CIA Orchestrates Coup to Oust Venezuala’s President Hugo Chavez, but Coup Fails

The Coup within the Coup

In the early morning hours of April 12th, the Generals, with Efrain Vasquez Velasco as one of the most important ones, decided to hand the presidency to Fedecamaras president Pedro Carmona. Later it would be argued that with Chavez’s resignation and the apparent disappearance of the country’s vice-president, Diosdado Cabello, the military had the duty to fill this “vacuum of power,” as it would be called. In actuality, though, Pedro Carmona’s designation as “interim” president had been long in the making.

Discussions about who should succeed Chavez had begun practically ever since Chavez first assumed the presidency in 1999. Towards the end of 2001 it appeared that the main candidate as successor to Chavez would be CTV president Carlos Ortega. However, powerful economic sectors in Venezuela and the military seemed to prefer Pedro Carmona. By late March 2002, the proposal had been floated that rather than one president, there should be “junta,” consisting of Pedro Carmona, Carlos Ortega, and an officer—either Vice-Admiral Hector Ramirez Perez or General Vasquez Velasco.

The final decision was, though, that Carmona would be the transition president. Carmona appeared on television, at 4:51am, to make the announcement. At that time, a list of candidates for the rest of the transition cabinet had already been made, as well as a draft of the infamous decree that would abolish all state institutions.

The next day was a very busy one for the coup leaders. Everyone who was anyone in the opposition gathered at the presidential palace, to celebrate, to congratulate, and to lobby for positions in the transition government. The private mass media was celebrating too, with tremendous headlines that cheered, “It’s Over!” (El Universal), “Chavez Resigned” (El Universal), “The Assassin Has Fallen” (Asi es la Noticia), “Good-bye Hugo” (Tal Cual). Napoleón Bravo’s morning talk show (24 Horas) opened program with, “Good morning, we have a new president,” and then Bravo proceeded to read the resignation letter Chavez supposedly signed, but actually did not sign. The state media, though, was still off the air.

Already early in the morning the first signs became visible that the coup was drifting to the far right of the political spectrum. According to Miguel Manrique, an advisor to CTV president Carlos Ortega, Ortega had become very upset when he heard that the military named Carmona as president without consulting with him.[30] In the morning of the 12th Ortega met with Carmona in the presidential palace to urge larger civilian participation in the transition government. He then left the capital, to go to his home town of Coro, about 300 kilometers west of Caracas and was not heard from again during the coup regime.

While the coup organizers were working out the details of a decree that would name Carmona as president, among other things, Isaias Rodriguez, the country’s Attorney General, managed to convince the private broadcast media to let him onto live television with the argument that he wanted to publicly announce his resignation. Once on live television, at 2:04 pm, he said, “This is a coup d’état. There is no doubt about it. The Inter-American Democratic Charter and the Washington protocol have been violated here.” He went on to say that Chavez did not resign and that even if he had, it would not be effective unless he did so to the National Assembly and that next in line of succession is the vice-president and then the president of the National Assembly. A few minutes into his announcement, as soon as they noticed that Rodriguez was not announcing his resignation, the private television stations cut him off mid-sentence. Already word had spread, by word of mouth and via the community media, that Chavez had not resigned and that he was being held against his will on a military island somewhere. Isaias Rodriguez’s announcement thus confirmed what many had already suspected.

Also that afternoon, various police forces, opposition leaders, and mayors decided to start a witch hunt for pro-Chavez officials. The first whose home was raided was that of the Interior Minister Ramon Rodriguez Chacin. As he was being illegally arrested by the police, neighbors who sympathized with the opposition hit him and launched insults at him. The next to receive similar treatment was Tarek William Saab, a member of Chavez’s party in the National Assembly. Tal Cual editor Teodoro Petkoff was among the very few in the opposition who publicly protested against this type of illegal witch hunt. Also arrested illegally and beat-up by enraged opposition followers was the governor of Tachira state, Ronald Blanco la Cruz. Numerous raids were also conducted in community media offices, where equipment was confiscated, and of homes of members of Bolivarian Circles. In the case of the Bolivarian Circles, which had been accused of being behind the shots fired from the Llaguno bridge, the justification for the raids was that officials were looking for arms caches. None were found, though.

