April 11 2002 Coup

This week, Venezuelans commemorated the 9-year anniversary of the failed coup d’etat that briefly ousted President Chavez from power and dissolved the nation’s democracy, installing a US-backed dictatorship. In an extraordinary turn of events, a popular uprising crushed the coup just hours later.

» read more

A coup d’etat 9 years ago in Venezuela backed by the US government cost the lives of dozens and injured innocent residents who today are still struggling to bring the truth to light and ensure justice reigns on those responsible.

» read more

Fugitive from the Venezuelan justice system, Manuel Rosales expressed regret for having signed the coup decree which dissolved all public powers in the country on April 2002, during the brief dictatorship of businessman Pedro Carmona.

» read more

Watching the documentary “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” (2003) about the short-lived coup against Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez in 2002, I arrived at the conclusion that Che Guevara’s detection of a single mestizo race stretching from Mexico to the Straits of Magellan must be fine-tuned to account for the existence of what appears to be a single golpista race spanning the same territory.

» read more

Alan Woods in Caracas describes the mood of the masses on the April 13 celebrations of the 8th anniversary of the failed right-wing coup. This time, as well as the usual red shirts, there was a massive display of the people’s militia clad in camouflage green, and carrying Russian-made AK-47s, a clear warning to the reactionary oligarchy that the masses are prepared to fight any attempt to turn the clock back.

» read more

Venezuela celebrated eight years since a popular uprising defeated a U.S. backed coup against President Hugo Chavez in April 2002 with a swearing in ceremony of 35,000 new militia members denominated the “Day of the Bolivarian Militias, the Armed People and the April Revolution” in central Caracas, yesterday.

» read more

In just 47 hours, a coup d’etat ousted President Chavez and a countercoup returned him to power, in an extraordinary showing of the will and determination of a dignified people on a revolutionary path with no return. The mass media played a major role in advancing the coup and spreading false information internationally in order to justify the coup plotters’ actions. CIA documents revealed US government involvement and support to the coup organizers.

» read more

In this photo essay, we remember how a coup was orchestrated, resisted, and overturned.

» read more

A comparison of the Coup in Honduras with the Coup of 2002 in Venezuela. The recent street rebellions against the Ahmadinejad regime in Iran were touted by many as the first baptism-by-fire of Twitter as a political tool. Celebratory articles abounded for a brief time, before such foolish dreams came crashing back to earth under the weight of a metric ton of misinformation, unsubstantiated rumor, and idle gossip..

» read more

Now a book-length treatment of the April 2002 coup against Chavez is available: Brian Nelson's The Silence and the Scorpion. It is a shame that a progressive publisher like Nation Books would publish such a one-sided account of the coup against Chávez and thereby contribute to the already overwhelming media meme that Chávez and his supporters are violent brutes.

» read more