Published at: 27/03/2024 09:00 PM

Thirty years ago, on Saturday, March 26, 1994, after being in prison for two years, one month and 22 days in the Dignity Prison in San Francisco de Yare, the Commander of the Bolivarian Revolution Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías was released.

• At the time of the presidential pardon taking effect, he was hospitalized. After leaving the walls of the Military Hospital in Caracas, before a press conference, he declared: “First of all I'm going to the Catacombs with the People... The Venezuelan people took me out of prison... Prison was for me a school of maturation, of reflection... The Bolivarian Revolutionary Movement—200 is going to the streets, to take charge, to take political power... We are going to build a new political model in Venezuela!”
• Commander Hugo Chávez Frías had been detained weeks before at the Military Hospital of Caracas to undergo surgery for an eye condition (Pterygium). From there, he was taken aboard a helicopter to Fort Tiuna.
• During his first public event at the Ateneo de Caracas, his statements were to reject any link with Cause R: “I will never belong to Cause R. We do not belong to that political organization.”
• He also stated that “our aspiration is to take power and to achieve this objective, the MBR-200 is being consolidated as a political organization, where various sectors of the population will have maximum participation.”
• He insisted on the need to convene a National Constituent Assembly, stressing that he was always in favor of peaceful processes, but that if the same conditions were present then he would rise up again.
• He denounced that the former Defense Minister, Radamés Muñoz León, sponsored by reactionary sectors of the FAN, the oligarchy and dominant groups, were planning a coup d'etat, supported by the Pentagon, but that he had to abort it because he did not have the support of the Bolivarians: “A retarded generalate and admiralty, troglodyte and gorilla has been leaving. One of its last representatives was the dismissed minister Radamés Muñoz León”.
• He warned that if the situations of February 4 were to arise again: “... it would rise again because history and the People have proved us right. At the same time, he ruled out inciting a popular rebellion and that only the people are able to decide if an exit of force is necessary.”

He assured that he aspired that President Caldera and his team would establish a social balance in the search for a new direction. Referring to the Sosa Economic Recovery Plan proposed by the Caldera government, he said:

• “... the country has already experienced eight Plans of the Nation in its democratic phase, and the last one was disastrous, because it brought Venezuela to the most chaotic situation in its republican history.”
• “This is not a question of designing a short-term program, as in the case of the so-called Sosa Plan, there is no perception of a national strategic policy based on new parameters... mathematical models applied in the past to social, economic and military reality have yielded negative results.”

Mazo News Team