Spokespersons of the Venezuelan Armed Forces are using their X and Instagram accounts to praise Nicolás Maduro in a push to support his reelection and criticize opposition leaders. In his X account, Venezuela’s main military operational chief, General Domingo Hernández Lárez, mixes messages about military deployments throughout the country with political tirades.
The Army officer has more than 170,000 followers on X. While many are members of the Venezuelan regime, some are also people trying to keep abreast of the activities of the different military components.
But on these accounts, as well as on Instagram, it is common to find slogans unrelated to military events. Some for instance, reject the international sanctions imposed against members of the Maduro regime, because of corruption and human rights violations.
Similar messages can be found in the accounts of Defense Chief General Vladimir Padrino, as well as the commanders of the eight Strategic Integral Defense Regions (REDI), in charge of leading the troops in their respective jurisdictions.
Gen. Padrino, for example, reposted messages concerning the May 16 protests of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, carried out in various parts of the country to reject “the sanctions and the blockade imposed by imperialism.” In this case, the initial source of the messages was Maduro himself.
These are not spontaneous actions. According to Carlos Correa, director of Venezuelan human rights nongovernmental organization Espacio Público, the social media accounts of all the offices of the Venezuelan regime, as well as those of the officials in charge of such institutions, are used as platforms for the dissemination of political propaganda and that includes the military.
“Their guideline is to repost Maduro’s accounts. I have seen this not only in personal accounts but also in institutional ones,” Correa told Diálogo on May 18. “There is a circuit of recirculation of information.”
Espacio Público monitors the regime’s activity on social networks. According to Correa, messages that are not related to the work of each institution are disseminated through these accounts. Gen. Hernández Lárez, for example, disseminated on May 16 a statement from the Venezuelan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to reject the sanctions implemented against Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo.
“They monitor what officials say. In the case of the military, it’s being monitored closely. They try to show a certain adherence to the party structure or in power,” Correa said. “It’s a way of saying ‘I’m with this,’ even though they generally have very few followers.”
Campaigning
While the Venezuelan Constitution indicates that “the National Armed Force is an institution without political militancy,” as the July 28 presidential election approaches, the frequency of messages referring to the proximity of the military leaderships with the regime and the candidate for reelection has increased.
Gen. Padrino reposted a note in which Maduro sings his own virtues: “You will never see me with weaknesses in the face of evil and perversity, I am not weak, manipulable, nor lazy, I have energy…”
Simultaneously, he criticized Juan Guaidó and other opposition figures who, from exile, warn about the plans deployed by the Armed Forces on the border with Guyana, describing them as “divisive people who live in Washington.”
All this within the context of an election in which the ruling party is at a disadvantage. According to a survey by U.S.-based political consulting firm ORC Consultores, in early May, opposition candidate Edmundo González (backed by María Corina Machado) led voting intentions with 52 percent, versus 17 percent for Maduro, El Nuevo Herald reported.
Gag law
As these elections approach, control over social networks and threats to independent media increase. According to Venezuelan communications researcher Marcelino Bisbal, between the regime of Hugo Chávez and that of Maduro, eight laws were implemented that restrict information disclosure. To this could be added the recently approved Law against Fascism, designed to perpetuate authoritarianism in Venezuela and that experts see as a strategy to squash citizens’ last freedoms before the elections.
This new law opens a door for the regime’s discretionary control of political freedoms and freedom of expression in Venezuela, Spanish daily El País reported. For Bisbal, the ongoing and permanent threat drive self-censorship behaviors, both in conventional media and social networks, he told Diálogo.
“Journalists simply censor themselves. The little public information they handle becomes the sounding board of what the regime reports,” Bisbal said. “From then on there will be journalists who are very good, who will try to contrast what a public source says with what is really happening in the street. But there is also a lot of fear, and they are self-censoring.”
For Bisbal, the only way to break the hegemonic control of the regime over the media is through political change. “This regime is not going to go back on the approaches it has been implementing toward the media […]. They have them on file,” he concluded.