Coup and Countercoup in 21st Century Venezuela: April, Today

By Misión Verdad – Apr 11, 2025

We republish this special work from last year to remember and analyze the events of April 2002, as relevant today to national sociopolitical praxis as to the historiography of the Bolivarian Revolution. The technologies of the coup, the rise of fascism, and the political and geopolitical intricacies of that era have been updated, but not overcome, in the current phase of aggression by a national and US extremist far-right that is playing with fire (economic, commercial, and violent in various dimensions) to attempt to forcefully bring about regime change. The countercoup, to a similar extent, remains the unification of the sectors of the country that continue to champion Venezuela’s right to exist, under the banner of sovereignty and not colony. It is (always) opportune to bring up, especially during these dates, what happened and read it in a contemporary light, as if to gather our own, organize it, and make sense of it amid the chaos. It tells us who we are or have been and offers clues as to what we can be as a people.

The events of April 11–13, 2002, are remembered with sorrow but also with lessons that have ever since been important for the consolidation of the Bolivarian and Chavista project.

If it hadn’t been for the line of resistance established by the people around the Miraflores Palace in Caracas and other important sites in Venezuela, the fascist dictatorship of far-right business and political sectors would have definitively prevailed.

Commander Hugo Chávez recounted in a television program commemorating April 11th that the people began arriving at Miraflores after anti-Chávez politicians and media outlets appealed to their insurrectionist “until the end” slogan, with which they led the opposition march convened that day toward the seat of government [Miraflores Palace in Caracas]. They came from far away, from the outskirts of Caracas, from the adjacent hills and mountains: Petare, La Guaira.

The people, aware of the approaching danger, began to establish a line of resistance without anyone’s order. A group of traitorous soldiers managed to immobilize almost the entire Armed Forces and withdrew troops, the National Guard, and security forces, leaving the field clear for the opposition march. Commander Chávez compared the coup maneuver to a soccer game: the defense withdraws and the goalkeeper is tied up. Something similar happened. The people understood the script and arrived at Miraflores, established a line of resistance, trenches, and assumed their role, accompanied by a steadfast group of patriotic soldiers.

The coup plotters were coming from several directions. A very violent party was advancing toward the El Calvario area, armed with long weapons and hand grenades; a paramilitary combat force largely made up of traitorous soldiers and hitmen. They attempted to operate along Baralt Avenue and at the Fermín Toro High School, organized into several marching fronts, each with a violent and coup-supporting vanguard. The snipers were well positioned and managed to control the surrounding high ground. They clashed with the resistance of a patriotic group of National Guardsmen and soldiers from the Military Household—the Honor Guard—without using firearms: that was Commander Chávez’s order.

Until the last minute
The April 11 coup was woven live and direct, in public view, disguised as social and democratic demands and a false flag: the politically motivated murder of innocent civilians to criminalize the Bolivarian government, a tactic they have repeated ad nauseam ever since. The only way to prevent the coup would have been for Commander Chávez to surrender to the so-called Venezuelan bourgeoisie and the empire. That was the only way to prevent it, but the Commander never backed down, and the people supported him.

Without the line of resistance and the group of patriotic soldiers, the fascist march would have achieved its objective: to storm the Miraflores Palace and assassinate Chávez. That’s why, every April 11th, we pay tribute to the martyrs of Puente Llaguno, to the unarmed people who resisted the bullets of fascism.

Commander Chávez always expressed his gratitude for the people’s efforts during those days. He said in the aforementioned television program, “Thanks to their sacrifice, I am alive. So, what is left for me? To fight, fight, and fight until the last day of my life. Let us make the dream for which they died a reality, like so many martyrs throughout these years.” These words are deeply relevant today.

The enemy took control on April 11th, fascism having momentarily won. On the 12th, the civil-military rebellion began to restore the Bolivarian Revolution to power. The Honor Guard remained loyal and joined the popular resistance line gathered around Miraflores Palace.

Now they have different, older faces, but the same enemy was walking through the halls of Miraflores that April 12th, celebrating, hugging. Commander Chávez remarked that “the cemeteries of the Fourth Republic were opened and the unburied corpses arrived there. They took this [Miraflores Palace], believing the mission had been done.”

They went through the school of fascism on that occasion and continued to employ those practices. Many of the opposition groups who were involved in and supported or approved the brief dictatorship of Pedro Carmona Estanga continue to call for a coup, an insurrection, and military insubordination against the government and the state. The conspiracy continues to attempt to destabilize the country and assassinate President Nicolás Maduro. They continue to try to sabotage the electrical system, the oil industry, and the national economy.