Suspecting that Vice-President Diosdado Cabello was hiding in the Cuban embassy, a mob surrounded the embassy and cut off all of its water, electricity, and phone lines. They trashed the cars parked outside, assuming that these belonged to employees of the embassy, and threw rocks into the windows. Television cameras broadcast these activities live, while the police stood by and watched. Eventually the major of the city district in which the embassy is located, Enrique Capriles Radonski, came and climbed the wall of the embassy compound in order to talk to the ambassador. Once inside, he asked the ambassador if he could search the premises, to make sure that no Chavez government officials were hiding there, saying that if he did this, the crowd would leave the embassy alone. The ambassador refused.[31]

Finally, by 5 pm, the coup organizers had their decree and the names of the transition cabinet ready. Prior to that, a debate had been raging around a proposal various opposition legislators had made, to convoke the National Assembly to ratify Carmona as president. The idea was to vote out of office National Assembly president William Lara and to replace him with an opposition deputy. Apparently a few deputies from the Chavez camped had decided to switch sides, so that the opposition could turn the slight Chavez majority into a majority for itself, with 90 out of the National Assembly’s 165 votes. Following this, Carmona would be named president by the National Assembly. However, upon consulting with Cardinal Ignacio Velasco, who had been deeply involved in the coup organizing from the start, and Vice-Admiral Ramirez Perez and General Rodriguez Salas, they convinced Carmona that convoking the National Assembly would be a bad idea. Instead, they supported the decree that had been prepared by Daniel Romero and others.

So, at 5:30 pm, in an assembly hall in Miraflores, the lawyer Daniel Romero read the coup decree to a hall full of opposition dignitaries. With obvious glee Romero read each of the eleven decree articles that specified:

1. The designation of Pedro Carmona as president of the Republic of Venezuela.
2. The removal of “Bolivarian” from “Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.”
3. The dissolution of the National Assembly and the convocation of legislative elections for December 2002. The new legislature would have powers to reform the constitution of 1999.
4. The creation of a “Consultative Council” to consult the president. It would consist of 35 representatives from “diverse sectors of Venezuelan society.”
5. The president will coordinate policies of democratic transition.
6. National elections will be held within one year. Carmona would not be eligible for reelection at that time.
7. The president would have the power to remove and name new officials to any national, state, or local post in order to guarantee governability.
8. The dismissal of all Supreme Court judges, of the Attorney General, of the Comptroller General, of the human rights defender (Defensor del Pueblo), and of the members of the National Electoral Council. The president can name new individuals to these posts.
9. The 48 law-decrees that were passed with the enabling law in November 2001 would be suspended.
10. The country’s juridical order would be maintained, but only insofar as it does not contradict the decree.
11. The “democratic transition and national unity government” would give up its powers in accordance with this decree.

Following the reading of each point the crowd gathered in the hall cheered wildly. 27 representatives of different groups were then asked to come forward to sign the decree, to give it legitimacy. One of the first to sign was the Cardinal. Most of the rest of the signers either came from the old AD/Copei elite or were former leaders of leftist parties, such as Pablo Medina and Américo Martin.

Then, Pedro Carmona swore himself in as President of Venezuela, swearing to “reestablish the validity of the 1999 constitution.” Normally the president of the National Assembly swears in the president, but in this case, following the dismissal of all high-level state officials, no one could have sworn in Carmona. Then, the new ministers were announced. All of them came from either the military or Venezuela’s political right-wing, making a mockery of the claim that this was a broad-based “national unity” government.

The Counter-Coup

While the coup organizers were busy preparing their decree and divvying up state power, Chavez’s inner circle began working on getting the word out that Chavez did not resign and that he was being held prisoner. Already people living in the barrios near Fort Tiuna began mobilizing to the Fort, to demand their president’s release. Also, there were three military centers that were clearly unwilling to accept the “transition” regime: the paratrooper regiment of the air force base at Maracay, one hour from Caracas, the presidential honor guard in Miraflores, and battalions within Fort Tiuna. The resistance that would happen in Maracay and in Miraflores would prove to be crucial in restoring Chavez to power.

The next morning, April 13th, as the spontaneous demonstrations in support of Chavez grew increasingly larger, the Greater Caracas city police (Policia Metropolitana), began repressing these demonstrations. Also, rioting and looting broke out in many poor neighborhoods, as Chavez supporters vented their anger on their surrounding infrastructure. The metropolitan police ended up shooting and killing between 50 and 60 people in the confrontations with demonstrators.[32] Many of these deaths happened in front of Fort Tiuna, where the Metropolitan police repeatedly and unsuccessfully attempted to disperse the crowd with live ammunition. Also, demonstrations were taking place throughout the country, with people demanding the immediate return of their president.

