Historic February
Agencia Bolivariana de Noticias
Translation: Owen Richards
Caracas, February 1. ABN.
It was not a small group. Five lieutenant colonels followed by 14 majors, 54 captains, 67 second lieutenants, 65 sergeant majors, 101 troop sergeants and 2056 soldiers. The mission was to topple the government, responding to the popular unrest that had cried with fury three years earlier - also in an unforgettable February - an enormous cry of frustration for the monster that had been made of so-called “representative democracy”.
The men of that February tried to fix things in a country tired of inefficiency and corruption. They belonged to ten battalions and made up part of the military garrisons of the states of Aragua, Carabobo, Miranda, Zulia and the Federal District. They were led by young officers – Hugo Chavez, Francisco Arias Cardenas, Yoel Acosta Chirinos, Jesus Urdaneta Hernandez, Jesus Ortiz Contreras, among others.
They were part of an organization known as the Bolivarian Revolutionary Movement 200 (MBR-200), with a nationalist and revolutionary political ideology based on the thought of Simon Bolivar. It was 16 years ago now and in that moment it was impossible to know that the seed had been planted of what we today know as the the Bolivarian Revolution, whose nine years we also celebrate this 2nd of February.
Why did this group of men risk their lives trying to change a nation? The antecedents and consequences will live forever in this emblematic month.
Perez Part Two
Carlos Andrez Perez enjoyed his second mandate and was sure that the country was the same as when he left it in the 1970s. But the economy was not like then. The external debt had reached 35 billion dollars, one of the highest debts per capita in the continent.
The international reserves had touched bottom and were only able to pay for a week’s worth of imports. Eighty percent of the earnings of 1988 were spent paying the interest on the debt.
A few days after ostentatiously taking power in what many called his “coronation” for all its showiness, Perez had to confront the new reality, under pressure from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
His “great turn” eliminated subsidies and initiated a process of privatization of many state industries. It was a clear neo-liberal program that brought results in cold numbers: if in 1989 the gross domestic product fell by 8%; in 1991 it had a rise of 9.3%.
But at the same time the most vulnerable sectors of society were gravely affected in their standard of living. In that time two thirds of the population lived in poverty, relative or absolute. The price rises in essential items and in transport fares were irreparably damaging.
On the 27th and 28th of February of 1989, just two weeks after these economic measures, the disturbances known as ‘El Caracaso’ exploded, resulting in, according to some sources, more than 1000 dead.
The brutal government repression involved the armed forces, which produced a deep disquiet in a sector that disagreed with using military force against the people.
This situation combined the generalized corruption with the political isolation of Perez and his Accion Democratica party into one explosive mix that detonated on the 4th of February 1992. The officers that rose up had become a kind of military “middle class” that did not support the breakdown of the command.
The assault on the presidential palace began at midnight on the 4th of February. At the same time, they attacked the presidential residence La Casona, and other important cities of the country. In some cases the confrontations were intense, but finally the insurgents surrendered. From there reverberated the historic “por ahora” (for now) of the arrested comandante that just a few years later became the president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela - Hugo Chavez Frias.
Also in February
Perhaps fatefully, the Bolivarian revolution also began in February, in 1999, after a great popular victory in December of the previous year.
With social justice and participatory democracry as its clear objectives, Chavez began a period of renovation leading a refoundation of the Republic under a socialist vision and through such key actions as the convovcation of a constituent assembly, which was thought to be a process of the re-legitimation of all the powers, always with the direct participation of the people.
Venezuelan men and women became, from that point on, the agents of change, actors in the structural redesign of the country, conceived from the grassroots and with a view to transforming representative democracy into participative democracy for all time.
In this spirit, the head of state had this to say exactly two years ago: “We have a society where the immense majority of Venezuelans are included in the social body, in the national aspiration … the current Venezuela is a society totally different to that of exclusion and privilege”.
