Hugo Chavez celebrates anniversary of failed coup - The Venezuelan president is the object of a millions-strong opposition that wants him out of office.
www.roanoke.com Wednesday, February 05, 2003 THE MIAMI HERALD
CARACAS, Venezuela - For Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Feb. 4 is a holiday, so he'll keep celebrating that historic day he led a failed insurrection that killed at least 60 people.
"When history is written, it will have to be divided into before and after Feb. 4, 1992," Chavez said Tuesday at a ceremony marking the 11-year anniversary of his failed uprising against former President Carlos Andres Perez.
"It wasn't a coup," Chavez insisted. "It wasn't a conspiracy of elite, economic, political and military corrupt. It was a volcano that erupted from the moral depths of the military youth who rebelled against a military elite submissive to corrupt governments."
Chavez honored himself on the 65th day of a strike aimed at ousting him.
Instead of overthrowing him, the work stoppage dealt severe blows to the state oil industry and national economy until it eventually petered out. Schools, malls and factories swung their doors open this week, while tens of thousands of oil workers continued to strike.
Chavez is the object of a millions-strong opposition that wants him out of office because of his control over government institutions. But while Chavez assails the opposition as coup-plotting bourgeois, he rarely acknowledges that his own political career began at dawn 11 years ago, when a military tank rammed the gates of the presidential palace.
Chavez led a group of junior and mid-level officers here in an armed revolt against Perez, who was accused of widespread corruption and ignoring the needs of the poor. The two-hour mutiny killed 14 soldiers, seven presidential guards and at least 40 civilians.
"Coups are not festive occasions," said legislator Julio Cesar Montoya. "There is a profound contradiction in Chavez when he accuses the opposition of being coup-plotting fascists, when we all know the only one who attacked government institutions with arms was him."
Chavez, then an army lieutenant colonel, was imprisoned for two years and two months, but continued to organize military upheavals from behind bars. Then he got a pardon and ran for president. And Venezuelans - lots of them - voted for him.
The majority turned against him later, after he rewrote the constitution, took over control of government bodies such as the Supreme Court and threatened the media. He is accused of arming civilian militias to defend him at all costs.
"Feb. 4 is an important date: that's the date people woke up," said Omyra Reyes, who attended a Mass Tuesday morning to commemorate the uprising. "It wasn't a coup, it was a civic-military rebellion."
The Mass was attended by a bulk of Chavez's cabinet, including the vice president, foreign minister and minister of education.
Shortly after Blanco stepped out of the Caracas cathedral, a band of rock-throwing thugs attacked the office of Chavez's nemesis, greater Caracas Mayor Alfredo Pena. He wasn't hurt. --- (c) 2003, THE MIAMI HERALD.
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