None of this was viewable on television, however. The previous day, on the 12th of April, all four main private TV channels were broadcasting interviews with gloating opposition leaders and the resume of Pedro Carmona. On the 13th, however, a complete news blackout had taken over. The private broadcasters were showing nothing but cartoons and old Hollywood movies. Channel 8, the state television channel was off the air for all of the 12th and most of the 13th. The lack of information was bizarre. At first one had the impression that there was no news simply because nothing was happening, because everything was back to “normal,” now that Chavez was out of office. Anyone who could receive cable television or who was in some way connected to the network of Chavez supporters, knew, via CNN or via word of mouth (or directly, if they lived in or near a barrio) that nothing was normal at all. Later, the owners of the media outlets would claim that the reason they did not broadcast any news was because it was too dangerous to send reporters onto the street. This argument, though, is hardly credible, especially because they could at least have reported on their fear of going onto the street. Also, it was later learned that in the afternoon of the 12th, Carmona had gathered the heads of the main media outlets and asked them to make sure that their broadcasts do not contribute to any instability in the country.

In Fort Tiuna, General Garcia Carneiro was relatively isolated because his sympathies for Chavez were well known. No action was taken against Garcia Carneiro, though, partly because he pretended to support the coup generals. The generals, in turn, assumed that Garcia Carneiro was simply someone who would go with however was in charge and so did not pay much attention to him. When he left Fort Tiuna, in the evening of the 12th, he went straight to the main entrance where Chavistas had gathered, to encourage them and to tell them that Chavez had not resigned.

As word gradually spread about the demonstrations, the rioting, and the repression, General Raul Baduel, who is well known in Venezuela for being a practicing Taoist, drafted a manifesto in Maracay, under the heading, “Operation Rescue National Dignity.” The four main points of the manifesto were:[33]

1. To end the terror being exercised by the metropolitan police in the barrios of Caracas.
2. To immediately reinstate the constitutional order.
3. To avoid a military confrontation.
4. To seek the immediate resignation of the usurping government.

The news of the manifesto and of the paratrooper’s unwillingness to accede to the coup regime spread very quickly, especially with the help of the Bolivarian Circles. At 1:34 pm, Gen. Baduel made a public announcement of the paratroopers’ resistance to the coup regime. Shortly thereafter, more and more battalions throughout the country made similar statements, which were broadcast mostly by the international media or community media.

By the afternoon of the 13th, General Vasquez Velasco, without whom the coup would probably never have gotten as far as it had, felt that Carmona had gone too far. First, he was upset that Carmona had named Vice-Admiral Hector Ramirez Perez as Defense Minister. Ramirez Perez was of a lower rank than he was and it was because of him, not Ramirez Perez, that Chavez had fallen. Also, he was upset with Carmona’s decree, which had abolished practically all state institutions – a move that went much further than he thought Carmona and his supporters would go. Vasquez Velasquez decided to summon all of the rebelling generals to discuss the situation.

Meanwhile, at the Miraflores presidential palace, the presidential Honor Guard began to implement its plan to retake the palace. Already a day earlier it had begun working on what to do. The Honor Guard was practically hand-picked by Chavez and so constituted among the most loyal troops in the country. That the coup organizers failed to replace these constituted perhaps one of the greatest errors of the short-lived coup regime.

While the honor guard was conspiring and pretending to go along with Carmona coup, Carmona and the other coup leaders were receiving the news of General Baduel’s refusal to recognize the coup regime and doubts Vasquez Velasquez was having. Carmona began to realize that the coup was in trouble. He sent someone to find Carlos Ortega, who was in his hometown of Punto Fijo, and offered to name CTV Vice-President Manuel Cova as Vice-President of Venezuela.

However, just as the coup leaders gathered in Miraflores were getting ready to swear-in the cabinet, an officer of the Honor Guard tipped-off the gathered dignitaries, warning them to leave as fast as possible. The Honor Guard had planned to arrest all of the cabinet and Pedro Carmona just as they were being sworn in. Most managed to escape in time, but many ended up being captured. TV crews that were in Miraflores at the time recorded how many of the gathered Venezuelan elite ran for their cars, as they tried to escape.

The coup leadership, including “Transition President” Pedro Carmona, fled to Fort Tiuna, believing that they would be safer there, since this is where most of the rebel generals were. Throughout the day Carmona had been receiving reports about the demonstrations and riots that were happening everywhere.

