Another Venezuelan general has called on the Venezuelan people — and the country’s armed forces in particular — to abandon Nicolás Maduro’s regime.
It’s time that the armed forces become aware. It’s time that they look at the constitution and become loyal to the country,” Venezuelan Air Force Major General Ramón Rangel said in a video appeal issued on social media, on May 12.
The former general is the latest of prominent military figures to call on Venezuelan service members to denounce Maduro. Last month, Army Major General Cristopher Figuera, Venezuela’s former intelligence chief, announced his support for Interim President Juan Guaidó, and in February, another Air Force general, Francisco Yánez, pledged his allegiance as well.
Prior to that, in January, Colonel José Luis Silva Silva, the defense attaché at the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington D.C., also declared his support for Guaidó.
Gen. Rangel was sent to Cuba by former Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez in 2012 to head up a state company on the island, and in his video goes on to dispel the long-held claim by the Castro regime that all the country’s woes were due to the U.S.-imposed embargo.
He also blames the Castro dictatorship for what is currently happening in Venezuela: “When I was in Cuba, I was not only subservient to a political bias, but I was also subservient to Castroism, which has led us to what we have today as a result of this union between Cuba and Venezuela.”
Gen. Rangel accuses the Castro regime of monopolizing any aid or resources being sent to the island. “No more Castro-communism for Venezuela. We need to be free and sovereign and reclaim our sovereignty,” Gen. Rangel said.