This phrase is part of the feminist performance A Rapist in Your Path (Un violador en tu camino), created by the Chilean collective Las Tesis in 2019.
THE RAPIST IS YOU!
«And it wasn’t my fault, nor where I was, nor what I was wearing.»
The rapist is and will continue to be every single person who formed part of the criminal structure that consolidated itself in power in Venezuela during the Chávez era, later during the Maduro period, and now, if one wishes to call it so, during the Rodríguez era.
The full lyrics of this feminist performance denounce the tendency to blame victims of sexual assault for their behavior, the way they dressed, or the place where they happened to be. Its central message is that responsibility for an assault rests solely with the person who commits it.
The slogan went viral and was replicated in numerous countries. One of its most famous lines states:
«And it wasn’t my fault, nor where I was, nor what I was wearing. The rapist is you.»
Since then, the phrase has become a symbol of protest against sexual violence and the blaming of victims.
Apparently—and indeed this is how they would like it to be perceived—the Rodríguez siblings, Diosdado Cabello, and the members of the power structures associated with the so-called Cartel of the Suns want to convince the world, and especially the Venezuelan people, that the blame was never theirs.
However, it is impossible to ignore the vast number of testimonies, complaints, reports, and audiovisual evidence showing how those who occupied—and still occupy—positions of power within the Venezuelan state apparatus have been accused of serious human rights violations, including killings, enforced disappearances, torture, and the mass exodus of millions of Venezuelans into exile.
Because according to the new official narrative, Delcy Rodríguez, Jorge Rodríguez, Diosdado Cabello, and much of the Venezuelan military leadership seem to have awakened one morning afflicted by a peculiar case of selective amnesia.
For more than two decades they controlled ministries, governorships, courts, security agencies, budgets, state-owned companies, ports, airports, and virtually every last screw in the public administration. Yet now they seek to convince the country that they spent all those years as mere tourists, watching events unfold through the window of a passing bus.
According to this version, nobody saw anything, nobody heard anything, and nobody knew anything.
A political miracle never before recorded by science: an omnipresent government that was everywhere—except where the problems were occurring.
If this theory were true, we would not be facing a power structure but rather the most incompetent organization in contemporary history.
A convenient collective amnesia that seeks to persuade the public that those responsible for the events are precisely the people who suffered them.
The only thing missing is for the Rodríguez siblings and their entire disastrous power elite to come out dancing and singing, just as the members of Las Tesis once did, repeating in unison:
«And it wasn’t my fault…»
Because, after all, it now appears that nobody bears any responsibility whatsoever for anything that happened during the last twenty-five years.
THE STRATEGY NOW BEGINS ACROSS ALL SOCIAL MEDIA:
«LET’S PRETEND WE’RE CLUELESS»
Apparently, this new communications strategy consists of convincing public opinion that the Venezuelan military is fighting illegal mining in order to protect the country’s forest reserves.
Yet for more than two decades they did absolutely nothing to prevent the environmental devastation they now claim to be combating.
What we are witnessing does not appear to be the dismantling of illegal structures but rather the replacement of one set of actors by another.
Now the very same guardians who spent years watching the fire while comfortably seated around the campfire present themselves as heroic environmental firefighters.
For more than two decades they watched as the jungle was devoured by illegal mining, rivers became contaminated, and armed groups expanded their influence throughout vast areas of the national territory.
Then suddenly, they discovered biodiversity.
Overnight, they fell in love with trees, listened to the songs of birds, and developed a profound concern for ecological balance.
The speed of this environmental conversion can only be compared to that of a pirate who, after dividing the loot for decades, decides to establish a school of naval ethics.
Now they want us to believe that they are evicting illegal miners, members of the Tren de Aragua, the ELN, and Colombian armed groups because of a sudden concern for the environment.
Yet the question remains unavoidable:
Where were they during the last twenty-four years?
Who allowed those organizations to establish themselves and grow within territories under Venezuelan sovereignty?
Who permitted the environmental destruction of vast regions in the south of the country?
The answer appears as uncomfortable as it is obvious.
It is difficult to argue that such extensive illegal activity could have developed for decades without some degree of tolerance, complicity, or indifference from those who exercised the monopoly of force and territorial control.
Now, quite conveniently, military operations, deployments, and environmentalist speeches appear.
And that is where another question arises:
Are we truly witnessing a policy of environmental recovery, or merely a reorganization of the actors who will participate in the exploitation of those resources?
Because the Venezuelan people have already heard too many promises.
Oil promises.
Mining promises.
Agricultural promises.
Industrial promises.
And yet the nation’s wealth continues to disappear while poverty continues to multiply.
If the exploitation of natural resources does not translate into hospitals, schools, roads, legal certainty, efficient public services, and better living conditions for citizens, then the outcome will remain exactly the same:
Wealth for a few and misery for the many.
The military leadership and the Rodríguez siblings now seek to present themselves before the world as if their hands had been tied and as though preserving environmental biodiversity and protecting the nation’s forest reserves had never been their responsibility.
Yet this claim openly contradicts the Venezuelan legal framework.
The protection of the environment, the defense of natural resources, and the preservation of the nation’s ecological heritage form part of the constitutional and legal obligations of the Venezuelan State and its institutions.
They never acted because they simply chose not to act.
Or because doing so would have affected interests that for years proved far too profitable.
THE LEGAL FRAMEWORK THAT ESTABLISHES THIS
The participation of the Bolivarian National Armed Force (FANB) in these matters is supported by various constitutional and legal provisions:
Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela: Article 127 establishes the protection and preservation of the environment as both a right and a duty of every generation. Likewise, Article 326 enshrines the principle of shared responsibility between the State and society, incorporating environmental protection into the concept of comprehensive national security.
Organic Law of the Bolivarian National Armed Force (LOFANB): Establishes the participation of the FANB in the nation’s comprehensive development and in environmental preservation.
Organic Law on National Security: Includes the protection of natural resources and the environment as fundamental elements of national security.
Forest Law: Regulates the conservation, protection, and rational use of Venezuela’s forest heritage.
Forestry, Soil, and Water Law: Grants authority for the protection of natural resources, the prevention of environmental damage, and the conservation of strategic ecosystems.
Therefore, if environmental destruction, illegal mining, and the presence of armed groups were allowed to flourish for years across vast regions of the national territory, it is entirely legitimate to ask who had the legal responsibility to prevent it—and why they never did.
What is truly extraordinary is not that they attempt to rewrite history.
All regimes attempt that.
What is extraordinary is the conviction with which they seek to sell the idea that the shipwreck occurred without a captain, that the fire appeared without arsonists, and that the looting happened without looters.
After governing for more than two decades, they now wish to appear as mere spectators in a play whose protagonists were none other than themselves.
It is the old strategy of the thief who returns to the scene of the crime dressed as an investigator, takes notes, shakes his head in indignation, and solemnly asks:
«Who could possibly have done something so terrible?»
And meanwhile, from some government office, one can almost hear the chorus once again:
«And it wasn’t my fault, nor where I was, nor what I was wearing…»
Because in this new version of events, the guilty are never guilty.
And those responsible always turn out to be the victims.
George L. Fereira
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