Under the teargas of the Caracazo´s

Twenty years later with still brighten the death in our chest(West Bay Tour 009)

::PANELIST

Rodolfo Montes de Oca (1985-) Attorney, writer and autonomous activist of Venezuela, born in 1985 in Caracas, graduated in law in the Catholic University Andres Bello. Long time co-editing and member of the anarchist newspaper “El Libertario” and founder the local chapter of the Anarchist Black Cross.

In the past was involving in communitarians activities like the first autonomous space in Venezuela call “Centro Social de Estudios Libertarios” in the popular neighborhood of Sarria. Also was de co-organizer of different anarchopunk festivals, the Social Alternative Forum (FSA) and the first abolitionist congress of Latin America call “Black September”.

Columnist of different publications like, “Libertarian Verb” (Mexico), “Point Zero” (Chile), “The Freedom” (Costa Rica) “Point of Fugue” (Spain). It has the following leaflets published: “Anarchism and Prisons” (Chile, Mexico, Spain and Venezuela), “Nucleus of Freedom” (Mexico, Spain and Venezuela), “Shaking the Global Panoptic I and II” ( Mexico and Venezuela), “The Penitentiary Hydra” (Colombia, Mexico and Venezuela) “The ABC opposite to the student movement” (Venezuela) “Barbaric Venezuela” (Venezuela) and “Behind the Anarchist Black Cross” (Poland)

In 2010 going to publishing his first book. “Anarchism in Venezuela, the history of a social movement”

January 2009 start own law office call “Indubio Pro Reo” (http://indubioproreovzla.blogspot.com)

2

:: CONFERENCES

Anarchism in Venezuela, ideas and perspective about a movement: Short brief about the history, the raise of the Chavez movement and our criticisms”. This conference includes a PowerPoint presentation. Abolitionist experience in Venezuela: Conference about the hard experience of the Anarchist Black Cross inside the prisons and the rise of the Penal Industrial Complex of the Chavismo. PowerPoint presentation and videos about the prison situation in Venezuela. The worst of the continent (surpassing in increase the violence of the Brazilian Prisons)

The Caracazo: the story about the popular revolt in the eighties. The first opposition against the IMF/WB. The collapse of the democracy. Insurrection. PowerPoint presentation.

:: VIDEOS

Our Oil and other tales: A strong documentary about the oil industry of Venezuela and his nationalization. The trade between Bush administration and his family oil company Chevron-Texaco with the “Revolutionary” Company PDVSA. A film of Elizabetta Andreolli, Sara Muzio, Gabrielle Muzio y Max Plug. English Subtitle.

Venezuela 27F: A short documentary about the popular uprising of February 1989, the first revolt against the IMF/WB, a country weak up in the middle of the insurrection and the death. A film of Lilian Blazer. English Subtitle.

La Masacre del Amparo: In 1988 a special command of the army and political police (DISIP) kill 14 fishermen accused to be guerrilla fighters. The true is the army prepared ambush against them to win positions and money in the government, the farmers was innocents a country joined in the pleasured of protest the innocents dead. A film of Rodolfo Rico and Rafael Uzcategui. English Subtitle.

3

:: DO YOU WANT PRINT TEXT ABOUT THE ANARCHISM IN VENEZUELA?

The panelist prepared two books about 100 pages about two unknown topics for the activities of USA.

The first proposal is the book of the history of the Anarchist movement of Venezuela, from their first beginning in the republican council for the independence war to arise of the Bolivarian Revolution of Higo Chavez. Full information about group of people who tried to take for assault the heaven in the tropic, four chapters with photos.

The second proposal is a book about the history and the abolitionist perspective of the anarchist from Venezuela of the Penal Industrial Complex. This book is a jewel about the unknown story of the Anarchist Black Cross of Venezuela with strong information about the worst prison system of Latin-American. Include 5 chapters and photos.

For more information you can ask the panelist about that.

:: SPRECIAL PROPOSAL FOR RECORDS

For this Tour, the anarchopunk scene of Venezuela prepared two special editions for the USA recods collectives. The first of one is the cd “Caracazo’s Noise” a music collection with the anarchopunk bands who collaborated with the newspaper El Libertario, include bands like Apatia No, Los Residuos, Epoca de Recluta, Crisis Politica, Dissension and more, this edition include a text about the history of the punk counterculture in Venezuela.

The second proposal is a stranger demo of the first anarchopunk band of Venezuela call “Octavo Pasajero*, very strong lyrics about the street revolts and the *Encapuchados* (maskmens) of the university, music never before published.

4

The third proposal is the cd *Notas de Libertad* (Freedom Notes) a music collection of Anarchist Trova (Spanish guitar and voice) an old tradition in the Latin-American Movement.

All the cds and proposals include text about the band and artist, art of cd, translates and photos.

The only condition is the record have to give some copies to the newspaper El Libertario to continue editing his pages.

