“The invaders stood in front of the tractor and wanted to attack the driver. I got in the way and that’s when they hit me with the machete. It was aimed at my neck very hard, so I protected myself with my left arm and received the blow. Already wounded “On the ground, they continue to beat me. It was a premeditated attack,” Canarian farmer Alexánder Rodríguez told EL MUNDO, attacked yesterday on his farm in Los Mangos by a group of invaders commanded by a Chavista militiaman.
The Spanish emigrant living in Acarigua, in the Venezuelan plains, today sports a wound with more than 40 stitches, a huge gash that has damaged his muscle. “It was another assassination attempt, there have been three since last December,” he explains to this newspaper.
The attack by the Chavistas, who are part of a cooperative called Vegetables for the People, provoked immediate rejection not only from their closest acquaintances and local activists. “All my support for Alexánder Rodríguez and each of the honest producers of Venezuela. We are going to build a country where the law is respected, private property is sacred and the State is at the service of the citizen. A lot of strength, you are not alone! “María Corina Machado reacted through her social networks after witnessing the video of the physical consequences suffered by the Spaniard after the attack.
Rodríguez’s story is one of the cruelest examples of the revolution’s siege against Spanish farmers in states like Portuguesa and Yaracuy. Five years ago, EL MUNDO covered the ordeal that Rodríguez suffers (“The Chavista nightmare of a Canarian farmer”), and that he has not given up with the passage of time. “There is almost nothing left to steal, now they are going directly for the land,” he says after stealing 650 bulls and cows and having destroyed 14 tractors, a combine harvester and a truck.
The last operation against him was commanded by the National Land Institute (INTI), which notified him of a period of 45 days to abandon his lands. Rodríguez’s appeal to the Agrarian Court, however, did have effect, so the procedure was stopped. The farmer continued with the corn harvest, which the invaders tried to steal in their last attack.
The struggle of the Spanish farmer marks more than a decade of siege against his farms Los Mangos, El Carmen and Las Canoítas. Son of Canarians from La Gomera, Rodríguez has moved his family to Madrid after being threatened with death, while he remains at the foot of the canyon, aware of the violence of his assailants and an example of resistance in the face of revolutionary impunity. “I have continued fighting and battling, with all my efforts. But there is no way to stop them, impunity reigns here,” emphasizes Rodríguez, who denounces the involvement of officials from the Ombudsman’s Office against him.
The attack against Rodríguez once again exposes the scourges that have destroyed Venezuela, in this case in the area that until recently was recognized as the breadbasket of the oil country. The invasion of farms, continued theft and impunity directly impacted food production, worsening the shortage and supply that had existed for years. The countryside is barely trying to recover, while the Maduro government has opened the doors of imports wide after the de facto dollarization of its economy.