Dedicated to the victims of April
11, 2002
After the brutal murder of 21 innocent people on Baralt Avenue in Caracas, the military institution that until that moment supported the President of the Republic, decided to remove him from power, following the voice of more than one million Venezuelans who took to the streets demanding his resignation. Until that moment, the Armed Forces existed as we knew them: an institution guaranteeing the Constitution that deposed a President as a criminal for having ordered a massacre.
From that moment on and in the eyes of all Venezuelans, a series of errors in the political conduction of the process resulted in the return of Chávez to power. From his resignation communicated to all Venezuelans by the then Inspector General of the Armed Forces, General Lucas Rincón, until his triumphant return, the country watched in astonishment how it was possible that the historic massive protest of more than one million Venezuelans, and the sacrifice of the lives of 21, who demanded Chávez's departure from power on April 11, could be lost in a matter of hours.
But we were also amazed that a high Military Command did not expect anything other than revenge against all those involved on the part of the one who had been removed from power for a few hours. They did not even agree to form a Military Junta that would lead the country to a political transition. From that moment on, the slaughter of the Venezuelan armed forces began, finally turning it into a militia at the service of the regime and its foreign allies. All this without taking into account the subsequent criminal onslaught against those who defended the innocent civilians of the march, locked up for a lifetime in the dungeons of the regime through rigged judicial processes. They were the living victims used by the regime as scapegoats for the murders it committed that day.
April 11, 2002 acted as a sort of calibration of all political and military actors in Venezuela, and was the most irrefutable demonstration of the rottenness of the foundations on which the country was sustained: a murderous regime in power, a clumsy and voracious opposition leadership, and an Armed Forces unaware of their own history. These elements combined resulted in the deepening of a tyranny in Venezuela that began to make its way with the promulgation of the 1999 Constitution.
So aware was Chávez of the crimes he had committed on 11A, that the first thing he did was to accept to leave the country when General Manuel Rosendo proposed him to do so on behalf of the Army (see General Rosendo's statement, Radiografía de una Mentira, La renuncia, in https://youtu.be/GrLz05KHVAw, min 57:45). Venezuela would have had a different story if there had been uniformity in the Armed Forces regarding Chávez's fate, since some Forces demanded that he be tried in the country.
On the other hand, the voracity for power and the clumsiness of those who arrived at Miraflores on the shoulders of that million Venezuelans with the dead of that day, resulted in a decree that dissolved the constituted powers, without any constitutional basis, and even worse, without the support of the Armed Forces. It all seemed to be an operation conducted by a gang of careerists and apprentices of political sorcery. This could not have had any other result than the "resignation" at the request of the military of Pedro Carmona Estanga, who had sworn himself in a few hours before. The correlation of forces within the Armed Forces at that time decided our destiny with the return of Hugo Chávez to power.
Never before has Venezuela been closer to solving this problem than on that day. From there, we may draw some conclusions. Not even the military who had in their hands Chávez's resignation and his decision to leave Venezuela, knew what to do with power. When had this ever happened before in Venezuela? Never! Neither did the civilians who reached Miraflores have the political sagacity to achieve a civil-military balance that would respect a minimum of constitutionality to safeguard the power that had fallen into their hands as a consequence of the reaction of a brave people. They wanted everything and got nothing! Did they lose? No, all Venezuelans lost.
From that moment on, the regime learned and protected itself. It deepened the model it had started with the Castro's in Cuba and made it impossible for another military uprising to occur. It has taken them 20 years to sophisticate their information systems with toadies and spies in the barracks, and to put the Armed Forces at the orders of foreign officers who look after the political and economic interests of their countries in Venezuela. Today it is impossible for anyone to move a razor blade in a barracks without the regime knowing about it. In this scenario, a military uprising is virtually impossible. That is why you see the military prisons full of officers who have tried to make a change without success. Even so, what I learned from my father is still valid, the military are with a government until they rise up, as we saw 20 years ago today.
What happened to the political opposition? The regime learned as well. After the disaster they bitterly experienced on 11A, they realized that such voracity could be bought and emasculated through negotiations. And those who refused were to be persecuted and imprisoned. After 2002, the next political episode in Venezuela was the Revocatory Referendum, which arose after a negotiation with the International Community. Remember the Negotiation Table and Agreements 2002-2003 and the facilitation process of the OAS and the Carter Center? Chávez delayed to the point of satiety from the NEC this Recall Referendum until 2004 (remember the Firmazo, the Reafirmazo and the Reparos?) and made a fraud with new machines accepted by the opposition, with the approval of the International Community.
The path from then on has been "electoral". Do you remember 2006 and the presidential candidacy of Manuel Rosales, and then in 2012 that of Henrique Capriles? Again another fraud by the CNE, with the approval of the opposition (see Eric Ekvall - Presidential Elections 2012, in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSa0kgHgcjs). And it would be from this process of continuous elections controlled by a flawed electoral power, that we still have not come out of this hole where we -or they got us- Venezuelans into. And still at this point in time, after everything that has happened to us, this is still the best offer that a bought opposition sector, devoid of ideas, has to offer.
Today marks the 20th anniversary of the real beginning of this misfortune. Perhaps the young people who are leading the political opposition from the Interim Government do not feel it as much as those of us who lived through it, and in some cases played a leading role in it, because by that year some of them were still in their teens. They know the story because they have read it or have been told it, but the story is not the same as having lived it.
Many Venezuelans, especially those who participated in that historic march of April 11, feel this date as a wound in their own flesh, and continue to wait for a change that has not yet arrived, and its possibility is in the hands of a leadership that has proven to be as clumsy as the one that led the events of April 11. And if you do not feel the need for change with the necessary depth, there will not be the necessary strength to do what needs to be done.
Twenty years are enough. It is time for another leadership capable of doing what is necessary to lead the country to that change. Venezuela can have another chance because it was the same people who gave it to that fatuous leadership on April 11. Let us then find the appropriate leaders and let us build again the conditions to successfully achieve the change that Venezuelans are still shouting for. Let us learn something from these 20 years…
Caracas, April 11, 2022
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