Published at: 28/02/2024 09:00 PM

• To analyze the events that occurred in Venezuela, between February 27 and the first half of March 1989, it is necessary to start from the fact that it was a real popular eruption that broke out against those who marginalized the people socially, economically and politically until it forced it to explode.
• For 31 years, Democratic Action and Copei installed a true poverty factory in Venezuela. The streets were the scene of the People's response.
• Guarenas was the national epicenter of this social shock, whose shock wave immediately rose to Caracas, reaching the states of La Guaira, Carabobo, Aragua, Lara, Bolívar, Mérida and Zulia.
• To arrest her, Carlos Andrés Pérez authorized the use of public force against a huge unarmed town that went out to look for food.
• Between February 27 and March 11, 1989, the morgues in Caracas were saturated, and funeral homes in the capital reported more than 90 daily services for people attacked by the repressive forces of the State.
• As of March 5, in the metropolitan area of Caracas alone, according to unofficial figures, 800 victims were estimated to have fallen as a result of the government's genocidal action.
• An even larger number of unidentified bodies were transferred to the mass grave of La Peste.
• Under the shadow of the curfew, hundreds of gunshot wounded were admitted to hospitals.
• There were a large number of victims who entered the statistics in Guarenas, Los Teques, La Guaira, Maracaibo, Valencia, Barquisimeto, San Félix, Puerto Ordaz, Mérida, San Cristóbal and Ciudad Bolívar.
• Ten days after February 27 and 28, the government was still killing people. A repressive dynamic broke out within the police forces. Unjustified searches, arbitrary arrests, humiliation of people and even the theft of property and money found in those houses.
• The operation to rescue goods taken from commercial establishments became, in many cases, an act of police abuse by officials.
• In this phase, the metropolitan police, overwhelmed by the situation, acted shooting left and right to try to calm the looting with a strong dose of destructive violence.
• The DISIP took advantage of the situation to mount selective hunting of individuals identified as subversives.
• With the guarantees suspended, the PM, the DISIP and the PTJ increased abuses.
• The Venezuelan people took to the streets, regardless of class, and expressed themselves in the only language left to them by the elites: social upheaval.
• What happened? :
• Against the hoarding, the town spread like a shock wave that penetrated supplies and supermarkets, finding in their warehouses the products that their owners had denied for previous weeks, waiting for prices to rise.
• While in New York, Miguel Rodríguez was signing a memorandum of understanding with the International Monetary Fund, a very powerful time bomb was gradually installed because of this situation of structural injustice.
• The highly sensitive fuse to this bomb was set by the government of Carlos Andrés Pérez.
• Some small merchants opened their doors on their own initiative so that people would take the food, without destroying the place and, if they were esteemed by the people, for their honesty and supportive attitude, they were respected.
• Representative democracy, inaugurated in 1958, was characterized precisely because it was founded precisely on a pact between economic, political, religious and military elites. The Venezuelan people were more an object than a subject of the decisions of these associated elites. Until the differences in the distribution of wealth became scandalous and people desperate for shortages and hunger took to the streets.
• During the third phase of this popular rebellion, the government of Carlos Andrés Pérez declared a “State of siege”, and the Minister of Internal Relations, Alejandro Izaguirre, collapsed in front of the cameras, handing over to the Armed Forces and the police forces the responsibility of restoring public order.
• The political status quo, the business elites, the senior clergy and some generals were carried away by the conviction of a country willing to sign a blank letter for any measure taken by the newly elected president.

Mazo News Team