Con El Mazo Dando (

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Culture, language and peoples * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England * ''English'', an Amish ter ...

: ''Going at it with the Club'') is a

Venezuela Venezuela, officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many Federal Dependencies of Venezuela, islands and islets in the Caribbean Sea. It com ...

n television programme. It is transmitted every Wednesdays at 7pm on

Venezolana de Televisión Corporación Venezolana de Televisión (Spanish for: ''Venezuelan Television Corporation'') or VTV is a state-run television station based in Caracas, Venezuela, which can be seen throughout the capital and surrounding areas on channel 8. Programs ...

and

TVes TVES is a Venezuelan public television channel. Its name is short for Televisora Venezolana Social (''Venezuelan Social Television'') and is pronounced "te ves" , meaning ''you see yourself''. It replaced the signal of Radio Caracas Televisión ...

. It is hosted by

Diosdado Cabello Diosdado Cabello Rondón (born 15 April 1963Vicepresidencia de la República Bolivariana de VenezuelaDiosdado Cabello Rondón, accessed 19 April 2010) is a Venezuelan politician who currently serves as Minister of Interior, Justice and Peace s ...

. Its sister broadcast Nos Vemos en la Radio (

: ''See You On The Radio'') is also broadcast on

Radio Nacional de Venezuela Radio Nacional de Venezuela is a government radio station in Venezuela. Broadcasting began in 1936. The station is currently run by the Venezuelan governments Ministry of Popular Power for Communication and Information (MINCI). For external br ...

History

On 17 February 2014, during the protests in Venezuela, Cabello warned in the program that "no opposition march will enter the Libertador Municipality, they will not pass!," adding that "it is a territory of peace" and ensuring that opposition protesters would not bring "violence" to the municipality. In 2016, after the opposition handed over to the National Electoral Council the signatures collected to convene a recall referendum of President Nicolás Maduro, Cabello expressed on 4 May in the program that the directors of public bodies they signed were to leave. In 2017, Cabello presented a video on his program in which the violinist and activist Wuilly Arteaga was heard supporting the government of

Nicolás Maduro Nicolás Maduro Moros (; born 23 November 1962) is a Venezuelan politician and former union leader serving as the 53rd president of Venezuela since 2013. Previously, he was the 24th Vice President of Venezuela, vice president from 2012 to 20 ...

. Wuilly reported that he was forced to record clandestinely every day without being able to take off his clothes and that the statements were manipulated.

Golpe Azul

On 12 February 2015, Libertador Municipality Mayor Jorge Rodríguez during a special broadcast, denounced the participants of an alleged attempt planned by aviation general Oswaldo Hernández, who was convicted in May 2014 along with nine other military personnel for the crimes of rebellion and against military decorum.

National Assembly In politics, a national assembly is either a unicameral legislature, the lower house of a bicameral legislature, or both houses of a bicameral legislature together. In the English language it generally means "an assembly composed of the repr ...

president

announced the arrests of eight people in

Aragua Aragua State (, ) is one of the 23 states of Venezuela. It is located in the north-central region of Venezuela. It has plains, jungles and Caribbean beaches. The most popular beaches are Cata and Choroni. It has Venezuela's first national par ...

by officials of the

Bolivarian National Intelligence Service The Bolivarian National Intelligence Service (, SEBIN) is the premier intelligence agency in Venezuela. SEBIN is an internal security force subordinate to the Vice President of Venezuela since 2012 and is dependent on Vice President Delcy Rodríg ...

(SEBIN) and the seizure of various equipment, including a computer with information on the tactical objectives of the coup group. He also showed maps allegedly located on the computer equipment of the protagonists of ''Golpe Azul'', where buildings appeared in Caracas that were marked as tactical objectives such as the

Miraflores Palace The Miraflores Palace (Spanish: ''Palacio de Miraflores'') is the official dispatch and head office of the President of Venezuela. It is located on Urdaneta Avenue, Libertador Bolivarian Municipality in Caracas. History Construction and decor ...

, the

Public Ministry of Venezuela The Public Ministry of Venezuela is an organ belonging to Citizen Power, it has autonomous and independent character. It is under the direction of the Attorney General of the Republic who is elected by the National Assembly for a period of seve ...

, the Caracas mayor's office, the

Ministry of Defense A ministry of defence or defense (see spelling differences), also known as a department of defence or defense, is the part of a government responsible for matters of defence and military forces, found in states where the government is divided ...

headquarters, the

Ministry of Interior, Justice and Peace Ministry may refer to: Government * Ministry (collective executive), the complete body of government ministers under the leadership of a prime minister * Ministry (government department), a department of a government Religion * Christian mi ...

building, the Supreme Tribunal of Justice (TSJ), the National Electoral Council (CNE), the Directorate General of Military Counterintelligence (DGCIM) and offices of

Telesur Telesur (stylized as teleSUR) is a Latin American terrestrial and satellite news television network headquartered in Caracas, Venezuela, and sponsored by the governments of Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua. First proposed in 2005 and subsidized ...

Foro Penal Foro Penal () is a Venezuelan human rights organization that provides legal assistance ''pro bono'' to people subject of arbitrary detentions and their relatives. The organization is composed of regional coordinators for each state in Venezuela, ...

declared that the accused suspects were political prisoners and that they were convicted without evidence, and its director Alfredo Romero described the sentence as arbitrary.

Intimidation and incrimination

In this program, Cabello talks about the government's view on many political issues and presents accusations against the opposition. The

Inter-American Commission on Human Rights The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (the IACHR or, in the three other official languages Spanish, French, and Portuguese language, Portuguese CIDH, ''Comisión Interamericana de los Derechos Humanos'', ''Commission Interaméricaine des ...

(IACHR) has expressed concerns about how the program has intimidated people that went to the IACHR denouncing the government. Some Venezuelan commentators have compared the use of illegally recorded private conversations on programs such as Cabello's to the practices in place in the

East Germany East Germany, officially known as the German Democratic Republic (GDR), was a country in Central Europe from Foundation of East Germany, its formation on 7 October 1949 until German reunification, its reunification with West Germany (FRG) on ...

as shown in the film '' The Life of Others''.

Amnesty International Amnesty International (also referred to as Amnesty or AI) is an international non-governmental organization focused on human rights, with its headquarters in the United Kingdom. The organization says that it has more than ten million members a ...

has denounced the way in which Cabello has revealed details on the travel arrangements of two human rights defenders in his program and how he routinely shows state monitoring of people that may disagree with the government. In 2022, Amnesty International released a report, along with the Venezuelan NGOs Center for Defenders and Justice (CDJ) and Foro Penal, identifying over 300 stigmatization events between January 2019 to June 2021. The report showed a coordination between stigmatization and repression against people critical or uncomfortable for the government, including Con el Mazo Dando as one of the stigmatization tools to arrest arbitrarily and one of the outlets where hate messages against Venezuelans were most frequently repeated before their arrests take place, along with the pro-government digital portals 'Misión Verdad' and 'Lechuguinos'.

Law against Hatred

Cabello has been accused by Venezuelan public of inciting hatred against opponents through the program, as he is frequently seen accusing and incriminating Venezuelan opposition activists and citizens, as well as international personalities, with alleged coup plans and/or terrorists against the government of

. Since the controversial ''Law against Hatred'' was sanctioned by the 2017 National Constituent Assembly, several sectors of Venezuelan society questioned whether such a law would be applied to Cabello for inciting hatred in its program. However, to date the defendants have been only opponents.

References

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External links