A fax arrived to the offices of the Honor Guard that afternoon, surreptitiously sent by a soldier loyal to Chavez who was supposed to be guarding the president. The fax, written in Chavez’s handwriting and signed by him, said,

“To the Venezuelan People: I, Hugo Rafael Chavez Frias, Venezuelan, President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, declare: I have not resigned the legitimate power that the people have given me.”

The Honor Guard rapidly photocopied the fax and distributed it among the demonstrating crowd of Chavez supporters outside the presidential palace.

Back in Fort Tiuna, in the meeting General Vasquez Velasco had with the generals, many of them pleaded with him not to make a pronouncement, but finally he decided to go ahead and drafted a statement that he then read to the press at 4:37 pm. Gen. Vasquez Velasco explained that errors had been committed in the “transition” and went on to demand the “compliance” with twelve “norms.” The statement, which, according to the general, were supported by the officers of the Army and of the troops in Fort Tiuna, specified, first, that the transition had to follow the norms set forth in the constitution of 1999. It also demanded the “elimination” of the Carmona decree and the reinstatement of the National Assembly. It went on to demand respect for the state’s institutions. Finally, the statement demanded that Chavez be taken to a country of his choice and that he be allowed to appear live on television, just as Chavez had originally demanded as a condition for his resignation.

However, by that time it was too late to save the coup. General Baduel had already launched the plan to bring back Chavez to Miraflores, the president’s Honor Guard had already taken back Miraflores, and in Fort Tiuna Colonel José Montilla and several other officers were in the process of arresting the coup generals. Also that afternoon, around 4:40 pm, on CNN, Chavez’s wife, Marisabel Rodriguez de Chavez, said that she spoke to her husband via telephone and confirmed once again what most Chavistas had already heard through the grapevine, that Chavez had not resigned and that he is being held prisoner in a military installation on the Island of Orchila, 300 kilometers off the Venezuelan coast.

In a last-ditch effort to save the coup from its collapse, Pedro Carmona decided, at 5:11 pm, from his hideout in Fort Tiuna, to announce on television that he would reinstate the National assembly. By this time, though, Carmona was practically completely surrounded by troops loyal to Chavez. Still, in an interview with CNN around that time, he claimed that his transition government is in complete control and that the situation in the rest of the country is “completely normal.”

Also around this time, Chavez supporters decided to stage demonstration in front of the private television broadcasters, as well as at the newspaper offices of El Nacional and El Universal. In the case of the TV stations, the demonstrators threw rocks at the buildings, braking windows and causing the stations to interrupt their cartoons and Hollywood movies and to focus on the angry demonstrators outside of their studios. Eventually some of the demonstrators managed to storm the studios of RCTV (channel 2), took it over, and held several television journalists captive. They then proceeded to interview them about their role in the coup, broadcasting the interviews live on TV.

A little after 8 pm various leaders of Chavez’s movement, supporters, and journalists re-took Channel 8, the state television station. At first the broadcasts were washed out and difficult to see because inexperienced people were using the equipment, but gradually the picture improved, as Chavez supporters talked about their experiences during the past two days. Also, an hour later they were able to confirm that Chavez would return to the presidential palace soon.

Chavez’s Imprisonment and Return to Power

After spending the night of April 11th in custody in Fort Tiuna, Chavez was taken the next morning to the naval base Turiamo, in accordance with orders from Vice-Admiral Ramirez Perez. The base is located a few short hours outside of Caracas, in the state of Aragua. In the helicopter to Turiamo Chavez was certain that they would kill him once he arrived. Before he had left, a waiter who was serving both Chavez and Carmona in Fort Tiuna told Chavez that he had overheard how Carmona and others were talking about the option of killing him.[34]

Once at Turiamo, two women soldiers asked Chavez to sign a statement confirming that he was in good health. He confirmed this, but added that he also did not resign, which the soldiers included in their report. They later sent the fax to the Attorney General, who then went on the air to say that Chavez had not resigned. Also at Turiamo, Chavez wrote the note that said he had not resigned, dropped it into the trash, where another soldier picked it up and faxed it to Miraflores.

Chavez was then, in the afternoon of the 13th, flown to the island military base of La Orchila. While there he exercised a bit and spoke to the soldiers who were guarding him there. In the late afternoon, once the coup was already falling apart, Cardinal Ignacio Velasco and one of the coup generals flew to the island to meet with Chavez. Chavez, did not know what was happening in the country, as his captors kept him without access to information ever since he had left Fort Tiuna. He knew, though, that if the coup organizers were sending two such high level representatives to speak to him, that it must be important.

