El Caracazo: 36 years since the massacre of a people condemned to hunger and repression

Published at: 27/02/2025 08:15 AM

This Thursday, February 27, marks 36 years of the popular and anti-imperialist rebellion that was suppressed with blood and fire by the Adeco Government of Carlos Andrés Pérez (CAP).

This spontaneous social outbreak, called “El Caracazo”, immediately spread to areas of the metropolitan area of Caracas such as Caricuao, El Valle, Nuevo Circo, La Hoyada, Catia and Petare and in La Guaira, Maracay (Aragua), Valencia (Carabobo), Barquisimeto (Lara), Mérida (Mérida), Barcelona (Anzoátegui) and Ciudad Guayana (Bolivar), among other areas of the country.

At that time, the People opposed a series of economic measures promoted by Carlos Andrés Pérez, which would end up being known as “El Paquetazo”, a plan agreed with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that required major macroeconomic adjustments that suffocated Venezuelans.

The product of this situation led to death and desolation. It is estimated that between 2 thousand and 3 thousand people were massacred, many of them buried in a mass grave, called the Plague, in the General Cemetery of the South in Caracas.

“Capitalism, the bourgeoisie denies the people power, denies the people the government, imposes them, and goes to the extreme of even the most savage repression such as the one that occurred in this valley of Caracas and the country on a day like today in 1989,” Commander Hugo Chávez said in 2011, commemorating the tragedy that the Venezuelan people must have suffered at the hands of the national stateless right.

With this “Shake”, as it was also called, it was the day that the people “came down from the hills”, a wave of looting broke out in the country, mainly of supermarkets, butchers, electronic goods and white goods businesses, which were inaccessible to the large impoverished majority who could not meet their basic needs of life.

In response, the people who had come out bare-chested to claim their right to life, were greeted by the shrapnel of a genocidal regime that, under the mantle of the United States and the big television networks, shot down thousands of Venezuelans, hiding their bodies in mass graves.

“The people were sleeping but that day they woke up suddenly, now one could say it in many ways comrades, companions, sisters and brothers, but on February 27, that Monday of that year 1989, I say, the 21st century began on this planet, the 21st century in the world began in Caracas, it began in Venezuela on a Monday morning, February 27.”

Supreme Commander Hugo Chávez on February 27, 2011.

Commander Chávez said during a speech on national television that the events that occurred in 1989 prompted the plan to take power with the Civic-Military Rebellion of February 4, 1992.

The Caracazo undoubtedly founded the foundations that made Venezuelans understand that a transcendental change was necessary to guide the destiny of the country towards a better future. For the 1998 elections, despite the population's dissatisfaction with the situation of poverty, the recovery of the image of a patriotic army with a Chávez at the helm, with the courage to assume the responsibility of removing the country from the pit into which the neoliberalism of the government of Carlos Andrés Pérez had plunged it, motivated the people to believe and trust in their emancipatory ideas for Venezuela.

36 years after this event, Venezuelans and Venezuelans pay tribute to those courageous men and women who courageously took to the streets to demand social justice.

Mazo News Team