Aletho News

Venezuelans Commemorate Popular Uprising against Privatization

By Edward Ellis – Correo del Orinoco International – March 6, 2011

Thousands of Venezuelans from all over the South American country took to the streets last Sunday to commemorate the 22nd anniversary of the seminal uprisings that marked the beginning of the end of neoliberalism in the now socialist nation.

Speaking at a rally held in the Caracas neighborhood of Petare, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez referred to the uprising, known as the Caracazo, as the day “when the people woke up”.

“[The Caracazo] opened the doors of a new history and here we are, 22 years later,” he said.

Understood to be the historical antecedent to Venezuela’s current Bolivarian Revolution, the street rebellions of February 27, 1989 swept across the country in defiance of a structural adjustment package implemented by the International Monetary Fund under the presidency of Carlos Andres Perez.

Spurred on by egregious price hikes in public transportation and scarcity of important consumer commodities, street riots, looting and spontaneous political protests rocked the poor areas of the capital Caracas and other urban centers throughout the national territory.

The protests lasted for more than two days as the Perez government implemented a curfew and sent the armed forces into the streets to put down the uprising.

Although the official death toll resulting from the massacre that ensued has been put at 300, experts and witnesses estimate the number of disappearances as a result of the repression to be closer to three thousand.

“Thousands of Venezuelans were massacred in 1989 by the so-called ‘democrats’ who today accuse me of being a tyrant and who today say they are the hope of the nation,” Chavez said, pointing out that neither the United Nations nor the Organization of American States came out against the Perez government after the bloodshed.

As part of the commemoration events on Sunday, the Venezuelan Public Attorney’s Office oversaw the burial of more than seventy cadavers determined by forensic anthropologists to be victims of state security forces during the Caracazo.

The cadavers, exhumed from a common grave, were laid to rest in the General de Sur cemetery in Caracas where a monument was erected in their honor and in remembrance of all those murdered during the uprising.

“These acts will never happen again in Venezuela… We will never allow an official or police force to act as they did during the Caracazo,” said Attorney General Luisa Ortega Diaz.

According to Diaz, the security bodies of the current government represent a drastic break with the past because they “respect life and understand what it means to respect human rights and love the Venezuelan people”, she said.

With respect to bringing those responsible for the violence of the Caracazo to justice, the Attorney General informed that the investigations are on-going. “We will continue with the investigative work. We already have some information to indict some people,” Diaz said.

As the first popular and widespread revolt against the free-market policies of the Washington Consensus, the importance of the Caracazo in relation to Venezuela and Latin America’s leftward turn cannot be understated. … Full article

March 7, 2011 - Posted by aletho | Economics, Solidarity and Activism