state had said on television, \"I have \r\nordered to stop the general who order the installment of that steel cable. Find \r\n\u00c1ngel Vivas and bring him.\" Maduro accused Vivas of being the mastermind of the \r\nfatal accident of a motorcycle rider, Elvis Dur\u00e1n de la Rosa, in avenida R\u00f3mulo \r\nGallegos, in Caracas. The investigations had shown that Dur\u00e1n de la Rosa, 29, \r\nhad had his throat cut with a steel cable installed across the road. Shortly \r\nbefore that misfortune, Vivas had written on Twitter, \"In order to neutralize \r\ncriminal hordes of motorcycle riders, nylon or galvanized wire strings must be \r\ninstalled at the intersections, at 1.20 meters (4 ft) \r\nhigh.\"<\/p>\n\n\n

\"It was a forged record, an evident irregularity,\" says his attorney.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n

Vivas \r\nand Zaa knew each other very well because the lawyer had drafted the lawsuit \r\nthat in May 2007 had been filed with the Supreme Court of Justice to request the \r\nprohibition of the use of the slogan \"Homeland, socialism or death\" in the \r\nVenezuelan barracks. All that would end later, in March 2012, with a sentence of \r\nfour months and fifteen days in prison for the offense against military respect \r\nby virtue of his public statements on service matters.<\/p>\n\n\r\n\n

Zaa, \r\na man with several decades of experience in the activity of the courts, broke \r\nthrough the crowd, who also wanted to enter to protect the military man, and got \r\nin the house between screams. \"Brave. Brave. Brave.\" \"It was a forged record, an \r\nevident irregularity,\" Zaa recalls three years later, sitting in a caf\u00e9 in \r\neastern Caracas, and regretting not having been able to visit him in jail since \r\nlast April 7. \"I told him to tell the captain in charge of arresting him that he \r\n(Vivas) would not leave with him until he brought a court order.\" Then Vivas \r\npronounced the words that made him famous.<\/p>\n\n\r\n\n

-Whoever \r\ngets into my house will suffer the consequences.<\/p>\n\n\r\n\n

The \r\npopulation that then applauded him, continued to take care of him for several \r\nmonths. The neighborhood association notified the family whenever a person \r\nwanted to visit them, or if a taxi was in the streets. It was the tribute they \r\npaid for having witnessed an act they judged to be the demonstration of the \r\nmanliness of an officer who refused to subordinate himself to the tutelage of \r\nHavana. Vivas had disobeyed the order of President Maduro, a close ally of \r\nCastroism<\/I>, and resisted in his house ready to die. He had raised the flag \r\nof Venezuela with the seven stars drawn in the blue stripe and with the shield \r\nhorse looking to the right. It was also a subtle way of resisting Hugo Ch\u00e1vez\u2019s \r\ndecision to add the eighth star to the national flag -corresponding, strictly \r\nspeaking, to an old wish of Liberator Sim\u00f3n Bol\u00edvar- and redesign the gallop of \r\nthe white horse.<\/p>\n\n