clipped from: www.counterpunch.org the origins of the global rebellion against neoliberalism
Seattle 1998
London's J18 protests earlier the same year
public emergence of the Zapatista movement on January 1st 1994
Caracazo
described by Fernando Coronil as "the largest and most violently repressed revolt against austerity measures in Latin American history."
Carlos Andrés Pérez
"bait-and-switch" reform
anti-neoliberal campaign
IMF as a "bomb that only kills people."
Pérez proceeded to implement the recently-formulated Washington Consensus to the letter
about-face
Pérez's neoliberal economic "packet" (the "paquetazo"
two weeks after the inaugural
signed with the IMF on February 28th
basic premises of the Pérez plan were laid out as follows:
a potent cocktail of stagnating incomes in the face of skyrocketing prices and monetary devaluation. As might be expected, poverty reached a peak in 1989
February 27th 1989 was a Monday
first stage
immediate 100% increase in
gasoline
Protests kicked off
early commute
fares had doubled
morning of February 28th
clipped from: www.counterpunch.org At 6pm, Pérez
announce the fateful decision to suspend constitutional guarantees and establish a state of siege
Repression was worst in Caracas' largest barrios: Catia in the west and Petare in the east
neighborhood of 23 de Enero
the organizational brain of the rebellion
Former Chavista vice president José Vicente Rangel put it clearly: "Venezuelan history split into two
A clandestine revolutionary movement had formed within the armed forces years earlier, led by Hugo Chávez, Jesús Urdaneta, Raúl Isaías Baduel, and the late Felipe Antonio Acosta. 1982 to be precise
Caracazo caught them off-guard.
Young soldiers, largely drawn from the lower classes, were sent into the barrios to slaughter their own, and many refused to do fire
anniversary of the Caracazo was celebrated
in El Valle, one of the large barrios in Caracas
As Luis Britto García, radical poet and political writer (recently named to the presidential committee for constitutional reform) has long argued: "World War IV began in Venezuela. WWIII was the Cold War, which culminated in the fall of the Soviet Union and the apparent triumph of neoliberalism. World War IV began in Venezuela on February 27th 1989, with the first rebellion by an entire nation against a neoliberal package. As a result, we have discovered that a global extension of neoliberalism into the economic, social, political and cultural fields is impossible."
As the opening volley in the war against neoliberalism, the legacy of the Caracazo lives on as long as that struggle continues.
