There were many April elevenths in Venezuela, for there are many, many different stories about what happened on this fateful day. Unfortunately for Venezuela, it was a day that left many dead and wounded. Between the eleventh and fourteenth of April 2000, in less than forty-eight hours, Hugo Chávez was expelled from and then returned to the presidency; an authoritarian project materialized and then evaporated; a coup d’état met with failure; and the armed forces impeached and reinstated a president. In less than forty-eight hours, 20 people died and more than 110 were wounded. After all the investigations, all the books, all the movies, there are still many unresolved mysteries from that day, murky areas in which the explanations for what happened were no match for the onslaught of accusations that the government and the opposition hurled at each other. To this day, it is a story filled with shadows and dense, bitter silence.
Chávez believes three main factors triggered the events of April 11. The first dates back to September 11, 2001. “That brought about a new attitude on the part of the U.S. government, which started to encourage the Venezuelan opposition.”2 The Venezuelan president maintains that the U.S. Embassy facilitated meetings between opposition leaders and groups. The government obtained this information through “a Venezuelan they mistakenly invited [to one of the meetings], because they sometimes make mistakes, too, and this Venezuelan—who is not a chavista—left very alarmed and told a mutual friend what he had heard the people in the opposition say back there, that Chávez had to be either overthrown or killed. And they said these things while talking to Pentagon officials.”3
The second factor, says Chávez, also dates to 2001 and the approval of a package of law decrees in November. According to the president, these forty-nine laws complied with the constitutional project and set guidelines for certain aspects of the country’s infrastructure including taxes, land, hydrocarbons, finances, but they were also perceived as an attack against some powerful elements of Venezuelan society.
The third detonating factor, a consequence of the first two, came into play when a group of military officers within the national armed forces banded together and allied themselves with certain sectors of the opposition, with the intention (according to Chávez) of staging a violent overthrow of the Bolivarian government.
The official analysis, however, neglected to mention additional factors that the opposition identified, such as the overwhelming social tension in Venezuela at the time and the increasingly heated and volatile relations among the country’s politicians. After the oil-industry strike, for example, Chávez publicly fired seven top executives of the state oil company, PDVSA, because of the controversy they generated over the government’s decision to appoint a new corporate board—a move that had been intended to provoke a crisis that would give the executive branch more control over PDVSA, as Chávez himself admitted two years later.
At the same time, the government was waging another battle with the radio stations whose programming Chávez had recently been interrupting with his long “chains.” Eventually they reached a breaking point with the president and his communications policies. In the end, a constellation of elements came together that day in a highly charged atmosphere, and many Venezuelans did little to hide their disgruntlement. Without a doubt, there had been a massive amount of social mobilization, but there are many indications suggesting that a conspiracy was also at play.
General Raúl Baduel, commander of the Fourth Paratroopers’ Brigade at the time, acknowledges that he was not exactly shocked by all that came to pass. “It wasn’t a complete surprise, because a number of incidents had already served as indications of what was to come: the whole national strike situation, the protests both here at the level of the capital, as well as in other regions…. And I have a calendar where I made a note on April 5, right there I wrote, ‘The coup is imminent.’ I marked it and I tried to talk to the president, but I couldn’t.”4
It is slightly surprising that Chávez and his closest aides underestimated the internal crisis in the armed forces. There is a good deal of evidence to suggest that, for a long time, some sectors of society had been determined to force Chávez out of office. Those intentions were never a secret, not even in the middle of the crisis. On the night of April 11, when the president’s fate was still a mystery, Colonel Julio Rodríguez Salas, the spokesman for the insurgent military officers, made the following announcement on TV: “Nine months ago, a solid, serious movement began to come together, a movement that fortunately has materialized on this day.”5 There is also evidence suggesting that the coup was far from an isolated plot hatched by a coterie of military officers, and that members of the business community, the media, and certain political parties were also involved. According to this version of the story, the real political operator who served as the nexus among the different groups, was the cardinal of Caracas, Monsignor Ignacio Velasco.
Photo Insert
HUGO CHÁVEZ FRÍAS AS A CHILD, IN BARINAS.
Courtesy Herma Marksman
CHÁVEZ’S GREAT-GRANDFATHER MAISANTA (RIGHT).