Cardinal Velasco tried to convince Chavez to sign a resignation letter, arguing that his doing so would be best for the country. The cardinal also told Chavez that a plane would take him to any country he wanted to go to. Chavez responded that he would not sign a resignation letter as long as his original conditions of safe passage, television address, and proper resignation in front of the National Assembly had not been met. He said he would, though, agree to sign a statement saying that he had abandoned the presidency. After some resistance, the general and the cardinal finally agreed to Chavez’s proposal. As the statement was being typed up, one of the soldiers who was guarding him whispered to him that he should not sign anything. That, combined with the obvious nervousness of the other soldiers and the rush that the cardinal and general appeared to be in, convinced Chavez that something was going on that he did not know about. So when the document was ready, Chavez said, “Look, I definitely won’t sign anything. Thanks very much for your visit.”[35] The cardinal and the general suddenly agreed and quickly left. A few minutes later they were back again and Chavez found out that the plane they had come with had left without them and instead a paratrooper squadron was arriving on the island to take Chavez back to Miraflores. At 2 am he was on his way.

Chavez landed in Miraflores, amid tremendous cheers from the crowd of 30 to 40,000 supporters who were gathered outside of the presidential palace compound. The people who were waiting for Chavez had heard several hours earlier, since perhaps around 10 pm, that Chavez would return soon. While they were waiting, various ministers and leaders of Chavez’s movement gave speeches to the crowd from the top of an improvised stage, which was the top of a van. Finally, when Chavez arrived at 4 am, many people were crying with joy, to see their president return.

Chavez went straight to the Salon in Miraflores where his cabinet and television cameras were waiting for him. His address to the nation was broadcast on all stations live at 4:35 am. “I send a message from the depth of my heart to Venezuela and the world that this palace is of the Venezuelan people. …the people have retaken this palace and they will not be removed!” said Chavez. Also, acknowledging that he too had committed errors said, “we must make decisions and adjust many things… We must respect dignity, without retaliations, no witch hunts… We should not tolerate disrespect for liberties we have won.”[36]

A Coup Conspiracy, a “Vacuum of Power,” or Something Else?

In the days following the coup opposition leaders were emphatic in stressing that what had happened April 11-13 was not a coup, but a “vacuum of power.” According to this version of events, Chavez had resigned, and his vice-president and the president of the National Assembly had disappeared. It thus fell upon “civil society” (the opposition’s term for itself) and the military to find a new president.

Another version of events, claimed mostly by the most radical opposition groups, was that Chavez had planned all of the events of those days himself, in order to trap the opposition and to stage a “self-coup” (autogolpe). Chavez’s ultimate goal supposedly was to purge the military and to use the incident as an excuse to persecute the opposition. Aside from the fact that there is no evidence for this version of events, if a self-coup was the true goal, it would seem that the plan ended in failure, as practically no one was persecuted afterwards, even though many oppositional military officers were removed from command.

The question of whether what happened was a coup or a “vacuum of power” is not really a serious question, in that practically everyone except the most die-hard anti-Chavistas agree that what happened was indeed a coup. However, there is the interesting question of what exactly made the coup possible. What were the coup’s most immediate causes and what were the causes of its ultimate failure?

The Coup’s Causes and Plot

Ultimately, the coup had its causes in the polarization of Venezuelan society, which is not something that Chavez brought about, but which is something that he made visible and accentuated. This is not to say that the coup was merely a reflection of the rich versus poor or light versus dark skinned Venezuelans, as many pro-Chavez commentators argue. Rather, Chavez made visible the existing extreme polarization of Venezuelan society in a way that no other Venezuelan president has before him. At the same time, his particular style of governing alienated some who might under different circumstances be natural allies, such as some of the more moderate leftist parties and their political leaders.

Part of his style, which certainly contributed to the crisis, has been his relative unwillingness to compromise with political opponents. This is an aspect which caused another group of former allies to switch sides (such as Luis Miquilena and his supporters in the National Assembly). This unwillingness to compromise also contributed to the radicalization of the positions of various opponents, who, under other circumstances, might never have supported a coup.

Another key contributing factor to the development of a coup dynamic in Venezuela was the unwillingness of the country’s old elite to accept Chavez as the country’s democratically elected president. This sector, to which one must probably count the former governing parties AD and COPEI, the CTV leadership, Fedecamaras, the Church hierarchy, right-wing officers in the military, and much of the private mass media (especially El Universal, RCTV, and Globovisión), had always argued that Chavez was dangerous and that his election and initial popularity were merely a fluke that was caused by the implosion of the Punto Fijo system. These groups could never tolerate Chavez as president and sought to find ways to oust him from office ever since he was first elected and still do to this day.