::ANARCHIST AND AUTONOMOUS LINKS IN VENEZUELA:

http://www.nodo50.org/ellibertariohttp://indubioproreovzla.blogspot.comhttp://www.organizacionnelsongarrido.comhttp://centrosociallibertariovenezuela.blogspot.comhttp://lalibertaria.acultura.org.vehttp://www.lostordos.comhttp://www.myspace.com/existenciamuertarecordshttp://www.soberania.orghttp://www.panfletonegro.comhttp://socialdemencia.blogspot.com/http://anarcopunknoticias.blogspot.com/http://www.myspace.com/dissensionanarcopunkhttp://cvrecs.comuv.com/http://www.geocities.com/apatiano/http://www.masquepalabras.org/anarcolepsia/http://www.myspace.com/kondenadozbandahttp://www.myspace.com/maldaddoahttp://criacuervosrecords.entodaspartes.net/http://exiliointeriorzine.blogspot.com/

:: FOR MORE INFORMATION:

Email:indubioproreovzla@gmail.com indubioproreovzla@yahoo.esPhone: 3369053648Web page: http://indubioproreovzla.blogspot.com

5

ANARCHIST TEXT AND PERSPECTIVE ABOUT THE CARACAZO

:: THE TRUE DEMOCRACY OR THE EPIPAHANY OF THE POOR NEIGHBORHOOD Angel Capelletti (Revista Orto, Año XXI, Número 121, Mayo-Agosto 2001).

The 27 of February of 1989 Caracas were present at a unique fact in their history than more thirty years of democracy. Neither in the days of independence nor in those of the federal war nor, much less, during the diverse riots or “military revolutions” it had occasion to see the angry effervescence of the popular mass. That day hidden a majority was pronounced, spilled the lava of a volcano that by many decades threatened to the valley its devastating eruption. When Gomez1 died, in 1935, small groups of Caracas assaulted some mansions of hierarchy of the regime. Something similar happened in 1958 to the fall of Perez Jiménez2. In 1989 the protagonists were not, without a doubt, small groups but the multitude of the marginalized ones and the workers, to who a part of the worker middle-class was added. Small palaces of losers civil servants were not assaulted or but the commerce of the entire city. One was not a political relief, more or less just, but of a social appearance spontaneous and, apparently, uncontrollable.

Which was the meaning of this unusual, down, unforeseeable event for the politicians and the good lucking? It is evident - and to thus they later said many it that the 27 of February cut in two the history of the Venezuelan democracy. And, nevertheless, the interpretations that of him occurred were many and contradictory. An episode of the police chronicle did not need almost who, disappointed of all the revolutionary and allergic ideals to any radical change, refused to grant importance to the facts and

1 Juan Vicente Gomez liberal dictatorship of Venezuela for twenty year close to US politics 2 The last dictatorship of Venezuela for eight years, extreme-right

6

tried to play down the subject, reducing it. After the skeptics, the opportunists came. There these saw a protest against the government and the governing party, trying to take waters to their own decrepit mills, as if Copei3 or any other party of opposition had been able to avoid the outbreak. But the most mistaken of all they were the illustrious politicians and the acute essay writers that understood the facts like a conspiracy against the democracy, promoted perhaps from the outside.

In fact, the 27 of February mean a vote, deep, unusual affirmation of the democracy. The town (from the marginal ones to the middle-class, from the unemployed workers to the students without quota and the college students without occupation) went out demonstrating its faith in the democratic principles, moved by the conviction that, being all the equal men, all they have right to all the goods that the society offers. It is clear that to this it at the same time took it conviction to deny the “established democracy”, the indirect, representative, parliamentary democracy, insofar as this one was lived like a pseudo-democracy, a good trap anger and capably maintained during decades, to assure the power a political and economic minority at the cost of the popular majorities. The direct democracy faced the legal democracy of the parties and the rich people, to the democracy of elite and transactions, the euphemisms and fiction thus, in an uncontrollable eagerness of sincerity and authenticity. It had, without a doubt, much destruction, but, as Bakunin said, the destruction is often a creative act. What it was destroyed was not only the supply and the supermarket, furniture and the factory of you graze, but also, for hours, the old capitalist and bourgeois order, the institutional rhetoric of the democracy, erected by the politicians of the middle-class to the benefit of the high class of the bankers, of the import retailers, the landowners. It is certain that they were not the politicians or rich people the direct objects of the popular wrath, without a doubt because they were not by hand or because they did not have time the “crowds” to arrive until them. The army fulfilled

