“These things are not seen in my country”he confessed Fidel Castro to a young Spaniard of the same size, recently arrived in the diplomatic career and in charge of assisting the bearded man from Sierra Maestra during the II Ibero-American Summit at the Casa de América in Madrid. Two groups of protesters were stubborn that day in July 1992 in the Plaza de Cibeles. On one side, Cuban exiles who had the cause of their misfortunes under their noses; in the other, Spanish communist veterans gathered by the Caribbean embassy to mitigate the other protest.
Direct witness of that revolutionary pulse was Jesús Silva, barely 30 years old at the timewhose destination Decades later it would be Venezuela under the volcanowith the other Latin American revolution in power and with its Cuban allies stationed in the nerve centers. The book with his memoirs, with unpublished and bizarre passages of Chavista tragic surrealism, has been left half-written due to the damn heart attack that surprised him on Wednesday at his last destination, the Consulate General of Mexican Guadalajara.
The torrent of posthumous thanks that has filled Venezuelan social networks only measures a very small piece of the diplomat who loved Venezuela (almost) as much as he loved Spain. Silva seemed like an ambassador from another time, one of those that Graham Greene described in The impassive American.
An intelligent political chess player, exceptional listener and analyst who anticipated what was to come, Silva became a diplomat with a record that is not yet in Guinness. The European sanctions contra Diosdado Hair and other revolutionary leaders at the beginning of 2018 forced Maduro to declare him a person not grateful y urgently expel him from Caracas. The Miraflores Palace reluctantly agreed so as not to enrage the number two of the revolution, but the diplomatic stature of the Spanish ambassador convinced Maduro himself to pull the strings and look for his return in just a few days. In April he returned through the front door, when diplomatic custom dictates that a new ambassador replace the expelled one once the crisis between governments is resolved.
That was Silva, capable of opening avenues of negotiation where everything seemed lost. His diplomatic skills were only surpassed by his bonhomie, which in the end he always knew how to combine with the best interests of Spain and Venezuelans. Silva extended his protective mantle beyond political correctnessas big as his big body. He got this reporter out of several troubles, the kind that usually end so badly, just a minimal example of the risks he assumed as part of his service.
The same bonhomie that led him to award the poet Rafael Cadenas with the Reina Sofía of Ibero-American Poetry when the teacher needed it most, suffocated by the same crisis that forced the flight of nine million Venezuelans in the midst of the gigantic revolutionary failure. Later the well-deserved Cervantes Prize would arrive.
“I end with an untimely observation: I believe that nationalisms are abominable, they bring hatred, conflicts, wars. Friendship between nations is preferable, that is why I have evoked the one that exists between Venezuela and Spain, not without reminding those who attack this country, that they do it in Spanish,” Cadenas concluded his speech with sarcasm to the delight of the ambassador who accompanied him.
Silva will also go down in history for giving shelter for opposition leader Leopoldo López and his familythe most important asylum in the Spanish diplomatic legations. That April 30, 2019, the ambassador opened the doors of his residence to the political prisoner, released hours before. An underground fight against the Embassy and its tenants then began, with Maduro’s Intelligence services distributed in the vicinity and with the Spanish GEOs stationed in the residence. Something that was not liked in Madrid, which had already begun its drift in Venezuelan matters thanks to the influence of Zapatero and the businesses of Víctor de Aldama and company.
“He knew how to handle the pressures of the dictatorship without giving up an inch on his principles,” López recalled in the posthumous tribute to his friend.
One of the anecdotes that Silva kept for his memoirs happened during López’s birthday at the diplomatic residence. The birthday boy sent a piece of cake to Maduro’s police officers stationed outside and they, gratefully, played “Ay que noche tan precious” on loudspeaker, the traditional Venezuelan song for that celebration.
Already at that time, the PSOE government partners had demanded Silva’s head, especially Enrique Santiago, leader of the Communist Party of Spain (PCE), always genuflecting before Caracas. Finally Silva left Venezuela in October 2020after three and a half years of frenetic activity, which seemed like two decades. The government punishment awaited him months later: the Cape Town Consulate, with barely 1,700 Spanish residents, for an ambassador in Panama, Venezuela, Jamaica and who also served as director of the cabinet of the Secretary of State for Latin America.
In just three and a half years, Silva turned the embassy into a political meeting point. The Chavista Jorge Rodríguez and the general in chief Vladimir Padrino López paraded there, so concerned about his daughter’s university adventures in Madrid. Governors with presidential aspirations, honest opponents seeking freedom for their country and the smart ones who only wanted to take advantage.
And above all the relatives of political prisonersmany of whom have maintained a umbilical cord with its Spanish protective angel. It was Silva himself who convinced the politicians in Madrid and Brussels to include Alexander Granko, colonel of the General Directorate of Military Counterintelligence (DGCIM), on the European sanctions list.
“He is one of the most bloodthirsty torturers of Chavismo, he does not dare to leave Venezuela,” he said just a few weeks ago to deny rumors of his presence in Spain. Because despite being in South Africa or Mexico, Silva never abandoned Venezuela and its people.