Courtesy Herma Marksman
AS A TWENTY-YEAR-OLD CADET IN LIMA, TOASTING WITH HIS FELLOW CADETS FROM COLOMBIA, ECUADOR, BOLIVIA, AND PERÚ. CHÁVEZ IS SEATED THIRD FROM THE RIGHT.
Courtesy Herma Marksman
HUGO CHÁVEZ, SHORTLY AFTER ENTERING THE MILITARY ACADEMY.
Courtesy El Nacional archives
AS EMCEE OF A BEAUTY PAGEANT AT THE MILITARY ACADEMY, 1975.
Courtesy Herma Marksman
THE PAGE DEDICATED TO HUGO CHÁVEZ, JUST SHY OF HIS TWENTY-FIRST BIRTHDAY, IN THE SIMÓN BOLÍVAR YEARBOOK, 1975.
CHÁVEZ (CENTER) CARRIES THE FLAG DURING AN EVENT IN BARINAS IN 1976.
Courtesy Herma Marksman
CHÁVEZ IN MILITARY FATIGUES, 1982.
Courtesy Henry Delgado
DURING A MILITARY DRILL IN 1983.
Courtesy Herma Marksman
CHÁVEZ AND HIS LOVER HERMA MARKSMAN (LEFT) IN THE LATE 1980S, WITH HERMA’S DAUGHTER MERCEDES (BOTTOM) AND SISTER CRISTINA (MIDDLE).
Courtesy Herma Marksman
CHÁVEZ’S MOTHER, ELENA FRÍAS DE CHÁVEZ, IN 1992.
Courtesy La Prensa, Barinas
CHÁVEZ URGES HIS FELLOW CONSPIRATORS TO SURRENDER ON FEBRUARY 4, 1992. THIS WAS CHÁVEZ’S FIRST TELEVISION APPEARANCE.
Courtesy Jesús Castillo
CHÁVEZ’S FIRST WIFE, NANCY COLMENARES, AND THEIR THREE CHILDREN, NEAR THE PRISON, FOLLOWING THE FEBRUARY 4 COUP.
Courtesy Jesús Castillo
DURING THE FIRST INTERVIEW CHÁVEZ GRANTED WHILE IN PRISON.
Courtesy Laura Sánchez
CHÁVEZ IN HIS CELL AT YARE PRISON FOLLOWING THE COUP ATTEMPT.
Courtesy Herma Marksman
HUGO CHÁVEZ SHORTLY AFTER HIS RELEASE FROM PRISON, WEARING A LIQUI-LIQUI, A TRADITIONAL SUIT WORN BY MEN IN THE REGION OF LOS LLANOS.
Courtesy Jesús Castillo
ON A VISIT TO COLOMBIA IN 1994, WITH HIS FRIEND JESÚS URDANETA (MIDDLE) AND HIS BENEFACTOR NEDO PANIZ (RIGHT).
Courtesy Herma Marksman
CHÁVEZ ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL DURING HIS 1998 BID FOR THE PRESIDENCY.
Courtesy Alex Delgado
TAKING THE OATH OF OFFICE ON FEBRUARY 2, 1999, IN THE PRESENCE OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE CONGRESS, LUIS ALFONZO DÁVILA, WHO SWEARS HIM IN, AND OUTGOING PRESIDENT RAFAEL CALDERA (MIDDLE).
Courtesy Ernesto Morgado
CHÁVEZ IN 2000, HOSTING ONE OF HIS FIRST RADIO SHOWS.
Courtesy Alex Delgado
WITH HIS SECOND WIFE, MARISABEL RODRÍGUEZ, DURING AN OFFICIAL PARADE, 2001.
Courtesy Manuel Sardá
WITH MARISABEL AND THEIR DAUGHTER ROSINÉS.
Courtesy Henry Delgado
CHÁVEZ’S ELDEST BROTHER, ADÁN.
Courtesy William Zurek
CHÁVEZ’S YOUNGEST BROTHER, ADELIS.
Courtesy El Nacional archives
CHÁVEZ’S BROTHER NARCISO.
Courtesy El Nacional archives
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p; CHÁVEZ’S BROTHER ARGENIS.