3 Comité de Partido Electorales Independientes, social ca-tholic party

7

fast and efficiently its task essential and avoided that those were affected by vendetta of people without shirt. But it seems clear that, at heart, they against those who were more or less consciously went directed the spontaneous movement. The president of the Republic did not stop being right he interpreted when it as fight of poor men against rich. Because even though the most affected they have not been then the rich ones, but rather the small and medium retailers, although it is watched, the deep intention had as it puts to the dominant classes and institutional the political system on which its power is based. The 27 of February represented, therefore, a temporary exercise, if it is wanted spasmodic, of direct democracy. And the direct democracy supposes, first of all, the refusal to all delegation (at least conditional weather is called and) of the own freedom, of the own sovereignty

The town that under hills and went out aspired, unconsciously, to true the democracy, always raised, never realized. Wise person who democracy means to government of the town, that is to say, self-government. And it knew at the same time as this that was given to him like democracy was not another thing more than the government of an oligarchy whose roots sank in the days of the colony, but that had had the ability to delegate the functions of government in a middle-class university, apt for the demagoguery, with great ambition of being able and with great capacity of self-deception. It intuited, not very clearly perhaps, but with sufficient force, that the key of the regime was there: in the complicity of political the middle-class with economic the high class. When concluding the cycle of the military dictatorships, the old woman masters of the valley and the country noticed with shrewdness the existence of a small one, but active youth small-bourgeois who could take to the country by revolutionary footpaths. They also realized of which the anxiety of being able of those “informed ones” could very effectively be canalized in own benefit. They arranged therefore a great pact, so much more solid the more implicit, with them. The pact consisted of the following thing: They, rich people, continue holding the economic power and having privileged access the wealth of the country that petroleum

8

returned more and more tempting. He does not matter that in fact a Capitalism of State was orchestrated, because in all Capitalism of State (without accepting those that is disguised with the finery of the socialism) there is a class that obtains in decline of the majority and the town. University and political the middle-class, with its flaming democratic parties, would have the political power and administrative, position would become of the government and would handle the State. Its participation in the wealth of the country would be substantial, but subordinate always to the interests of the great bourgeoisie, associated with the international capital. In no case those interests could substantially be affected. Under such conditions the high class yielded the political power to the middle-class and its democratic parties. This made sure, on the other hand, the approval of the army and the Church, by means of comfortable budgetary allocations. What exceeded was for the town, that is to say, the great mass of the farmers, the workers, of the marginal ones, whose at least passive assent was necessary to make sure, so that the democracy of the parties and the elections worked, of the parliament and the agreement. While something exceeded, it was distributed, along with promises of distributions many majors that never got to take shape.

This way, the democracy born with the blessing of the oligarchy, lived with the hopes of the poor men. When no longer nothing exceeded, the demagoguery Populist had to undress and to show its true face. The town horrified of him and its horror became rage. The increase of the passages of the public transport was only the spark that brought about the fire or, if it is wanted, the drop that made exceed the glass. At heart of it brings back to consciousness of the plunderers and of the arsonists it annoyed this desire: Democracy already; authentic, direct democracy, without representations neither fiction, divided parliaments nor; self-government; social and economic equality and not purely constitutional and legal; freedom to live and not only to die of hunger. The democracy lives! the marginal boy thought while he loaded on his backs a television.

9

Several times had stopped it in their casts the police and more of a detent it had visited. If now they capture to me - he reasoned would lock up to me per months or years, but the retailer who robbed million to the country with the dollars of Recadi4, never will go to the jail. It is precise that there is democracy, concluded. The democracy lives! The housewife thought that was gotten tired under the weight of a maize flour coat. With this - she said myself we will kill the hunger in the hill, while the harder kills to rich in the Country the Club. It is precise that there is democracy, repeated. The democracy lives! , the unemployed worker thought, while he took several packages of spaghettis, a ham and two bottles of rum. I have produced millions of packages of spaghettis, - she reasoned but I straight do not have legally to consume only one without buying it, while the owner of the factory wastes in Miami or Milan the money that I have given him with my work. It is precise that there is democracy, cried out. The sackings, the transgression of all the norms of civilization, the attacks against the public and deprived property constituted the collective and practical critic to a system that is shielded in the written laws, when not in the rhetoric of the proclamations and the partisan programs, to avoid the real democracy, using the hallucination of a pretended democracy. They were a spontaneous, but no devoid attack of sense, against the cardboard-stone idols of the parliament and the presumed State of law.

They were the definitive abjuration of the parties and the supposed representative ness. They, consequently, went the aspiration to a real democracy, that is not another thing that the direct democracy. That this is therefore they prove the realized elections ten months later, in December of 1989, in which the seventy percent of the citizens abstained to vote. If to it we added the null votes deliberately, the percentage of those who apostatizes of the system, of the parties and the representative democracy it is increased to the point of we forced to think that in these elections the candidates and their families only voted.

