MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Maduro summons “Peace Squads” to avert coup threat

We have to prepare ourselves institutionally to defend sovereignty, peace, and internal union, Maduro said

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro Moros Monday spoke of a new campaign against his country and called on all citizens to prevent fascism and a coup d'état from filling the streets with violence and sterile confrontation, it was reported in Caracas.

Maduro also said in his own TV show that he had ordered the activation of the Peace Squads, with more than four million militiamen nationwide to guarantee the civic-military union. The head of state's words came after statements by former Caracas Mayor Antonio Ledezma.

“With these statements, Antonio Ledezma and all his coup groups are completely naked. We have to prepare ourselves institutionally to defend sovereignty, peace, and internal union. I call for the maximum organization to guarantee the maximum mobilization,” Maduro argued.

“I have given the order to immediately activate all the Peace Squads, with more than four million leaders of the country's squads activated in the Special Anti-Coup Plan to guarantee tranquility and peace,” he went on while recalling the 2001 coup attempt against then-President Hugo Chávez, and protests in 2014, 2017, and 2019, when the opposition took to the streets.

Maduro also called on the Bolivarian Militia to be “activated in the Special Anti-Coup Plan to guarantee tranquility, peace, so that violence never returns.”

“In the 2002 coup d'état we defeated them, and we were not as united as we are today,” he warned. “In Venezuela, peace will triumph, but we will heed these calls for hatred, divisionism, and this call for foreign military intervention that these extremist sectors are making,” he added.

The extreme right sectors want to call for a military intervention “of the US imperialism over our country,” Maduro insisted. He also said that the Bolivarian National Armed Forces (FANB) would defend the country's natural resources and confront illegal mining activities carried out in Venezuelan territory by mafias from Colombia.

“All support to the FANB in its actions to defend our jungles, our water sources, the sovereignty of the country, defend the Amazon,” stressed Maduro.

“I have given the order to increase the number of military and police personnel and militia men and women in the area until we have completely liberated, all the national parks, the Amazon, and all these protected areas,” he also noted.

Ledezma said that a civil rebellion must be established with the support of military sectors and assured talks were going on with military cadres. The Attorney General's Office has issued a warrant for Ledezma's arrest.

Maduro's Peace Squads are civilian organizations made up of supporters of the national Government seeking to guarantee social peace in coordination with law enforcement authorities.

A member of opposition leader María Corina Machado's Vente Venezuela party, Ledezma called for the activation of 'civil disobedience,' a constitutional mechanism whereby radical sectors usually seek to overthrow the president.

Ledezma participated in a show hosted by journalist Patricia Poleo and spoke about the alleged contacts with the military that the opposition, disqualified by the Comptroller's Office from holding any public office since 2015, would have made.

“The only way to be able to carry out the registration of a woman who is being vetoed by the regime is to launch civil disobedience and she is talking to the military, and that is normal, and that is not conspiracy,” Ledezma said. He also admitted members of the FANB had met with Machado in disguise.

In 2017, Ledezma fled to Spain while under house arrest. He had been arrested in February 2015, for conspiracy and association to commit a crime, being involved in a plan to overthrow President Nicolás Maduro.

“There is a new stage and our struggle is adapted, without leaving aside values and principles”, closed Ledezma in the interview.