Venezuela's Social Media Revolution: Chavez and Imprisoned General Start Twitter Battle

It used to be the case that new technology in Latin America and abroad would be seen as a threat to the new regimes in the region and in similar oppressive governments worldwide. One story that stood out in my mind was the description of the feared Fax Machine, one that was kept under armed guard and under locked bars in order to preserve the secrets of some illegitimate governments in many Latin American countries in the past. When political debates come to one of the new media tools available, it becomes part of the defining characteristics of the new generation of political activists. New media tools go beyond simple utility when Iranian leaders fear it and cannot stop it, and political prisoners face off on it with a response from the person who jailed them in the first place, in this case, the President of Venezuela versus a former General in Venezuela’s Army.

One of the closest traditional allies to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a man who brought him back to power in 2002 after a brief coup as well as one of the founders of Chavez’s revolutionary movement and former defence minister was sentenced to eight years less a month last week for allegedly stealing over $3 million from the Venezuelan military and people. General Raul Baduel was once one of the inner circle for President Chavez until he chose to openly oppose Chavez’s push in 2007 to bypass the Venezuelan Constitution and have a referendum on being able to be elected indefinitely. According to Baduel and his family, Baduel achieved his eight years in prison for speaking openly against the President and becoming a rallying point for the anti-Chavez movement in Venezuela, even publishing an article in the New York Times opposing Chavez’s move to change the Constitution of Venezuela. While Chavez lost the initial referendum, he succeeded in a second referendum and proceeded to deal with his opposition as he often does, by accusation and applying legal measure prohibiting them from running as opposition in Venezuela.

Baduel recently started posting his point of view on the end of his career via Twitter. As a possible response to Baduel and other general opposition, Hugo Chavez proudly joined the Twitter community at the end of April 2010. The positive of Chavez on Twitter might be that he can now communicate with those in Iran being progressively disappeared for their own revolutionary movements and that he is limited to a few sentences as opposed to hours long speeches on Venezuelan television. An end result might be that many will look for his Tweets for personal interest and it will become a great promotional tool for the upcoming documentary on Chavez by Oliver Stone. If history repeats itself, Stone’s film will be as passive as his film on Castro and Chavez’s Tweets will be of greater interest than a Stone’s two hour film. With luck and persistence, Baduel will be able to openly oppose his government and opposition leaders to Chavez will not be threatened at the risk of imprisonment and political neutering. Baduel will not be the last to be imprisoned for his political views, or “corruption charges”, but when a leader starts to turn on his inner circle as they seek to splice themselves off from the core leadership, it’s the small bits of information and Tweets that start to erode leaders from within, in Iran and even in Venezuela.