February 7, 2022
After his arrival to power, Hugo Chávez strongly insisted on the construction of a model of society that would go beyond the traditional pact between the dominant classes, represented in the Venezuelan importing and financial bourgeoisie.
As he described it at the closing of the first International Meeting of Left Parties, “The Berlin Wall was falling, (…) neoliberalism emerged then as the only alternative (…)all over the planet, but then a strange thing, Caracas rose up. The Washington consensus reigned in Latin America, but Surprise!, a popular rebellion in Caracas against neoliberalism (…) We are talking about 1989, when the fire started in Caracas, popular rebellion, the Caracazo. There were several days of rebellion, thousands of dead, but that was the beginning, a few months later, three years later a patriotic military rebellion on February 4, 1992, then a few months later, second patriotic civic-military rebellion, November 27, 1992; that is to say, Venezuela exploded”.
Thirty years have passed since the historic “For now” pronounced by Commander Hugo Chávez on February 4, 1992, one of the first and most important milestones in the construction of the Chavista project.
The facts
The civic-military rebellion entitled “Operation Zamora” began on February 3 in the afternoon hours, and included assaults in different garrisons of the National Army in the states of Aragua, Carabobo, Zulia, Miranda and the Capital District.
It was planned within the Venezuelan Armed Forces by a clandestine group known as “Movimiento Bolivariano 200 – MBR-200” (Bolivarian Movement 200 – MBR-200), of which different middle commanders and professional officers were part, among them the then Captain Hugo Chávez Frías.
The immediate objective was the seizure of political power, wresting it from the neoliberal governments that alternated in power. Its base of support was found in the discontent of the Venezuelan people with the unequal economic measures, the pact of elites, and the yoke of bipartisanship and clientelism, which had its greatest expression in the social revolt of February 27, 1989 known as “the Caracazo”.
Three years later, after several hours of combat and in view of the failure to take Caracas -the main bastion of the operation-, in the afternoon of February 4, Chávez declared:
“Comrades, unfortunately for now the objectives we set ourselves were not achieved in the capital city. That is to say, here in Caracas we did not manage to control power. You did very well over there, but it is time to avoid more bloodshed, it is time to reflect and new situations will come and the country must definitely head towards a better destiny”.
The revolutionary character of the uprising
The Venezuelan history of the second half of the 20th century is marked by multiple crises hidden behind the illusion of modernist development promoted by oil exploitation and the consequent obtaining of income and its unequal and unjust distribution.
The neo-liberal package applied in 1989 by the recently arrived government of Carlos Andres Perez included a series of policies which contemplated the extreme precariousness of the lives of Venezuelan workers, successive privatizations/opening of State enterprises to foreign capital, and a group of hypocritical welfare measures intended to compensate the most disadvantaged sectors through direct subsidies and other measures -always within the limits of the system-.
The “Caracazo” opened the first crack in the Fourth Republic and in the Punto Fijo Pact. Although repression prevailed over popular discontent, at that time lacking leadership, the underlying conditions did not change.
When launching a new onslaught three years later, the revolutionary movement born in the ranks of the national army gathered the generalized popular discontent with neo-liberalism which was only deepening. Discontent that at that time did not find political expression in the traditional institutions of the State or in electoral participation.
The democratic path
The 1992 failure marked the beginning of a path that would allow Chávez to win the 1998 elections. The daring onslaught of a group of professional military men, sui generis in thought and action, in contrast with the Latin American military doctrines that violently scourged the peoples of the region during the second half of the last century, was the first organized response to a people drowned in popular fervor but without clear objectives and representation.
The presidential pardon received in 1994 by the 23 prisoners of the 1992 revolts, generated the objective conditions for the participation within the traditional democracy of the revolutionary movement, which would later become the political party “Movimiento V República – MVR” and which would triumph in an unprecedented way in the elections at the end of the century in Venezuela.
This process was determined by a nationwide deployment that called for the re-foundation of the Republic, based on the transformation of the inherited order through a National Constituent Assembly. The objective was to put an end to the false party alternation of the last 40 years, based on the negotiation of power quotas and positions within the state bureaucracy.
The fight against the pact of elites
During his campaign, and with more strength after his arrival to power, Chávez insisted strongly on the construction of a model of society that would go beyond the traditional pact between the dominant classes, represented in the Venezuelan importing and financial bourgeoisie, and promiscuously related to the ruling political sectors.
In his discursive evolution, he laid bare the anti-neoliberal character of the revolution that was being gestated from the grassroots, but also from the structure of the State and the government he now presided over, designed in its entrails to suit the interests of big capital.
The socialism of the 21st century was taking shape with a clear historical enemy: the conciliation of classes contained in multiple forms in a State that acts as administrator of a wealth that it distributes at convenience. Also with a clear objective: the construction of social justice as the only possible way.
The validity of the anti-neoliberal struggle
The milestone of February 4 becomes in this historical moment more than a simple commemoration of Venezuelan history.
It is enough to make a brief tour of recent events, and a parallelism with Venezuelan history at the end of the XX century, which although delicate becomes necessary, to account for some setbacks in the struggle against class conciliation and the pact of elites.
After the physical departure of Chávez in 2013, and as a consequence of the deep multifactorial crisis Venezuela is going through today, it is more necessary than ever to put under the magnifying glass certain economic, social and political measures that constitute the strategy of the Chavista project, struggling to survive in the midst of the maelstrom of world capitalism and imperialist aggression.
The famous “for now” was then a promise of counter-offensive action against a project that did not respond to the yearnings and rights of the exploited and impoverished majorities, and should now be the premise of counter-offensive action against the interests that are determined to revoke the dignity that the Bolivarian Revolution gave back to the people.
Source: Alainet, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English