4 Economic Government crisis institute famous because everybody Stella Money and dollars from them.

10

We read in an article of “Correo A”5 : `The 27 F was a day that will last much more that the twenty-four hours of the calendar. Their effects are had to extend by long time and among them some can be given off. A class is dead, the political class, although it seems that she did not find out. It was clear that its message, as to so many we have repeated it times, only has to do with the defense of its sectarian interests and only has sense between the members of his clans. The 27 F the society retired the power to them that said to hold in the name of her. It was clear that they do not represent anybody but them themselves. The question that we become is if the population will decide to bury to those deads, restituting the power and dissolving it to them in the same society or will not allow that they, or their heirs, follow with more of the same”. The results of the elections of December seemed to indicate that a will exists to bury to those deads. But the task is not easy, because many of them are “living deads”, in the sense of Tolstoy and the one of Bram Stoker; because the ground in which there is to bury them is very hard, petrified by the action of the habit and the prejudice; because the buried do not know well their office. It is precise they learn that it, not of the “revolutionary vanguards” or the “intellectual elites”, but of their own experience, its own praxis, its own reflection. Thus the town did of Paris when it instituted the Commune, the Spanish town when in 1936 the agrarian and industrial collectivities created, the Russian town when it constituted the Councils (Soviets) of workers and farmers. And it is precise in addition that they learn to watch so that they do not leave after his coffins living deads, they did as it in Russia de Stalin, to construct to a new and oppressive political class of technicians and bureaucrats.

5 Anarchist publication of the ninety11

:: THE POPULAR EXPLOSION OF FEBRUARY 27 OF 1989 IN VENEZUELAColectivo Circulo A

Only Manuel Caballero had the clarity to see and the anger to say it enters that have analyzed the happened thing. Nobody but intention to express itself with all the letters which without a doubt summarizes that it happened the 27 of February. We had a day anarchist. Nevertheless, it is necessary to clarify this expression that some will confuse with the sacking or the disorder.

She was anarchist because there was a movement of all the common one; not only those of the hill as contemptuously it is said to them, also the call middle-class and all the employees faced those who of a form or another one obtain with the other people’s sweat.

She was anarchist by spontaneous, without heads or “vanguard” it guided that it, without theoreticians who took examination to the participants. It was born from more deep from the people, blessed by the grandmothers. It grew in the friendly solidarity of all the life in the district, brothers. Scorn to the political power and to squares of Miraflores6 was popular grill with meat taken from a neighboring market

She was anarchist because if during years we have listened that all we are guilty of the evils of the country, this time if we were responsible, but no guilty, because 27/F governed other values. There was no that robbery that is the property as it Proudhon denouncement, everything were of all. The obligations car imposed by solidarity only existed, there were no sanctions and the values forgot a law done for benefit of the operators. We were equal and free, together recovering what before they robbed to us.

She was anarchist because, like in other similar cases, nothing it brakes. I finish when the protagonists returned to their houses,

6 Goverment Palace 12

to their district, exhausted of a unknown freedom. Soon the repression came to look for its quota of death, but in revenge that in justice, with all the force that never uses in front of speculators, narcotics traffickers or that sacks to the country. I arrive with guns, with tanks and grenades, as beast after blood, doing merits with those to which always they defend and they protect.

27/F united to us to Paris, to Spain, to the Soviets in showing the world that all person, even though does not express it, identifies to the property and the authority like her oppressors. The question that is and that each must respond is: we will be able to make that freedom and equality in a society permanent anarchist? , We want to do it?

:: 27/F: THE MYTHS THAT FELLArmando Vergueiro (CORREO A, # 9, pp 3-5; mayo 1989)

“Oil Venezuela, an exception in Latin America…” Too much petroleum was repeated to us rich and happy that us towards, in contrast to the evils of the rest of Latin America. We did not have to hope to that the old nightmare of the exhaustion of wells took shape so that the stealth efficiency of the transnational powers, the bourgeoisie corrupt and inept local parasite and that collection of the call political class would take to us to which today we lived: the turbulent aim of the model of rent economy of hydrocarbons characteristic of Venezuela post-Gomez; by all means, the costs of all that fiasco to him have been continued loading a town to which pains are only promised but, undressed until of the illusions created in 50 years of oil boom.

“We enjoy a Democracy consolidated and open to the reforms that perfect…” The promoters of the democracy bourgeois in Venezuela seated their essential supply at first: the democracy is justified for being the best way to modernize the political institutions and to redistribute the wealth between the populations. What costs to carry out such aspirations will come from the oil

13

rent. Unlike other countries, this system was not maintained on the basis of the popular yearning to prevail, to a certain extent, its own subjects; here the things were constituted of such form that the democracy I gain support by its capacity to distribute - or to simulate to distribute - the bonanza oil. Their crisis of legitimacy not even happens when no longer it must nothing offer, good desires for the future. The deeply undemocratic characteristics of a regime are demonstrated then that only understands to the group under the follower label of governed.

