Red Dawn Alert: Castro, Chavez smuggle 1,700-2,000 Cuban troops into Venezuela aboard Caracas’ C-130 Hercules transports, shore up Chavez regime as Hugo returns to Havana for chemotherapy; Cuban commander vet of Angolan civil war

2 Comments Posted by periloustimes1 on July 16, 2011


Pictured here: On July 5, representatives of Latin America’s Red Axis congregate in Caracas to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Venezuela’s (fast-diminishing) independence. Bolivian President Evo Morales (third left) laughs with Hugo Chavez’s foreign minister, Nicolas Maduro (right), and Paraguay’s ex-bishop president, Fernando Lugo (second left), as Uruguay’s ex-guerrilla president, Jose Mujica, looks on.

Following Hugo Chavez’s extended medical stay in Havana, during which time he revealed his battle with cancer, and in the light of a possible return to Cuba for chemotherapy, Cuba’s communist dictatorship is anxious to shore up its ally in Caracas. The Cubapolidata blog, citing Venezuela’s former top general, reports that Presidents Raul Castro and Chavez have smuggled 1,700-2,000 Cuban troops into Venezuela under the guise of participating in Venezuela’s bicentennial celebrations:

General Carlos Julio Peñaloza, the former chief of the Unified Command of Venezuela’s Armed Forces, tweeted Sunday (July 3rd) about the arrival of Cuban troops in Port Cabello in Venezuela for the bicentennial independence celebration on Monday (July 4). In a subsequent tweet dated July 5, the general said there are 2000 Cuban troops in the country with the excuse of participating in Monday’s military parade. Will this near battalion strength formation make a permanent presence to shore up Chavez’s security if a threat materializes to his regime?

The reported Cuban military presence in Venezuela, which has been confirmed through other sources, appears to be a little reminder to Chavez’s opposition that a repeat of the events of 2002, which almost dislodged Comrade Hugo from power, will not be tolerated. According to In Defense of Neoliberalism, journalist Patricia Poleo, who writes for El Nuevo Pais, has ”denounced the arrival of 1,700 soldiers from the Cuban military commanded by Generals Wilfredo Rodriguez and Julio Casas Regueiro. The troops were brought into the country via Hercules aircraft from the Venezuelan Air Force.” The same source continues:

General Julio Casas Regueiro is the First Vice Minister of the Cuban Armed Revolutionary Forces and a veteran of Angola. He is a very dangerous man, whose photograph is being provided to facilitate the citizens’ duty to capture him at all costs, detain him, and force him to explain the motives behind his command of Cuban troops occupying our territory. He must be captured and tried according to international laws that pertain to prisoners of war.

The original deployment of Cuban forces appears to have taken place on June 29, but this news has yet to trickle into the MSM. The Venezuelan air force operates six C-130 Hercules transports, each of which can carry about 70 fully equipped soldiers or paratroopers, necessitating at least four flights for each aircraft to transport 1,700 Cuban troops to the South American country. The Venezuelan air force is awaiting delivery of two Russian-built Ilyushin Il-76 heavy airlifters

According to International News Analysis, the communist regimes in Havana and Caracas established a military defense pact in 2005, which is an important development in the militarization of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA). Last month, the ALBA bloc of socialist states founded a military school in Bolivia for the purpose of indoctrinating member armed forces in neo-Marxism and “Latin Americanism.”