Templario

.@iamGermania this is an astonishingly naïve, or willfully misleading, portrayal. Let’s be clear: the Cisneros Group is not some benevolent force waiting to “help Venezuela transition.” It was deeply embedded in the same ecosystem of power, privilege, and corruption that helped hollow out the country long before Chávez consolidated control. Gustavo Cisneros, and his father Diego Cisneros, were two of the most damaging (and damaged) members of the Venezuelan elite. An encyclopedia would be needed to catalogue their many crimes. Given the zeitgeist and the fact that you’re writing to an English-speaking audience let’s start with his “Miss Venezuela” organization, owned by Cisneros, which long faced credible allegations of sexual exploitation and transactional relationships between contestants and powerful men. It was a sex abuse pyramid scheme. Sex trafficking at its worst… so serious that its operations were suspended amid scandal and internal investigations. The Cisneros orbit was entangled in dozens of corruption scandals over the 1970s-2000 including Venezuela’s 1990s financial collapse, the Banco Latino debacle: a crisis that devastated the middle class and exposed the tight, opaque relationships between political and business elites. And it was this scandal that brought about the rise of Hugo Chavez who ran on anti-corruption platform (before becoming the most corrupt govt in Venezuelan history) And when Chavez was on the rise what did Gustavo Cisneros do? Backed him. And put the full force of his media empire at Chavez’s disposal. And then, once Chavez was in power, Cisneros provided multiple associates to join Chavez’s government in key positions. Ultimately Chavez betrayed Cisneros. And that’s when Cisneros, rather than fighting back, became a toad of the government (contrast this to the RCTV media who lost everything standing for principle). And what did Cisneros get in return? A fortune in government advertising contracts. Politically, Gustavo Cisneros himself maintained a fluid, opportunistic relationship with power. And was probably the Venezuelan who most paid bribes to politicians in the 1970-2000 period. I know because I have seen the internal receipts. He was the corruptor-in-chief of the pre-Chavez era. A profoundly dishonest and corrupt man with a diabolical mind. And that corruption wasn’t just in business it was throughout his living existence. So spare us the mythology. Rebranding the legacy of Cisneros as “bravery” or “a pillar of transition” is blatant PR. And not even subtle PR. It’s the kind that assumes nobody remembers what actually happened, which is why you’re doing this in English and not in Spanish because in Spanish you know more than anyone that the Cisneros brand is among the most disliked and hated family names in the country right up there with Chavez and Maduro and the reaction against your X post would be swift. If you want to argue that Adriana Cisneros has changed course, make that case honestly. And please provide something to reveal a distancing from the family modus operandi. But laundering decades of complicity and calling it virtue doesn’t just insult the historical record it insults the Venezuelans who lived through it. Ask your own father and then tell us why on earth you would publish this. I have to imagine you must be getting paid (and I hope it’s worth it) to ruin your own reputation by posting this dreck