They do not happen of laughable the reformist pirouettes that abound, especially lately, in the Creole political fauna. Technocrats, political troublemakers and demagogues of varied coat try to maintain with patches and wordiness a structure that no longer gives more. He completes born of these personages is the economic package at the moment in execution, where by nth time in the Third World, social contemporary is discovered to the recipe book of at the most explaining IMF of economic wisdom and; whereas our nightmare reformers don’t do their oiled of change again then, as always, “ the mother country this in danger and is not time of utopias”

“AD7 and COPEI are exact expression of the feeling politician of the majorities…” What they the past announced the abstention and the disinterestedness in electoral match, I emphasize less than three months dramatically later: the parties of the status are mere representative electoral machineries and autocratic in anything of the citizen aspirations. The parties are simultaneously creative and creatures of the rent democracy in Venezuela, and when the basic precondition of that regime staggers, as now happens with the fall of the oil entrance and the weight of the external debt, the effect cannot be other that the impotence with which the bureaucracy of the parties saw this social explosion where open the worse one of its fears: I ignore them completely to the town. Then, surpassed the initial scare, they continue with its toy of but of the same in the

7 Accion Democratica, rulling partye for almost 20 years like Mexican PRI

14

press, the parliament and the TV, before the people of common that the something new learned on them.

“The enterprise sector this mature for majors economic and social responsibilities…” 27 and 28 of February we enjoyed an unusual spectacle in this country: Bourgeois on the brink of madness hearth check. But, just as with the politicians, the fear happened soon and completely unconcerned assumed its habitual arrogant attitude of plunderers in great scale and full-time. With the neoliberal catechism they try to tricked to those who we are witnesses of his continued enrichment and I release the brakes consumer, enjoyed by those who do not stop to call to the tranquility and the sacrifice, the same bourgeoisie whose scandal and condemns before the popular violence does not demonstrate but the fear to that the independent action of those of down is developed consistently.

“The safety mechanisms of the Venezuelan State are professionally suitable, with democratic vocation and obedient to the institutionalism…” Santiago of Chile and Santiago of Leon of Caracas already looks like in something more than the first name. The brutal disproportion of the repressive answer, with the greater number of died and hurt as soon as the town I leave the streets is sample of the tenebrous aptitude for their office of the military unit’s officials, before demonstrated in as diverse events as the Amparo8, Yumare9 or that one stroll of tanks to Miraflores. The dramatic denunciations of executions, tortures and disappearances - that deserved the intervention of Amnesty International - remembered a habitual picture in other places that always had been painted like impossible or exaggerated for Venezuela. As well as the town tested of future actions of freedom, the violence of the power great test in and without restrictions it’s routine of terror and death.

8 Massacre of the army against fisherman, just must see this video in our Tour. 9 The government and the political policy kill 8 popular fighters and false accused them to be guerrilla

15

“The Venezuelan town this in agreement one and lacks own answers to confront its problems… “ It is the myth which the greater hope faces: the one that arises when they finalize 31 years of democratic comedy, when the pressed ones not only express their fury, but also initiate an own way with encouraging signs, spontaneous and multiple, of solidarity and car-organization. One demonstrated what we are able to do simultaneously and in a celebration atmosphere. Lack to walk much but took a great step; like never before, the town know the force of its direct action and the challenge is to advance by that way, that is the route towards the organization of the society. Spark has now of confidence and of town brings back to consciousness of as far as which it can by itself that, if we obtained that it survives and extends, marked the way towards that utopia of freedom and equality that today we dreamed some but that tomorrow we will construct all.

:: THE NEXTMariana

27/F was a day that lasted much more that the 24 hours of the calendar. Their effects are had to extend by long time and among them some can be given off.

A class is dead, the political class, although it seems that not whole. I am clear that its message, as to so many we have repeated it times, only has to do with the defense of its sectarian interests and only has sense between the members of its clans. 27/F the society them retirement the power that said to hold in the name of her. I am clear that they do not represent anybody but them themselves. The question that we become is if the population will decide to bury to those deads, not restituting the power and dissolving it to them in the same society, or if he will allow that they, or their heirs, follow with but of the same.

A group that showed to its double face and its lie was the one that integrate the worker union of the CTV10 and the enterprise elite of

10 Government worker union like the American AFL. 16

FEDECAMARAS11, that have given to returns and returns, and have said to speeches and speeches about wages, crisis, sacrifices, productivity, external debt, culpability of all and is that in hours, moved by the panic, they gave a miserable increase us that the 26 of February was unthinkable. They demonstrated thus these two partners who when the Popes burn are possible workers to conquer improvements without waiting for by consensuses or negotiations to them between those of above.

Another group collection relevance and I occupy drained that I leave to the sudden disappearance of the politicians the week of 27/F. They were the military they did and it of the unique way who preparations to do it are: killing, striking, destroying, and humiliating to us with the argument to have a weapon in the hand. They are now the hope of the bourgeoisie and the threat for all the others. In Latin America one knows very well when the troops remove to the street, but never has she known when they return to his quarters, if they return.

