Cuba, FARC train terrorist in Venezuela

Miami Herald:

The Venezuelan government, with help from Cuban military advisors and leftist Colombian guerrillas, is operating a secret paramilitary training camp in a closed-off tourist campground near here (San Cristobal, Venezuela), former participants and government critics say.

The camp offers six-week courses for a rolling contingent of 400 to 1,000 participants, including a first-phase political indoctrination with texts printed in Cuba and a second phase of guerrilla training for the most loyal students that includes the use of light and heavy weaponry and use of explosives, they added.

One complaint filed in April with a prosecutor's office in the surrounding state of Tachira requested an investigation of the secret operations conducted by the Cubans, including ideological instructions based on the philosophy of Ché Guevara and Fidel Castro as well as speeches by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.

If the allegations are confirmed, it would heighten tensions between Chávez's leftist government, the conservative government of President Alvaro Uribe in neighboring Colombia and the Bush administration in Washington.

Although the Chávez government has not responded to the allegations, local officials in the area have acknowledged the existence of the camp and the presence of Cubans, while denying that the activities at the Tapo-Caparo National Park involve paramilitary activities.

Gerardo Luna, the pro-Chávez mayor of the Panamericano municipality adjacent to the reserve acknowledged the presence of Cuban trainers but said the camp is a training center for people involved in social welfare missions for the national government.

''Not at any moment is there paramilitary training and much less terrorist training,'' Luna told El Nuevo Herald.

The campground, roughly 125 acres in size and a two-hour drive from San Cristobal, capital of Tachira, is closed off by a military checkpoint. A park spokesperson told El Nuevo Herald that the campground was ``closed for remodeling until the end of the year.''

According to Desarrollo Urbanite Caparo, a private tourism company that organizes trips to the area, its services have been suspended for the time being because ''the government has taken the installations'' until January.

Witnesses interviewed by El Nuevo Herald say the camp is cloaked in secrecy and run under strict military discipline to train Venezuelan civilians who support Chávez in the type of guerrilla war that the president has repeatedly vowed to launch in case he's ousted from power, either by a military coup or the U.S. invasion he has repeatedly alleged has been planned.

''When I arrived, I expected to attend a course on training for social organizations, and I met with a military course,'' said 28 year-old Berta, a resident of Maracaibo who agreed to talk about her experience on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

Berta said she was kicked out in February after she began to complain against the military-styled regimen and to question the lessons.

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Pérez added that some of the trainers come from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, the largest leftist guerrilla force in the neighboring country. ''We have information that in the workshops on asymmetric war and explosives, there have been people linked to the FARC,'' he said.

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One person who has free access to campground told El Nuevo Herald that groups of about 450 Venezuelans are constantly arriving, most of them from the states Zulia and Merida primarily. The most recent group arrived in mid-August and was made up of about 1,000 people, the source added, asking for anonymity out of fear of government reprisals.

Some supporting evidence for the alleged cooperation between FARC trainers and the Venezuelan government has come from e-mails found in the computers of the FARC leader known as Raúl Reyes, killed by the Colombian army earlier this year. The e-mails were made public by Colombian authorities.

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It appears that Chavez is preparing for the counter, counter revolution. He has certainly picked some knowledgeable instructors for a terrorist campaign. It does not say much about his confidence in his own government, that he would be training the equivalent of survivalist militias. Chavez remains creative in ways to squander Venezuela's windfall from oil.