Relations between Buenos Aires and Caracas continue to deteriorate.
The confirmation of the arrest in Venezuelan territory of the Argentine gendarme Nahuel Agustín Gallo is the latest episode in a saga that began with the arrival of Javier Milei to the Casa Rosada a year ago.
However, the accusations of the Venezuelan Minister of the Interior, Diosdado Cabello, that the agent was part of a plot against the government of Nicolás Maduro seem to have exhausted the patience of the Argentine authorities, who have described what happened as a “kidnapping”.
“Release Nahuel Gallo or face the consequences,” warned the Argentine Minister of Public Security, Patricia Bullrich.
“You are the lackey of a criminal and cowardly dictatorship. Kidnapping an Argentine gendarme does not make you strong, it shows you desperate,” added Bullrich, whom Cabello had described as “fascist.”
Conspirator or tourist?
Gallo was detained by the Venezuelan police on December 8, when he was trying to enter Venezuela by land from Colombia.
The agent traveled to meet his wifeAlejandra Gómez, who is Venezuelan, and their daughter, who have been residing in the Caribbean country for several months.
However, this version was questioned by Cabello.
“One person was arrested. You go on his Instagram, he travels all over the world, but his salary is 500 dollars. What were you coming to Venezuela to do? What was your task? They don’t say that,” said the Venezuelan minister.
“Everyone puts up a facade. ‘He had his girlfriend.’ Everyone makes that excuse (…) He who comes to conspire must assume his responsibility,” the official insisted during a press conference.
From Argentina they denied the accusations. Thus Bullrich showed on his X account (former Twitter) some documents that would prove that Gallo has only made eight trips abroad.
The Argentine Foreign Minister, Gerardo Werthein, expressed himself in similar terms, who in statements to the press stated: “His entire narrative (by Cabello) does not correspond to reality. The gendarme has a two-year-old Argentine daughter and his wife went to help her mother in Venezuela. He went to visit them and they arbitrarily detained him, and They accuse him of carrying out missions“.
So far, Venezuelan authorities have not reported Gallo’s whereabouts, while his wife has requested his release.
“We are working people. All of us who know Nahuel know the kind of person he is. We know that he is a great guy, a family man, a good son, an excellent father and husband,” he said, while denying that he is part of any conspiracy.
Gallo’s case adds to the impasse that Argentina maintains with Venezuela over the siege of the embassy in Caracas, where six opposition leaders have been refugees for nine months.
During the last few months, the diplomatic headquarters, which has been in charge of Brazil since Maduro’s government broke relations with Milei’s, has seen it cut off without electricity and running water, while police officers surround it and monitor it.
“This violates the Vienna Convention and the convention on diplomatic asylum. We cannot allow the inviolability of diplomatic missions to be undermined. It is psychological terror,” Werthein denounced before the Permanent Council of the Organization of American States (OAS).
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