Chavez Supporters Remember Coup
Photo Feature by Caridad
HAVANA TIMES, April 16 — What many Venezuelans had printed on their T-shirts alluded to this past April 13 when they took to the streets to celebrate the eighth anniversary of the President Chavez’s return to power following the April 11, 2002 coup d’état.
April 13 is celebrated because most people in Venezuela also took to the streets back on that day in 2002, thereby achieving the return of their president-elect to the Miraflores presidential palace.
Beginning at 8:00 a.m., Bolivar Ave. —usually sparsely congested with pedestrians because of the high potential for their being assaulted— was filling with the footsteps and chants of men and women dressed in olive green. These were the young and old, university students, campesinos, and workers in general who are a part of what here is called the Popular Militias Bolivarianas.
Later there approached those supporters who don’t belong to the militias; wearing red T-shirts and caps, while carrying flags and posters – they reminded me of May Day marches in Havana.
All of them were anxious for the arrival of their president, crowding as close as possible to the street along which Hugo Chavez would travel.
The sidewalks were packed with vendors of soft drinks and orchids (this country’s national flower), people with their children and pets, young people in love, pacifists and the curious; it was an immense mural of colors filled with musicians and slogans on this the afternoon along this avenue in Caracas.
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Thanx 4 the pictures. As U allude here, if ‘socialist’ Venezuela cannot get a handle on the pro-capitalist criminal elements which R in fact destabilizing the whole country — certainly spearheaded in part by colombian gangs fronting 4 U.S. imperialism as an internal subversion campaign — then this revolutionary fervor won’t amount 2 a hill of frijoles in the end. The biggest obstacle seems 2 B the continuing control of the government by bourgeois “bolivarian” elements — & not by the self-organized democratic mass of the workers & farmers themselves. As much as this situation is changing 4 the better, it still appears 2 B far from reaching any revolutionary ‘critical mass’, in the classic sense. & time is of the essence, as always.
If the venezuelan Bolivarian Revolution falters, I don’t C how cuban socialism can hold out. However I do have infinite faith in imperialism 2 remain in permanent crisis. With all that this implies 4 the forces of World socialism.