And they are the protagonists, people, the common one, we. It is us to decide that we do with that politicians expert in deceits and robberies, that we do with the bourgeois who 27/F left fleeing from the Carlota in their airplanes, that we do with the annulled CTV that to us has maintained as much subtle or crude time, that we make to face the repression that of a way or another one, has untied against the collectivity. All these decisions and others of greater spread are, as they were it always, of our responsibility. Only that we have demonstrated, we know, that we can cause that the tortilla becomes, but… we want?

11 Powerfull and richman union. 17

:: FEBRUARY 27 OF 1989: Yesterday like today, impunity gets dressed green camouflagedComisión de Relaciones Anarquistas (CRA)

I am called the Caracazo, said that it was the Day that Lowered Hills, labeled it to the sociologists like “ Social” explosion; , and without a doubt Venezuelan was the important event but in century XX. It was the Day of the Truth; the day that fell the masks, showing that the society was fractured and that were to reunify it; that the military like before, like now, serve the power and kill in their benefit; that the economic structures were a sacking of the wealth publishes; that the institutions were a lie and the leadership no longer was around which they tried to direct; that the patience with the submission is not due to confuse; that people can do and do.It was a quiet shout. It was celebration and it was tragedy. It was joy and it was pain. It was a successful revolt and it was a failure. It was solidarity and it was confrontation. It was vindication and it was delinquency. Its rage had all the own contradictions of the spontaneous actions of people expressing, shouting its hopelessness, protesting by a better world to the one than it can aspire. It did it without speeches it did, it with the action, and nobody had coherent arguments to be against.

The 27 of February of 1989 I do not leave heirs. There were beneficiaries and losers, but no inheriting. Still it hopes by who raises those yearnings and makes with them a society better. That one day we knew the force the direct action and the challenge is to advance by that way that is the route towards the organization of the society. Of that date even spark subsists of confidence and of it brings back to consciousness popular as far as which we can by that, if we obtained that it survives and extends, marked the way towards that utopia of freedom and equality in solidarity that today we impelled some but that tomorrow we will construct all.

Dissolution of the repressive bodies of the State!Punishment to the military assassins!

1818

:: THE ASSASSINS OF YESTERDAY, THE HEROES OF TODAY Any Alarcón

Thousand inks of blood write the history of a Venezuela that, contemporary, does not stop to become ill of contradictions and atrocities. History never changes, because it has been written by the winners of before and later a turbid one and exhausted. The 27 of February have served to be sorry to us, to evoke “never more” from this dreamy side and of it institutionalizes which it to gain followers to a cause that for being authoritarian already it has failed.

Of this date many things have been said, from the recognition on the part of the government who was “little of excess”, until the uprising of organizations of human rights that demand justice within the framework to fortify the state of right of the representative democracy. Nevertheless, I believe that nobody has raised the glance to question the roll of the military and the militarist values within a society in the light of these facts.

So that it serves the militia? According to the State to defend us of a war, to protect the citizen, to maintain the order and velar by the interests of the country. Nevertheless, this smoke screen that makes us repeats from the day-care center to our maturity falls by its own weight. The military serve to the interests as the powerful ones, their formation this cradle in blind obedience, in fulfilling you order without bullshit, in killing to protect the money of which they handle the power. The military are the other face of the politics and enterprise speech. The society does not need them is the State that attributes false arguments to him, repeated like litanies that make think us about that one this fascist who says “ a repeated lie one hundred times becomes one true”. That is militarism, a concrete lie, a lie that him has cost the life to many people.

19

This government who says “revolutionaries” , past February decided to commemorate this date saying “ never more” but when they are reviewed the information on violation of human rights are that 27f is repeated every day in the Caracas quarters, the extrajudicial executions continue growing and the continuous government repeating “ never more”, I ask myself: never but that? But it is never happened open an establishment to you and to remove the food, never but you rebel yourself against my, never but leg in the ground the East your voice because you know that here above I have a boot and a bullet that take your name.

Really this world this of head and whenever memory the happened thing I evoke to Sabato in its memories titled before the aim, when is asked: “… in which society class we lived, that democracy we have where the corrupt ones live in impunity, and to the hunger of the towns subversive.” is considered;

We dreamy tenth: HOPEFULLY THAT NEVER MAS RECRUITED YOUNG PEOPLE TO BE THE MILITARY, HOPEFULLY NEVER MAS NO WORKER WOULD CONDUCT A MILITARY OPERATION, HOPEFULLY NEVER MAS WE MUST CRY TO DISAPPEARING, DEAD OR TORTURED BY THE STATE AND THE MILITARY…

:: TEN YEARS OF THE “SACUDON”… AND THE ASSASINS CONTINUE LOOSE…Apatía No

27 and 28 of February of 1989 it a fact that marked the life of a town. This it has been the event where more people have participated in the history of Venezuela. It was the accumulation of as much injustice, hunger, poverty, misery, corruption, etc., like detonating of a social explosion of which still one remembers with terror, hatred rages and towards all the bodies of security of the state which they perpetrated the massacre, where all these accumulated factors throughout the Venezuelan democracy next to a package of economic measures that implemented the President

20

of that time like recommendation of the I.M.F (International Monetary Fund), they would be the drop that would spill the glass. These measures consisted of a series of increases of prices (gasoline, transport, products of the basic basket) that supposedly would remove to the country from the economic crisis in which it was imbued east as a result of the bad administration of the previous governments.

