By Jose Herrera Ramirez 

MINCI 8947 

She grabbed the ideal of justice and said: From my cold dead hands.  She was a truly committed person who was criticized by the shallow and void.  A freed woman who was never afraid to talk and opine… A freed woman who shared her freedom (time) with anybody, sharing global knowledge in the simplest ways, very educational. Ethics was her most recurrent topic.

A Swiss-born woman who decided to dive into the good side of the Venezuelan traditional culture... She observed that punctuality had been reinterpreted in Venezuela and decided to live there for good and became the most unpunctual Venezuelan, only she looked remarkably European. Her accent when speaking Spanish was that derived from prescriptive phonetic training given as a child living in Venezuela. She was spoken to in Swiss-German and Venezuela had only Spanish as an official language then. She had the opportunity to mingle with the top business families while studying in USM (Universidad Santa Maria) in Caracas. She, later on, as a civil engineer had the chance to understand the Venezuelan Fourth Republic lifestyle and decided to be different. Different was her characteristic.

She did not act as common Venezuelan women, who tend to be unaware of many of the ways in which culture has induced chauvinism or machoism to their behaviour. She would exude confidence everywhere, as to somehow teach others to defend their rights everywhere. Maria Clelia Spinas experienced life in Venezuela from 1959, when she was brought from Switzerland to grow up, until March 11 2009.  She was able to understand Venezuela and love it. Therefore she wanted to be part of a new Venezuela. At the beginning, she was not very sure of Chavez. But once Chavez began announcing policies, she began supporting a President loathed by basically, all her social surrounding.

She was loud in favor of Chavez everywhere and she could not be accused of being an unworthy indigenous, which is what usually is said about common Chavez supporters among the a small group of discriminatory anti-patriotic TV channels in Venezuela. She enjoyed the fact that, in Venezuela, one can address almost anybody and initiate a casual conversation. She began to be a Chavezism spreader among her friends. She then realized that many friends ceased to be such. She gained many other friends; she went to pro Chavez rallies in Caracas. Maria Clelia Spinas, when asked about the reasons why she had decided to live in Venezuela instead of Switzerland, she replied: there is nothing to do there. There is much that you can do in Venezuela. I would get depressed in Europe, she said. There are so many projects that can be developed in beautiful Venezuela, she said to many people.  She then decided to support the Venezuelan revolution from within by working for several institutions, including CONAVI and Min Vivienda y Habitat more recently.

After years of experience within the Chavez governmental institutions, she began to realize that the Fourth Republic was not easy to overcome. She decided to become an inspector of governmental trusts in El Tigre Mayor’s office in Venezuelan Anzoategui State. She represented the Ministry of Popular Power for Habitat and Housing and had the ability to block these trusts by not signing the documents after having met with private contractors and the Mayor’s office. The Chavez government had recently decided to send a central inspector to watch the public purse, since the Fourth Republic’s corruption was the biggest heritage that the Fifth received when born.

She kept her friends updated on her exciting missions to build a better Venezuela. On March 9 2009, she discussed with one friend about a case of a family construction company headed by Manuel Andrade had been stealing from the public pursue that is aimed at building new roads, etc. She, as an inspector sent from Caracas, had been collecting many documents as evidence of a millionaire case of pillage by the well-known Venezuelan Fourth Republic-styled greedy construction sector companies in conjunction with money-reverent governmental officials and banks that hold government trusts. In this specific case, we need to mention the Mayor of El Tigre of the time, Banco Guayana, and the company run by Manuel Andrade.

Maria Clelia Spinas, was very open to discussing any topic with high standard politeness. When it came to facing Venezuelan Mafia, she was just as polite. She held many meeting with Manuel Andrade and the Governmental official by the El Tigre Mayor’s office to discuss some construction projects within that municipality. She began to notice that the infrastructures that she had been visiting and evaluating did not match the luxurious fingerprints brought to the trust signing meetings. The Fourth Republic rules of ethics appear to say that when one is a governmental inspector, inspecting is optional. Manuel Andrade had been expecting that Clelia Spinas, as many inspectors do, would sign the trust releasing documents for the bank to deliver him the gargantuan funds. Clelia Spinas shared during meetings with Manuel Andrade and the Municipality of El Tigre that the fingerprints were remarkably different from the construction sites that she had been inspecting. She did not sign the documents. She did not autorize Banco Guayana to deliver the government trust to Manuel Andrade. After a year of monthly meetings with Manuel Andrade, Clelia had not yet signed the first trust releasing document. Clelia called Banco Guayana and was able to find out that the funds had been delivered to Manuel Andrade. She immediately assumed that her signature had been forced and seek for help for Banco Guayana. She asked for copies of the trust releasing documents and found out that there were several forged signatures. These copies had been faxed. She called the bank again days later and asked a different bank representative for printed copies of these documents again. She received copies of the same documents she had received a week ago, but this time, there were no signatures. She was able to collect several hundred documents against Manuel Andrade.

During the morning of March 11 2009, two days after she had discussed this pillage case over a fondue dinner with two of her kids and a friend, she was sent two men, dressed in a Venezuelan delivery company’s uniform and a small package to be delivered to the Swiss engineer on the top floor. Clelia was just starting her Wednesday after a busy Tuesday. A woman who helped Clelia with her apartment let the two men in. They were pretending to be delivering a package and asked the woman to get Clelia to come sign as receiving. Clelia was able to hear the two men in her apartment and silently got close. She was able to hear that the two men had lost their temper since the woman kept saying that it was not necessary to have her sign it. She offered herself to sign. These two men then began acting violently against the woman in the kitchen. Clelia returned to her room, locked the door, and began calling people on her mobile phone to ask for help. She was sure this was a crime. The two men began to kick the door to break into Clelia’s room. Before they continued destroying the door, Clelia opened the door and asked them: “Muchachos, ¿que quieren Uds?” (What do you want, you gentlemen?) She was pulled to the floor drastically. She then said that she was not rich but that she could give them everything she had. The two men, had grabbed knives from the kitchen after having tied Clelia’s assistant. Clelia was stabbed six times on her back on March 11 2009. Her assistant also reported that she blessed her killers out loud: Dios te bendiga muchacho! (God bless you boy).

The two hit-men, LUIS ALBERTO RODRÍGUEZ GUERRA and FERNANDO ANTONIO PELÁEZ NAVARRETE were hired by MANUEL ARTURO ANDRADE DUARTE y MANUEL ALFREDO ROJAS BRAVO as state by this document in Spanish on the Venezuelan Supreme Justice Tribunal website.

http://www.tsj.gov.ve/decisiones/scp/Agosto/448-11809-2009-R09-258.html