Venezuelan operative Livia Acosta gives a solidarity fist pump to the Bolivarian Revolution.
CARACAS - The Miami consulate that serves as a governmental affairs liaison to thousands of Venezuelan expats living in the Southern United States will be shut down, according to Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez in an announcement on Friday. After Venezuelan diplomat Livia Acosta was recently expelled after a Univsion documentary played a recording of her conspiring with susected terrorists and radicals from Iran, Cuba and Mexico, that were allegedly plotting cyberattacks on U.S. installations, Chavez announced that he would not expel a U.S. diplomat in return, but would shut down the consulate "while we assess the situation."
A subsequent report revealed documentation that showed that Acosta was also a member of Chavez's secret police, and that her rise to a diplomatic post came in just eight years after starting out as a leader of Chavez's violent and illegal Bolivarian Circles, then subsequently receiving intelligence training in Cuba, before moving up the ranks to become a diplomat in the United States.
The scandal involving Acosta has led several legislators in the U.S. congress to call for an investigation into all of Venezuela's consulates and diplomatic offices in the United States on the grounds that the prima facie evidence against Acosta is likely a small part of the espionage network that might be operating alongside Iranian and Cuban operatives inside the country.
When Acosta was unmasked by the Univision documentary, the normally excitable Chavez maintained a calm demeanor while delivering the decision to close the consulate during an address to the National Assembly. His responses to diplomatic scrapes with the U.S. in the past have involved histrionics that have come to symbolize culpability in the eyes of most Venezuela analysts. But the fact that the evidence against Acosta was uncovered by the most popular Spanish-language TV channel in the hemisphere, rather than from the U.S. government, may have made the typical blanket denial and conspiracy theory less palatable to the public.
However, the decision to shut down the consulate has raised far more concern among the Venezuelan exile community in Miami and South Florida, who believe that it was a strategic decision designed to disenfranchise the staunchly anti-Chavez vote for the upcoming presidential election in October. In Georgia, Florida, North and South Carolina alone, there are around 200,000 Venezuelans that rely on the consulate to transact business with their home government, including registering to vote.
The Chavez regime had earlier passed laws making it much more difficult for those who have fled persecution to be able to register to vote, and shutting down the consulate will only exacerbate the problem of disenfranchised opposition voters. In the Miami-Dade area alone, there are more than 20,000 voters that have registered to vote through the consulate. Those voters tend to vote as high as 95 percent against the current regime.
Board members of the Miami-Dade and Broward County Independent Venezuelan American Citizens organization put out a press release that stated that the decision to shut down the consulate would trample the rights of Venezuelan citizens living in the U.S. “This will have very serious consequences for Venezuelans who live in these states, because they’ll be unable to do their legal business in this country. As everyone knows, for Venezuelan citizens to enter this country, they now need documents other than their passports, such as their Proof of Life,” or background checks, according to a spokesman for the Venezuelan expats.
A number of candidates from different political parties opposed to the anti-democratic measures taken by the Chavez administration have planned a primary election on February 12, which will select one unity candidate to take on Chavez in the presidential race in October.
