“Commander Chávez said that if we had to find a date of birth of the Bolivarian revolution, we would have to look for it in the streets of Caracas, Guarenas and then Venezuela on February 27 and 28,” said the President of the Republic, Nicolás Maduro, after commemorating this February 27 the “popular insurrection” known as the Caracazo (*).
He recalled that on that day in 1989 they underestimated the power of the people who took to the streets in rejection of the economic policies of then President Carlos Andrés Pérez.
“In 1989, the Washington consensus was established, where they privatized the entire country, education, what was left of public health, all labor rights, basic companies in Guayana, and with all that money, one goal: to pay the foreign debt to the IMF,” he said.
In the words of the president, the Caracazo was “the first popular, spontaneous insurrection in the history of America, the first people to rebel against savage capitalism.”
He recalled the atmosphere that was experienced in the streets, “concern, uncertainty, but they overestimated their power,” he said, referring to those who governed the country at that time.
“We are proud of all the historical events, some painful but inevitable, others hopeful,” he concluded.
(*): The “Caracazo” refers to the popular uprising and insurrection on February 27, 1989, against the neoliberal economy measures implemented by then president Carlos Andrés Pérez, which ended in riots, violence and deaths by the hands of the security bodies and military corps under orders of his government.