El Caracazo marks a two-day holiday in working-class history of the world’s first popular rebellion against International Monetary Fund, World Bank, World Trade Organization and “Washington Consensus.”

🇻🇪⭐⚒️🚩The 27th of February: The Genesis of Chavismo!

It has been 35 years since el Caracazo, on February 27th and 28th of 1989, when the working class of Venezuela led the world's first popular rebellion against the IMF, WTO, and World Bank.

Those corrupt imperialist institutions had made a neocolonial deal with the traitor “president” Carlos Andrés Pérez, also known as CAP🤡, an imperial vassal from the deceased Punto Fijo Pact period of the infamous 4th Republic.

PuntoFijism was a neoliberal US puppet regime backed by imperialist media that upheld it as a "perfect democracy," while in practice it was a genocidal, anticommunist dictatorship that ruled over four decades, commencing with the US's fascist Operation Cóndor in the 1950s and lasting until February 2nd, 1999.

Research carried out last July by El Correo del Orinoco reveals how neoliberal policies of the governments of the so-called Fourth Republic led to pervasive poverty. “By the first half of 1989, in the context of the explosion of El Caracazo, general poverty in the country was 62.93%, while extreme poverty reached 30.12%.”

During this period, a neoliberal package of International Monetary Fund "reforms" was applied to the letter by the Democratic Action party, led today by Henry Ramos Allup. They asked the people to make sacrifices in exchange for the promise of economic improvement. In reality, this meant neoliberal shock doctrine, asset-stripping, and wholesale capitalist looting. The result for the second half of 1989 was more misery: general poverty reached 70.56% of the population; that is, 7 percentage points more compared to the first half,” according to the Orinoco study entitled “Humanitarian Crisis: a matrix set up to encourage foreign intervention in the country.”

The draconian deal led to 100% inflation and a spike in gasoline prices, a 30% increase in bus fares, deregulation of the prices for basic necessities, arbitrary privatization of state enterprises, the freezing of salaries and wages, and cuts in all “expenses” or budgets destined for the social arena, as well as a progressive increase in the national external debt.

This unbearable misery sparked two days of a spontaneous and fierce, popular working-class rebellion. The uprising led to mass expropriation of the wealth and property of the bourgeois, colonial plutocrats of PuntoFijism. The rebellion, which first began in the city of Guarenas in Miranda State, later reached the capital city and spread nationwide, causing dozens of burned buses and the looting of shops.

A deadly response: A week of bloody repression that left over 5000 dead

After the events of Feb 27th - 28th, 1989 and the popular expropriations against the bourgeoisie followed a week of genocidal state terrorist repression. Over 5000 people were killed or disappeared in Caracas alone, while many more nationwide succumbed to PuntoFijism's brutality, thanks to the backing and training by CIA and Mossad paramilitaries.

In an attempt to halt the popular rebellion, Carlos Andrés Pérez suspended constitutional guarantees of the Magna Carta of 1961, including personal freedom and security, freedom of movement, inviolability of the home, freedom of expression, the right to assembly, and the right to demonstrate. But the popular movement remained on the streets, determined to stop the implementation of the announced economic measures. Consequently, state security shot demonstrators in a bloody repression.

These events had two results: first, an unprecedented massacre in the history of the Republic. Second, a paradigm shift in the raising of class consciousness to change the system and bring back a representative democracy.

Awakening of the consciousness of a people

On February 2nd, 1999, Commander Chávez assumed the presidency of Venezuela with an oath that marked the beginning of a profound process of changes: "I swear before God, I swear before the Homeland, I swear before my People that on this moribund Constitution (1961), I will promote the democratic transformations necessary for the New Republic to have a Magna Carta appropriate to the New Times. I swear!"

Commander Chávez had won his first election for President of Venezuela on December 6, 1998 with 56.20% of the votes, putting an end to the bipartisanship exercised by the Democratic Action and Copei parties, which had handed the country over to western imperialism.

After the triumph of Commander Chávez, the Venezuelan People had another massive victory: the Constitutional Referéndum. This referendum gave birth to the 1999 Constitution and ushered in the 5th Republic, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

For the eternal commander, Hugo Chávez, Caracazo had been “the spark that ignited the engine of the Bolivarian Revolution,” since it made the population wake up and promoted the coup d'état plan, which he led, on February 4th, 1992.

Chavez once said during a speech in 2011 that "...February 27th is not over! Because it continues to raise its cry and its song of pain and of hope and of clamor for that it has already said a better world (...) 27F was a day of popular rebellion. It's a lie that it was an unconscious mob ..."

Chávez added that "the bourgeoisie should not forget that one of the causes of the Caracazo was the increase in poverty (...) product of neoliberalism that is aspiring to return to Venezuela.”

The current president of the Republic, Nicolás Maduro Moros, echoed these words: "A rebellion of millions, it was called the Caracazo, but it was the 'Venezolanazo', millions of rebels in the streets saying enough is enough!, after two centuries of betrayals, looting, repression of the fourth republic, which denied social rights to the invisible and crushed people, who were only sought every 5 years to get their vote."

On Tuesday, February 27th, 2024, Maduro wrote on his Twitter account @NicolasMaduro, "I congratulate the beautiful march of our people who took to the streets of Caracas to commemorate the 31 years of the Caracazo and to say NO to neoliberalism, NO to capitalism and NO to the interventionism of the Yankee empire. We are standing, in fight and victory. Long live Venezuela!"

For more, read our article with victims and eyewitness accounts narrating events. Stay tuned to The Revolution Report for posts with links to relevant documentaries.

Independencia y Patria Socialista!

Viviremos y Venceremos!