Cualquier ciudadano venezolano puede certificar la importancia de las jornadas del 11, 12 y 13 de abril de 2002 para la historia contemporánea, teniendo un buen número de implicaciones en diferentes ámbitos que destacamos en esta nueva publicación https://t.co/O7BWEwBn4a
— MV (@Mision_Verdad) April 12, 2022

April 13: Alternative to fascism
In the face of the fascist coup plots, the responsibility we Venezuelans have is to continue strengthening the fertile ground of the Bolivarian project, confronting and defeating these factions, or any others that emerge on any battlefield.

On April 13, a military operation with broad popular support restored presidential power to Chávez, thus inaugurating a new stage of the revolutionary process.

After that day, we began to talk about anti-imperialism and, later, socialism. The coup and its countercoup contributed powerfully to further shaping the course of the Bolivarian Revolution and deepening it. The call since then has been to continue to better shape that path, as President Maduro also constantly warns.

The events of April 11–13 could be compared to the successful resistance to the US invasion of Playa Girón against the Cuban Revolution. A historical analogy that may very well be worth mentioning regarding the turn taken by both the Cuban and Venezuelan Revolutions following direct US intervention.

“Thank you, media”
Let’s analyze what emerged from this in terms of politics and history, geopolitics, and technologies for “regime change.” It’s about recording the phenomena into other dimensions beyond what actually happened.

As the first media coup in history, the political nature of private media in Venezuela must be highlighted, dating back to the days when the main television channels and newspapers began to influence public opinion in favor of or against certain currents and actions of political parties, social movements, and administrative programs that would have a significant impact on national dynamics.

Marcel Granier, president of RCTV, played a pivotal role during the 2002 coup. His TV network enforced a news blackout of the events in Caracas that culminated in the kidnapping of President Chávez under a policy of “zero Chavismo” on television screens on April 11th. Instead, he introduced a narrative that gave way not to information but to the sentimental construction of a consensus in favor of the regime change occurring in real time.

Let us recall the expression on [Venezuelan far-right journalist] Napoleón Bravo’s television program on April 12, 2002 [the day after the alleged resignation of President Chavez]: “Thank you, media.”

We can see the same thing happening with Russia across the Western world. The closure of channels and the restriction and censorship of RT and Sputnik websites by media conglomerates and Big Tech are effectively shutting down the broadcast of information and analysis that diverges from US and European coverage, not only of the Russian Special Military Operation in Ukraine, but of all events around the world.

This factor simultaneously produces a shift in the way all things Russian are viewed, resulting in an attitude of hostility and “cultural cancellation” that stems from the behavior in April 2002—and thereafter—when people were motivated to target all things Chavista by the opposition’s extremist media and political spokespersons, openly protected by the US umbrella. In this context, there is a continuity of procedures, with political and cultural motivations that triggered the media.

The work of [far-right media outlets] RCTV and El Nacional, among other media outlets, producing political consequences is no coincidence. It is also not a coincidence that it led to a fascist agenda of persecution and “cancellation” of Chavismo on April 11 and 12 [2002]. The media coup fueled the political coup.

In this sense, [RCTV head] Granier’s political and media work also extended from the 1970s until 2006, when RCTV’s official broadcasting license expired.

On the international fringe of coup and chaos
On the other hand, from an international perspective, the United States was taking actions in different geopolitical scenarios that had consequences for different national dynamics in 2002.

In 2001, the invasion of Afghanistan occurred. In early 2003, the White House—then led by George W. Bush—was preparing for the invasion of Iraq.

In 2002, following the coup and countercoup in Venezuela, the US State Department designated North Korea, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, and Syria as “state sponsors of terrorism.” Since then, the economic, financial, and commercial offensive against all these countries has intensified over the years. In some, US military operations have wreaked havoc, even leading to regime changes: Iraq, Libya, and Sudan. In Syria, where a US base still occupies part of the oil-rich northwest, they were unable to overthrow the government of Bashar al-Assad; however, it remains a source of logistics and protection for ISIS and al-Qaeda terrorists.

#12Abr Del 11 al 13 y 14 de abril: una cronología del golpe de 2002 https://t.co/4BFU0JFYVC @Mision_Verdad pic.twitter.com/iOQO3kK6WD
— Fundación Pakito Arriaran (@solidaridadEH) April 12, 2021

Venezuela shared a place on the geopolitical map in Western aspirations for regime change. While control of national agendas in the Bolivarian Republic and several of the aforementioned countries is no longer a prerogative of the United States, as our country once orbited under Washington’s influential reach throughout the 20th century, it was widely believed in the US capital that the same result they planned for Iraq and, later, Libya could be achieved under the coup d’état format and the establishment of a government led by businessmen and politicians—who today enjoy its protection.

