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The pans roared last night in Caracas with renewed forces, from the eastern middle class to the popular areas of the west, even around the Miraflores Palace. The biggest protest in the capital so far this year. Reason? The cessation of operations of DirecTV, the largest subscription television operator and refuge for Venezuelans in the face of the overwhelming propaganda of the revolution. And all this in the midst of the quarantine, with citizens confined to their homes besieged by cuts in electricity, water, gas and gasoline.

The impact of the departure of DirecTV is enormous, because it brings Venezuelans even closer to the living conditions suffered by Cubans, who can only see the channels of the State and Telesur, the international propaganda body of Chavismo. Currently, this satellite television had 2,300,000 subscribers and an estimate of over 13 million viewers, according to the NGO Public Space. Its great success was based on the fact that, thanks to its technology, it massified its service and established itself in popular areas , with very cheap prices, close to 2 euros per month.

In a country where Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro have daily abused television channels, which force the broadcasting of their endless speeches to all national television and radio stations, DirecTV was the refuge where great series such as "Game of Thrones" were also seen. " or" Chernobyl ", the European football leagues, children's programs, movies and also uncensored international news programs.

Abruptly and without prior notice, the US company AT&T, owner of DirectTV Venezuela, yesterday announced its decision "due to the impossibility of complying with the legal requirements" of the US and Venezuela. On the one hand, there are the Washington sanctions , which prevent the transmission of the sanctioned channels of Globovisión and Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA). And on the other, the arbitrary decisions of the government of Nicolás Maduro, which imposes the presence of their TVs on the operator's grill and which has also censored a dozen channels on DirecTV, from CNN to Colombian television, for broadcasting opposition protests on the streets.

"AT&T informed the government that it was preparing to remove the sanctioned channels, linked to the dictatorship and corruption, from the air. The dictatorship replied that if they were removed from the air, they would ban DirecTV in Venezuela and arrest the company executives. For this reason AT&T decided to leave, because a US company cannot do business with the regime, " reported the National Communication Center, which is part of the presidency in charge of Juan Guaidó.

Globovisión, once a news channel, was acquired in 2013 by lawyer Raúl Gorrín, thus complying with government orders. Since then, censorship and self-censorship became strong among its professionals, until it became another press body of the revolution. Gorrín, who is considered one of the most important figureheads of the leaders of the revolution, is on the most wanted list and is accused of money laundering and leading "a significant plot of corruption."

Public televisions, today converted into propaganda bodies with very low follow-up percentages, thus become the main alternative for the Venezuelan, who also suffers from the second slowest Internet on the planet, amid constant power cuts and service outages. .

" Venezuelans do not have water, electricity, gas, internet and now you cannot even watch television. Maduro is the pandemic, the architect of this terrible chaos that Venezuela is experiencing," deputy Nora Bracho, president of the Services Commission, complained. .

"Grab idiotic scrawny (opponents) there, who still believe that (the sanctions) are against Maduro and not against Venezuelans," replied Pedro Carreño, a former military man and right-hand man of the radical Diosdado Cabello.

Chavismo's strategy is clear: to target the US sanctions to turn them into a boomerang against the opposition, which provoked the immediate reaction of the president in charge, Juan Guaidó: "We are contacting the service provider to know the demands made by the dictatorship to continue operating and evaluating possible reactions, always in the same direction: the return of democracy to Venezuela. "

From the US, Carlos Vecchio, ambassador of the Democratic Parliament, assured that "we are working so that DirecTV returns as soon as possible."

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