That Monday 27/Feb. Transport unemployment began which caused the conglomeration of people in the streets which served as spark for disturbances and another type of manifestations that would be extended afternoon until the 6 of Tuesday 28/Feb., when the constitutional guarantees were suspended. As a result of this they were thousands of warehouses of sacked food, houses of political parties burned, streets desolated and deads, hurt and disappeared. The numbers of these are uncertain, but surely they happen of the 1000. Also it is important to stress that the “Sacudón” was a fact very disorganized where the losing major (although it seems lie) was the town by the thrown dead balances, although meant a species of warning for the governmental beings of which already we are tired of as much manipulation and bureaucracy or corruptocracia as it is due to call to him to this.

Today, to 10 years of those Antique facts, we dedicated this concert to all those people who were killed in these events, not forgetting the happened thing and we have left to vindicate the social fights against the oppressor state; organizing to us and taking the action in our own hands so that all those disappeared deads and are not in vain, because the causes continue latent (poverty, stop cost of the life, economic crisis, etc.) and at any time similar facts could happen.

21

:: THE CARACAZOManuel Isidro Molina

The Caracazo de Roman Chalbaud, was film propaganda and other people’s to the historical truth. The moan much by the cinematographic trajectory of the famous director and Venezuelan dramatist, to whom I admire.The slanted pro-chavista and militarist exoneration clear force to him to the cinematographic production; and the adulteration of historical facts impoverishes important it. I left the room of cinema, indignant, because it does not have right to such degree of manipulation. Perhaps in the outside, the tape of Chalbaud with indulgence can be received, dice the ignorance of the events, relatively recent. It already obtained one first winner in XXVII the Festival of the New Latin American Cinema of Havana.

What in Venezuela we know like “February 27” or “ 27F” of 1989, it was a popular event of protest against the neoliberal policies of the government of president Carlos Andres Perez, brutally repressed by the troopers, especially the National Guard and the Army; an unpunished genocide, until today, after seven years of government of president Cold Hugo Chavez. Neither hierarchies of the government nor the military High Commands of the time, has been judged legally, although 27F started off in two contemporary history and served as shootout to successive political events that took passage to the displacement of the forces of being able traditional: immediate political tremor; military rebellions in February and November of 1992; emergency of new national, regional and municipal tendencies political; destitution and judgment of Carlos Andres Perez; presidential election of Rafael Boiler for period 1994-1999; triumph of Cold Hugo Chavez, in 1998, presidential candidate of extinguished “ Patriotic” pole; ; and the constituent process of 1999. Nevertheless, at heart “ has lasted; inertial weight of the culture of old political”, associated to the corruption, the improvisation, the abuse and the strongman, that is leaving very far to so criticized “presidents” of the Venezuelan democracy.

22

Brutal RepressionThe Venezuelan troopers brutally repressed to tens of thousand of men and women who passed of the protest against the increases of passages of the transport public in indiscriminate sackings. Neither hierarchy Neither politicians nor the military, who ordered the slaughter, sufficiently are reflected in the film. Hurt to bullet, prisoners and tortured hundreds of died and millions of had like material twigs to officials, sergeant majors, soldiers and agents of the Army, the National Guard, the Metropolitan Police, the Disip12 and the Direction of Military intelligence. The jails of the Military police, in Tiuna Fort, were a center of violation of human rights. Although such crimes follow bathed of impunity, the historical truth is there, prosecutor.

Although there was within the National Armed Forces (FAN), enemy counterattacks to the genocide repression ordinate by the government of Perez, institutionally the FAN have the historical load of that crime of leas humanity. Unlike which it happened in Argentina and it is happening in Chile with the criminal judgment of liers, assassin and August Pinochet, in Venezuela a leaf does not move. So it is the degree of complicity and concealment, in chavista Venezuela: neither the government, nor the National Assembly, nor the Office of the public prosecutor, nor the legal defends of the Town, or the Judicial Power dare to gossip of guilty and the accessories after the fact of the genocide. After almost 16 years, humanity is political nor no material person in charge of that historical crime of leas.