Against democracy
There have been several occasions in which the Venezuelan opposition has attacked the legitimate and constituional democracy that today, after nine years, marches on with greater stability, flying flags of sovereignty and strength.
To enumerate some of these attacks it is worth mentioning the 11th of April 2002 when the government of Hugo Chavez Frias met with a coup d’etat. Nevertheless, the sidnificance of the date lies in the mobilisation of the people who did not stay at home but came out into the streets to defend their revolution, restoring politival and social order in just 48 hours.
Again, in December 2002 and January and February of 2003, another attack was made against the socialist process. This time, it was sabotage against the most important economic enterprise in the nation, the state-owned Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), the sabotage attempting to put pressure on the people with such actions as the suppression of basic items such as domestic gas for cooking and petrol for vehicular transport.
This destabilization attempt was also defeated thanks to the efforts of the workers who instead of joining the strike - a strike convoked by organizations like the Venezuelan Conferderation of Wokers (CTV) and Fedecamaras - remained active. Retired oil workers and the armed forces also mobilized.
Two years later in 2004, under the sign of the recall referendum, an election was held with the aim of ending Chavez’s term. But it was not to be. Instead, it marked a new stage for the Bolivarian Government, with the president receiving 59.25% of the vote in favour of him continuing to hold the reigns of the nation.
Revolutionary successes
In the year 2004 a New Strategic Map was launched, a program defining ten directives or objectives for the nation, among them energy and food sovereignty, the latter being an issue that has occupied the attention of the Chief of State for the last few years, who has embarked upon numerous actions in this direction.
Two years later, the presidential elections on the 3rd of December 2006, Chavez began his second constitutional period, whose first axis was to look at the proposal of the Ley Habilitatnte (Enabling Law) that permits the executive to legislate on necessary matters to further the changes toward socialism.
This initiative constitutes the first element of the Five Motors of the Revolution promoted by the national government. The second, the Constitutional Reform represents a general phase that was attempted, through the referendum of this past December, but failed to gain a majority of votes. To agree with the president, the moment that he decided to propose to the population a Magna Carta was probably a little hasty: “Maybe the people were not ready or prepared to assume the socialist project”.
The third motor of the revolution, Morality and Enlightenment, is the national project by which is understood a campaign of moral, political, military and social education, that goes beyond the schools, because it will be present in the factories, the fields, the endogenous nuclei and other popular entities.
Chavez named the fourth motor the New Geometry of Power, defined by a new way of distributing the economic, political, social and military powers on the national level through the revision of the political-territorial distribution of the country and the consequent construction of systems of cities and federal territories.
The Revolutionary Explosion of Communal Power is the fifth motor, intimately related to democratic participation, which according to the Venezuelan leader, has the greatest force and will depend on the success of the previously mentioned revolutionary axes of this new era of the public administration that today arrives at nine years.
The three ‘R’s
Revision, rectification and to re-propulsion. Three linked actions that result in the optimization of a successful period. Three actions that are not accidental and, refer in the first place, to all the internal revision that should take place in the socialist structure in train. In the second place, a kind of self-analysis by which to modify harmful conduct for the change, and finally, the re-propulsion of the revolutionary process.
The results of this past 2nd of December have much to do with this initiative of president Chavez, who proposes for this 2008 to reverse the flaws that have given place to the constitutional reform being suspended “por ahora”.
To activate mechanisms that respond to the raising of the three ‘R’s, it’s necessary that such reforms find means of execution through extensive debate in the communities for the sake of reaching a popular consensus that gives a green light to the project.
In retrospective, the advances outweigh the setbacks, and the failures have been skillfully made into successes. In advancing, continuity can be foreseen in a period that points towards the prolongation of the socialist method, protected in a humanist and educated democracy as a space for participation and inclusion.
Towards there we journey always taking notice of the importance that the month of February has had in all the changes that today we live through as a nation and those that are yet to be attempted.
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