“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 keep hitting me. It was a premeditated attack,” the Canarian farmer tells EL MUNDO. Alexander Rodriguezattacked yesterday on his Los Mangos farm 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 to 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! “he reacted Maria Corina Machado through their 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 destroying 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.