The fact that the April 2002 [far-right] protests ended in resounding failure didn’t mean the White House would stop pursuing impeachment actions. Then came the oil sabotage, led by the same actors involved in the coup months earlier, including the Venezuelan Workers’ Confederation (CTV), Fedecámaras, certain PDVSA leaders, and the Democratic Coordinator (Coordinadora Democratica). According to the People’s Power Ministry of Petroleum, these incidents resulted in losses estimated at some $16 billion.

Then, in 2005, Commander Chávez denounced Operation Balboa, known as the “Specific Operational Planning Exercise Balboa.” It was part of the Second Joint Staff Course of the Spanish Armed Forces in May 2001 and was attended by guest officers from several countries. The operation consisted of a military exercise by the Spanish army, a NATO member, held between May 3 and 19 of that year. Operation Puma, an Argentinian military exercise that took place between April and June 2019 and whose mission was the “humanitarian invasion” of Venezuela under the format of a multinational coalition, was likely a strategic continuation of Balboa.

In the 2000s, the White House carried out a series of overt and covert military interventions, some successful and others unsuccessful, to shift the international landscape in its favor. The April coup can be interpreted within this framework of operations, given that the individuals involved in it have close connections to the US establishment (see Leopoldo López, Julio Borges, Iván Simonovis, Pedro Carmona Estanga, María Corina Machado).

One should not forget, as even El País of Spain reported at the time, the role of the Pentagon in the coup events:

“US Lieutenant Colonel James Rodgers, installed on the fifth floor of Army Command, is said to have advised the generals who disobeyed Chávez and remained with them until their defeat. US Embassy spokesman John Law denied a complicity that does not seem far-fetched given that US Ambassador Charles Shapiro, accompanied by Spanish Ambassador Manuel Viturro, met with Carmona after the latter had dissolved Congress and empowered himself to legislate by decree until elections were called.”

April 2002 in Venezuela was intertwined with various geopolitical issues, amid several US and NATO military movements in the region (Haiti in 2004), Southwest Asia, and Africa. Another pin on the map of Western operations.

Finally, if we trace the historical actions and motivations of the anti-Chavista movement in Venezuela, we can see the continuity between the factors and actors at work in April 2002 and the other coup attempts over the past two decades.

We have already mentioned politicians Leopoldo López, Julio Borges, and María Corina Machado. However, we should not underestimate the role of Henrique Capriles, signatory of the Carmona Decree and protagonist of the siege of the Cuban embassy in Caracas, a crime under international law.

The Spanish state, like the United States, also bears a share of responsibility in many of the destitution scenarios, including the protection of Leopoldo López after his escape.

April, today
For its part, the Venezuelan business sector played an important role during the most intense years of the internal economic war, particularly in the exorbitant rise in prices that, in part, caused inflation unprecedented in the history of Venezuela. The combination of this scenario with the US blockade and embargo of the national economy provided an ideal breeding ground for various coup plots over the last decade that President Nicolás Maduro’s government had to successfully confront, yielding current political benefits.

The anti-Chavista media continues to be overwhelmed by its capacity to broadcast bursts of hoaxes, fake news, and channels for manufacturing consensus among its audience. Between one attempt at impeachment and another, its role continues to play a pivotal role in the information war and as a theater of operations for psychological manipulation, especially in the sector that draws on the resources of USAID, NED, and other associated NGOs.

PSUV Leader Diosdado Cabello: April 11-12 Was the Beginning of Civil-Military Union in Venezuela

Much of the reason Juan Guaidó was “recognized” as “interim president” rests on the media narrative that echoes the US mandate nationally and internationally, a vivid example of the information bias experienced in April 2002. At the same time, it serves as a transmission belt for the message of political and cultural hatred against everything Chavismo does, thinks, and represents since those days. Nothing has had greater continuity than the denigration endorsed by the media courts and Big Tech in favor of anti-Chavismo supporters.

In response, the Venezuelan state has created a strand that binds the Bolivarian National Armed Force (FANB) to the conduct and expectations of the politicized and organized population within Chavismo, an originally Chavista organization known as the civic-military union, which has had opportunities to demonstrate its ability to respond to the counterattacks that have been unleashed in the years to come.

We can talk about the Battle of the Bridges in February 2019 and the dismantling of Operation Gideon in 2020 as a very clear switch. However, we can also mention the experience of the CLAP program—especially in other regions of the country outside of Caracas—considering that the economic and social area is one of the most important edges in the strategy of continued coup against the Bolivarian Republic, since there lies the opposition’s expectation that citizens will take the initiative to overthrow the Bolivarian Government—as in 2014 and 2017.

Tested by fire for over 20 years, Venezuela’s best weapon to counter attempts to snuff out its right to exist as an independent and sovereign nation remains the Bolivarian Government and the FANB in conjunction with the mobilized people as integrated actors.

(Misión Verdad)

Translation: Orinoco Tribune

OT/JRE/SF