The Acosta Carles deathIn the film of Chalbaud “emphasizes the official of the Army; CARLES”, that is not other that the major Felipe “Catire” Acosta Carlés, outstanding in the Military school of Venezuela. The film director take retook in “history official” of President Hugo Chavez and his surroundings, who by affection to the official

12 Political police 23

missing person, companion of oath of the MBR-20013,have seeded the heroic species of which he was eliminated by a sniper, when he fulfilled a mission of “take control” in a district of Caracas. Until a epic one he ran he composed to him - and he sings his close friend Hugo Chavez. I have always respected those feelings of camaraderie and pain, human expressions that I value. Nevertheless, history is very another one: That one week of 27F, “ were forts disturbances in the district; The Antena” of kilometer zero of the Pan-American highway, in Car. By recognized his I throw like official commando of the Army, with courses in Central America, Acosta Carlés was chosen to head a repressive mission in this district; it arrived right and left shooting, burst doors of humble houses (“ ranchos” , tenth them in Venezuela) and “controlled” to shots the zone, with its group of soldiers of the Army. In his advance to open fire, assaulted farm, where a thug (delinquent) with a pistol was seized, that shot several shots to him to the official, hurting it mortally. The forensic acts must rest in the military court who knew the cause.

Military RepressionThe death of Acosta Carlés untied a brutal military repressive wave. The officially of the Army issued the order to kidnap to all the hurt men of bullet who were taken care of in the Hospital of Car. They arrived at dawn, happening over the medical authorities of the public center of emergencies, without judicial order of no type, loaded with all the wounded of bullet, without concerning his state to them of health, and took it to the jails of the Military police, in Tiuna Fort.

Three of those kidnapped young people of the Hospital of Car, irresponsibly were accused like “assassins of the major Acosta Carlés”. One of them, Zarrameda Zárraga (ZZ), salesman of Popes and onions in the municipal market of Car, had received a shot of FAL14 in its left heel, but they maintained it kidnapped

13 Movimiento Bolivariano Revolucionario 200, Chávez logia in the army 14 Assault Belgium Rifle

24

in the Military police and without appropriate medical attention. Deputy, is rotting him the foot, said a day, tearful, its mother to me, requiring aid to save the leg and the life of his son.

It was at the beginning of March of 1999. I comprised of the Parliamentary Fraction of the MAS15, along with Enrique Ochoa Antich, Victor Hugo D’ Paola, Pompeyo Márquez, Teodoro Petkoff, Luis Manuel Esculpi and many others, friendly with those who I maintained and I maintain important ideological and political differences, without it has caused notch in the friendship and considers mutual.

Does not leave aliveTo the young ZZ, it corresponded to me to rescue it. Its foot was purulent. I required the officers of the guard - first reticent, their urgent transfer “ Hospitalito” of Tiuna Fort, where the guard doctors refused to take care of it by the advanced thing of the infection of the wound, unheeded during several days of kidnapping. I demanded, then, to take it urgently to the Central Hospital of the FAN, in Artigas, where he was taken care of diligently by the medic of guard. Nevertheless, when he took to the young wounded in a wheelchair to take a x-ray him, in floor 1, came behind us, two military doctors, and one commented to him to the other:That is the assassin of the major Acosta Carles… That does not leave alive here! Alarmed, I came with caution until ZZ was cured by the paramedical doctors and. When we lowered to orthopedic surgery, I informed to him to the guard head into the occurred thing in the corridors, before which the doctor-colonel (if my memory serves me right that was its military rank) reacted disrespectfully towards me, reason why had to shout to him also and to make him see that it was a serious denunciation in defense of the life of a young innocent Venezuelan, of 18 years of age, to that was not going to abandon nor to allow its hospitalization in those conditions.

15 Movimiento al Socialismo, young fraction of the Commu-nist Party closed to the Allende experiences and the Prague Spring.

25

ZZ and their two companions of importunes, with the due legal consultant’s office, left in total freedom, the same day that were presented/displayed the military court who saw the death of the major Acosta Carlés. In that file part important of the true truth can be found.

Killing FieldIn that one genocide, they died more than three hundred people and they were wounded several millions. “ The Peste” it is a zone of the General Cemetery of the South, where they dug a grave in which the military buried tens of corpses, without forensic recognition nor any other legal proceeding. The slaughter was so brutal that the deads wanted hide-and-seek. There were not bones, but corpses in rotting state, fact in which was recognized the parliamentary protagonist of Enrique Ochoa Antich, in nothing reflected in the film of Chalbaud; either, the persistent and brave deed of COFAVIC16, Venezuelan NGO that has managed to ventilates the case in the Inter-American Court of Human rights that sentenced indemnification to the victims. The film at issue had to be of historical rank, with an authentic load of protest and denounces, without party slants. Moan, I reiterate, that Roman has directed it to Chalbaud and produced. Before seeing it had it the expectation to find me with a brave story, but I left defrauded.

16 Copmite de Familiares y Victimas del Carachazo (COFA-VIC)

26

(A)

27