Political instability has been a constant in Venezuela as well as conspiracies and overthrows of governments. The timeline has had shocks since 1989, going through February 4, 1992 with the coup against Carlos Andrés Pérez. Ten years later the scene would be similar, this time with Hugo Chávez as president.
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On April 11, 2002, the country experienced a day of intense protests. That day 19 deaths were counted, all from gunshot wounds. “They killed Tortoza.” That was one of the first shouts at around 2 pm inside the National Assembly. Photographer Jorge Tortoza was one of the first victims.
The image of the bloody man being transferred by several people was recorded on the screens of national television. Everything was still confused but one thing was clear: the objective was to get Chávez out of Miraflores.
This Monday marks the 20th anniversary of the events that marked a turn in the way Chavismo governed. From that moment, alleging the complicity of the media and the business community, the executive initiated a policy of controlling newspapers, radio and television channels; the phenomenon of the exiled and persecuted returned. Those who remained on the side of Chavez, who returned to power on April 13, are still facing the country’s administration today.
Vladimir Padrino López, Cilia Flores, Nicolás Maduro, Diosdado Cabello, Tarek William Saab, Freddy Bernal and Iris Varela They are some of the militants who stayed by Chavez’s side. Some had to hide on April 11 and 12 and operate with a low profile so as not to be arrested, as in the case of Saab, who was apprehended as a deputy.
“The people in April found our Armed Forces, they found the loyalty to defend our commander. Until the sun of today and until the centuries pass, the civic-military union, ”said Diosdado Cabello last Wednesday during his television program.
April 11 and 12 are dates that gave rise to the hottest clashes between Chavismo and the opposition. Although the soldiers who participated in the coup claimed that Chavez had signed his resignation, the president and his supporters denied it.
One of the key characters for the return of the president was the general in chief, Vladimir Padrino López, today Minister of Defense. When Hugo Chávez left Miraflores, he arrived at the military base in La Orchila, a Venezuelan island. At that time, Padrino led the Bolívar Battalion – one of the most important – at Fort Tiuna in Caracas, and refused to rise up against the president. It is said that this was the key to Chavez’s return and 10 years later he was named army commander.
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The aftermath of the hit
Jesús Yánez, deputy of the National Assembly in 2015, was 21 years old in 2002. At that time he was part of the Democratic Coordinator, which grouped the opposition sectors that had been insisting on the departure of Chávez since the previous year.
“We wanted democracy and we were dissatisfied with the actions that Lieutenant Colonel Hugo Chávez had already been undertaking. You could already see the signs of the military autocracy that we have today”Yánez tells EL TIEMPO.
The former deputy recalls that days 9, 10 and 11 were intense. Chávez had fired workers from the oil industry in a mediatic way, so the unrest was growing. Pedro Carmona Estanga, president of the Venezuelan Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Production and who would later assume the presidency of the Republic for 48 hours, led the rally together with Carlos Ortega from the Central de Trabajadores de Venezuela and Juan Fernández from Gente del Petróleo. .
The demonstration, according to some calculations, was more than a million people, something never seen before. From Chuao, in the east of Caracas, they began to walk. Then they headed towards Miraflores, in the center.
“Mayor Juan Barreto mounted an offensive and shot at innocents,” says Yánez, stating that subsequent events demonstrated a “Capricious improvisation and that there were many mistakes by the opposition leadership.”
Today the aftermath continues. Three uniformed officers of the extinct Metropolitan Police, disappeared as a result of the coup, are still imprisoned accused of the events of that day. Like former commissioner Iván Simonovis, today in exile.
Twenty years later, Chavismo is still in power, led by Nicolás Maduro. Opposition protests accompanied the rest of the years, being the years 2014, 2017 and 2019 the ones that shook the government again but without results.
ANA RODRIGUEZ BRAZON
WEATHER CORRESPONDENT
CARACAS
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