Images of the Caracazo. Photo: Zocalo Public Square.
Venezuela’s Minister of Defense Vladimir Padrino López, in order to commemorate the events of February 27, 1989, known as the Caracazo, published an official statement on his account on the social media network X.
The minister recalled how, on that day, a “popular rebellion filled with indignation and dissatisfaction awakened, in the conscience of the heirs of the Father Liberator, the urgent need for a radical political transformation in Venezuela.”
Below is the full text of Padrino López’s statement:
If there is an event in the contemporary history of our country that redefined its course, it was precisely “El Caracazo” of February 27, 1989, a social tidal wave that represented the most forceful repudiation of neoliberalism and the neocolonial formulas that condemned the Venezuelan people to hunger, poverty, and exclusion, a popular rebellion filled with indignation and dissatisfaction that awakened in the conscience of the heirs of the Father Liberator, the urgent need for a radical political transformation in Venezuela.
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Unfortunately, this event was bloodied by the crime of a sepoy, pro-imperialist, and reactionary government, which, making disproportionate use of public force, ordered a criminal, treacherous, and irresponsible operation against the most vulnerable and dispossessed sectors, victims of the leonine economic measures imposed by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Hundreds of dead, persecuted, and missing were the fateful result of this brutal repression, which had the acquiescence and complicit silence of the “representative democracy” of Puntofijismo.
Fortunately, with the arrival of the Bolivarian Revolution, a new FANB began to be forged; vindicated in its popular, revolutionary, anti-oligarchic, and anti-imperialist character; guided by precepts of social justice, solidarity, and humanism; and merged with the people to protect their most sacred interests, constitutional rights, and social achievements. Hence, my most faithful conviction, that that fateful episode of national commotion will not be repeated in this country, because, in the present time, the children of Bolívar and Chávez, under the leadership of our Commander in Chief, Nicolás Maduro Moros, are determined to strengthen the civil–military union to preserve life, liberty, sovereignty, and national independence at all costs.
Chávez Lives!… The homeland lives on. Independence and a socialist homeland! We will thrive and we will win. The sun of Venezuela is born in Essequibo. Independence or nothing! Always loyal, never traitors.
Caracas, February 27, 2024
Vladimir Padrino López
(RedRadioVE) by Victoria Torres.
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/KW/SL