Courtesy El Nacional archives
CHÁVEZ’S BROTHER ANÍBAL.
Courtesy El Nacional archives
HUGO DE LOS REYES CHÁVEZ AND ELENA FRÍAS DE CHÁVEZ.
Courtesy Iván Aponte
A RECENT PHOTO OF ELENA FRÍAS IN BARINAS, WITH HER PUPPY COQUI.
Courtesy La Prensa, Barinas
CHÁVEZ IN FULL-DRESS UNIFORM FOR THE MILITARY PARADE ON PASEO LOS PRÓCERES, JULY 5, 2000.
Courtesy Jesús Castillo
HUGO CHÁVEZ FRÍAS, PRESIDENT OF THE BOLIVARIAN REPUBLIC OF VENEZUELA, IN HIS MILITARY UNIFORM, 2000.
Courtesy Jesús Castillo
A few weeks before the coup, certain representatives of the political and business elite of Caracas met in that city. After offering a blessing to all those present, Monsignor Velasco spoke about the very urgent need to remove the president from office and said he was sorry that the “greens” had not made it to the gathering. This was the prelude to another meeting, held on April 9 at a home in a luxurious neighborhood in southeast Caracas. Apparently, representatives from the military and civilian sectors worked on their conspiracy plan that day. Monsignor Velasco, yet again, served as the link between the civilians and the military personnel and asked them for a vote of confidence that would empower him to designate the person to lead a possible transition government, if it became necessary. It seems probable that, beyond the social predicament and the general friction in Venezuela at the time, a group of opponents of the Chávez government was indeed plotting a coup.
Teodoro Petkoff suggests the following hypothesis: “Both initiatives moved forward in a kind of parallel, and at a certain point, the conspirators galloped over the popular movement. I don’t believe that the popular mobilizations of the previous months were a response to the conspirators’ strategies, but the conspirators—in the last few weeks—most definitely took advantage of them.”6
ON APRIL 11, 2002, a massive protest was staged by the opposition leaders in Caracas. While the most ambitious estimates claim that one million people participated in the march, even the less enthusiastic assessments said there had been at least 500,000 attendees. Whatever the real number, in the middle of the fervor generated by the crowds of people, their temperatures rising as they demanded the resignation of the president, some of the organizers of the protest relented and decided to let the march continue beyond its original destination and on toward Miraflores Palace, despite the fact that they had not been authorized to do so. The protesters needed little encouragement. The collective mood only grew more heated and the crowds were all too anxious to get to the palace and clamor for Chávez’s resignation. At the same time, the pro-Chávez mayor Freddy Bernal summoned the president’s sympathizers to the palace to defend the government. It was just barely noon.
As for the president, he was inside his office at Miraflores, analyzing the situation, receiving information, making decisions. At around one in the afternoon, things began to happen, and fast. National Guard officers blocked the arrival of the protesters outside the gates to Miraflores, and the situation rapidly degenerated into chaos. Bullets seemed to fly in every direction, without warning, without any particular target—just the nearest body. And as blood began to spill onto the multitudes, all of a sudden anything seemed possible.
One hour later, Lucas Rincón Romero, inspector general of the armed forces, accompanied by a group of officers from the High Military Command, appeared on the state-run television station to deny rumors that they had resigned and that the president had been arrested. Rincón Romero explained that there were a few pockets of unrest in the center of Caracas but that Chávez was in his office working. “The situation in the country is one of normality,” he stated.
The situation around Miraflores, however, was anything but normal. To date, it has been impossible to come up with a credible reconstruction of the events of those few hours. The opposition accused the government of unleashing its armed troops, officers, and subordinates on the protesters. The government, on the other hand, accused the opposition of hatching a cynical plot with mercenaries and members of the Metropolitan Police (which reported to the anti-Chávez mayor Alfredo Peña) to open fire on the protesters and foment massive chaos, in order to spark an institutional crisis and pave the way for a coup d’état. Photographs from that day support both theses, and investigations and testimonies have allowed both sides to defend the argument they find most convenient. There have even been documentary films promoting respective versions of the events of April 11. Sadly, there were also many dead and wounded on both sides of the story, people who are no longer pro-or anti-Chávez.
