with relatively few casualties among the security forces.
Here is a more objective account of the Caracazo...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CaracazoIt says "riots, protests and looting." "Protests" gets kind of sandwiched in there, but at least it's mentioned--unlike in the Associated Pukes/Miami Hairball version above (which doesn't mention the protests). The Pukes/Hairballs also choose the lowest possible number of dead ("at least 300") at the hands of the security forces, and don't mention the actual number that human rights groups have estimated (3,000) after they started finding the mass graves where "security forces" (security?) buried many civilians.
It sounds to me like the Caracazo was a combination of peaceful protests against draconian "free market" looting by the rich and some retaliatory looting and property destruction by the poor. It's possible that agents provocateur were also involved, as they so often are when people peacefully revolt against injustice, to provide an excuse for violent repression. But even if some ordinary people were guilty of "rioting" (destruction of property) and "looting" (taking the opportunity to steal goods that they can't afford because they have been rendered extremely poor by an unjust economic system), the relative lack of injuries and deaths among the "security forces" points to a government gone bonkers with greed. Why else slaughter so many people for objecting to "neo-liberalism" or for stealing or property destruction?
Most of the "security forces'" slaughter was in the poorest barrios--and what comes to mind more than anything is the Watts Uprising in 1965, which was directed not against people but against property. Do you slaughter hundreds to thousands of people, and dump their bodies into mass graves, for being poor--for stealing TVs, or food, or clothes; or for revolting against the banksters and other oppressors by destroying their property? The U.S. was still a civilized country in 1965, and responded to the Watts Uprising with the "War on Poverty" (a genuine effort to alleviate poverty which was soon deep-sixed by the Pukes, and was also undermined by the Vietnam War).
Anyway, the point I'm trying to get at is that, in Venezuela, there were PROTESTS, as distinguished from "riots" and "looting." And the protests were
not being heard by the imposers of looting by the rich.
If you leave out the "protests" and only mention the mayhem (riots, looting), you are greatly coloring and misinterpreting the event. This was not a "college town riot." This was not a "soccer riot." This was not random mayhem. It occurred
because of political/economic injustice and
because the powers-that-be were
not listening to more civil forms of protest. The AP/MH article mentions gas prices (i.e., looting by Exxon Mobil & brethren) but that is not sufficient to convey the overall, longstanding, increasing injustice in Venezuela on all issues, nor the long term efforts of grass roots political groups, labor unions and others who were being ignored.
Hugo Chavez was a young officer in the military at the time of the Caracazo, and he and his fellow officers sided with the poor. They revolted against the orders to kill the poor, and tried to topple the Perez government, in the hope of establishing a better one. Their coup failed. Chavez was sentenced to two years in prison for his part in it, and became a hero in prison. When he got out, he disavowed violent rebellion as a means of establishing justice, and ran for president (and won). He also helped to write a new Constitution which established human rights to a decent wage, education, health care and a more equitable and democratic political system.
I suspect that Chavez, and Venezuela's Attorney General Luisa Ortega, may intend this legal move against Perez (ensconced in luxury in Miami) partly as a "message" to the Junta in Honduras. The situation has similarities to the Caracazo (except that there has been NO looting or rioting in Honduras; the similarity is the revolt of the poor against their own oligarchy and against the global corporate predators who support it, with state violence used to repress the revolt.*) And the "message" is: 'You will not get away with this.' Even if the Junta essentially retains power, and uses their corrupt judiciary (as well as force of arms) to try to immunize themselves for their violent repression--beatings, torture and murders--that is taking place in Honduras, there are now international agencies and courts in which to try them, and the many new leftist democratic governments that have been elected in South and Central America will join in their prosecution and will not give them refuge. It is a warning, also--possibly aimed at preventing a "Caracazo" in Honduras (which hasn't yet reached the level of slaughter that occurred in Venezuela, as far as we know).
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*(One of the things that the Associated Pukes, the Miami Hairball, Rotters, the New York Grimes, the Wall Street Urinal and other corpo/fascist 'news' organizations have utterly failed to report is that there was a grass roots leftist democracy movement in Honduras prior to the Junta, which was
pushing President Zelaya to champion a Constituent Assembly for re-writing the Constitution. This was among several proposals that they had advocated--which included a raise in the minimum wage, lower bus fares for the poor, and school lunches for poor children. Zelaya was
listening to the people, as a good president should--and was trying to remedy one of the worst poverty levels in the hemisphere, through the enactment of these proposals, including fundamental reform of the Constitution (which was written by Reagan's henchmen in the 1980s). The corpo/fascist media has tried to make it appear that he was acting autocratically, or--a great contradiction--as a "puppet" of "Hugo Chavez." In both cases--Venezuela and Honduras--the need for fundamental reform was
coming from the people. The corpo/fascist press doesn't want us to know this--that reform in Latin America is
coming from the People--so they personalize these events and demonize the leaders.)
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