At 3:45 P.M., Chávez decided to “chain” all the television stations in the country to deliver a message to the Venezuelan people. For the first time, he actually seemed nervous, uncomfortable, and tense, and his usual aplomb had all but vanished. He repudiated the intentions of the protest march and, paradoxically, also claimed that the country was doing fine, that everything was normal. It was then that the privately owned television stations decided to take a stand against the official story by dividing their screens in two, placing the president on one side and the painful, bloody images of the confrontations in the city center on the other. This was a very overt challenge to the president’s authority, and in response the government cut the private stations’ signals while the chief executive said his piece. After Chávez delivered his message, the signals went back up and they continued broadcasting images of downtown Caracas. The city was in complete upheaval choked by the acrid smell of tear gas.
After that point, little is known about what was happening with Chávez, who did not reappear on television until early dawn the following day. At approximately 5:30 P.M., he activated Plan Ávila, a highly repressive security operation carried out by military personnel. A few months earlier it would have been all but impossible to imagine Chávez resorting to a measure like this, given his oft-repeated refusal to use the army as an instrument of civil repression. In addition, within the armed forces a complex crisis had suddenly come to a head. The book El acertijo de abril (The April Puzzle), which offers a meticulous analysis of what happened in the armed forces between the eleventh and fourteenth of April, describes one detail that seems to be a telling sign of the nature of things that day: when the president finished his television message, he went back to his office and “changed his clothes. He put on a field uniform.”7 This one image speaks volumes about the direction in which things were headed and reveals that the country’s problems could be resolved only by calling in the military.
Starting in the early afternoon of April 11, certain high military officers began to carry out acts of insurgency. As the night wore on, more and more people made statements against the president declaring he no longer had authority as president. This is the point at which discrepancies begin to appear regarding the day’s events. Some people maintain that it was an orchestrated, highly organized plan to overthrow the government. Some of the generals implicated, however, claim that they had simply been reacting against the order to execute Plan Avila when they refused to lead their soldiers onto the streets to control the disturbances. Chávez, meanwhile, remained inside the palace trying to assess the situation and figure out which forces were on his side. A number of his closest aides were with him by this time. The president had announced his plan to hold a meeting after his television broadcast with the governors loyal to his cause, but the meeting never happened. His mother and his father, the governor of Barinas, were with him in the palace that afternoon. Elena recalls, “It was worse, worse than the fourth [the coup attempt of February 4, 1992]. I was sobbing, begging God to just give me a heart attack.”
The entire country seemed on the verge of a heart attack. Army commander Efraín Vásquez publicly declared that “Until today, I was loyal to you, President.” After that, a considerable number of generals and other high-ranking officials stated that they held Chávez responsible for the violence tha
t had erupted. The first lady and her children were taken to the city of Barquisimeto, in central Venezuela. The signal from the state-run television station was suddenly cut off, and the government’s screen went blank. Luis Miquilena sharply criticized the day’s events, marking his definitive split from what he called a “bloodstained” government. Everything, right then, seemed fraught with tension, uncertainty, and tightly controlled fear. Venezuela was a flurry of whispers, speculation, muffled negotiations. The entire country remained glued to the television and the radio, waiting for something, anything. Maripili Hernández, one of Chávez’s close aides, confirms that by this time “a ton of people were saying that the only answer was to fight to the end and defend Miraflores Palace. Chávez said no. He was going to surrender, he said.”
At around three in the morning, Elena spoke to her son. “He said to me, ‘It looks like we’re leaving, Mamá.’ And I said, ‘All right, we’re leaving, my darling. But don’t you worry because your house is waiting for you. The little house in Barinas, we’ll live there. And if all we find is a banana or some noodles, then that’s what we’ll eat, but we will always be the same family.’ And my son hugged me and then said to me after a moment, ‘Oh, Mamá, I really have made you suffer.’ Without shedding a tear, I said to him, ‘Don’t you say that. The suffering is nothing compared to the great pride I feel as your mother.’ After that I blessed him, kissed him, turned around, and left.” It wasn’t the last time she would see her son that early dawn. A bit later on, outside on the palace grounds, she watched as her son left for Fort Tiuna with a group of military officers.
Hugo Chavez Page 20