These were the broader societal dynamics that contributed to the coup. However, the details of the events of April 11 appear to have been largely planned by a small clique, which knew that they could count on the tacit support of practically the entire opposition. The core of this clique probably consisted of General Enrique Medina Gomez, who was Venezuela’s military attaché in Washington, Vice-Admiral Hector Ramirez Perez of the navy, Isaac Perez Recao, a wealthy and very young businessman and arms dealer, Pedro Carmona, the president of Fedecamaras and former manager in one of Perez Recao’s businesses, and Daniel Romero, a friend of Perez Recao’s and assistant to former president Carlos Andres Perez. What follows is largely speculation on my part, but it seems that there is sufficient evidence to make some educated guesses.

The plot to overthrow Chavez was probably very simple. At its heart it aimed to create a situation of maximum political tension, in which it could later be said that Chavez had lost legitimacy and could either be forced or convinced to resign. The combination of the loss of legitimacy and the resignation would then be sufficient to convince Venezuelans and the rest of the world that this was not a coup, but a legitimate transfer of power.

The very first step thus had to be to create a situation of maximum tension. This was done by exploiting the conflict between PDVSA and the president, where the private media helped tremendously in raising the pitch and the stakes (with Chavez’s help). Next, once people were mobilized, a situation was created in which Chavez and/or his supporters appear to act in ways that de-legitimate the government. The coup plotters did this by placing armed men in the buildings surrounding both demonstrations and having them shoot at these, causing Chavistas to return fire and causing general confusion and mayhem, for which Chavez could be blamed. Since key Chavez advisors, such as the vice-minister for citizen security, General Camacho Kairuz, was in on the coup plans and knew of Chavez’s probable reaction to the demonstration heading for Miraflores, the coup plotters knew that any attempt to stop the march, especially with the use of Plan Avila troops, could be used as an additional argument to justify a military uprising against Chavez.

The next element was to have military officers in place who would denounce the president for the supposed human rights violations of the day. Apparently there were far more high ranking officers who were willing to do this than Chavez had realized. These officers, who later proved to be quite right wing, such as General Carlos Alfonso Martinez, General Enrique Medina, and many others, would then be used to pressure Chavez to resign on the basis that he no longer controlled the military and, if that was not enough, that there would be a threat of violent confrontation in the presidential palace.

Once Chavez was gone from the presidency, the coup organizers were probably certain, due to their previous discussions with U.S. government officials, that the Bush administration would endorse the coup. They would endorse it, provided, of course, that it did not look like a coup.

With Chavez facing the terrible alternative between resigning or fighting it out in a situation where his legitimacy was in question, the coup planners had Chavez in a lose-lose position. Chavez managed to beat the coup plotters, though, when he got out of the alternative by neither resigning nor fighting. At first, Chavez believed that resignation or fighting were indeed his only alternatives. However, the false announcement that Chavez had resigned meant that the opposition could no longer threaten with bombing, so Chavez no longer felt pressure to resign. He was free to let himself be arrested, thus robbing the opposition of one of the main ingredients it needed for the coup to succeed.

The Reasons for the Coup’s Failure

All of the foregoing, if that was indeed the plan, happened according to plan. Things only started to go wrong when, first, Chavez’s resignation was announced when, in reality, he had not resigned. This created the impression among the opposition that they had succeeded and made some of them careless in the next phases of their effort to replace Chavez. Among Chavez supporters this created the demand to see the resignation letter and to see Chavez, which the opposition could not allow. Once rumors started circulating that Chavez had not resigned, there was nothing the opposition could do, since they could not prove that he had resigned. This then increased people’s willingness to go onto the street and to demand Chavez’s return.

The next factor that contributed to the coup’s failure was that the coup was taken over by the country’s most right-wing elements. More moderate supporters of the coup, such as General Vasquez Velasco, did not realize that they were actually instruments of a very radical faction of the opposition. The naming of Pedro Carmona as president, the “national unity” decree, and the exclusion of any moderate factions of Venezuelan society from the Carmona government took large sectors of the opposition by surprise. The coup government thus ended up being stillborn, as sooner or later many initial supporters would have turned against it. This weakness, however, might not have been necessary for the coup to fail. It is quite probable that the lack of a signed resignation and the large support base for Chavez, both in the population and in the military, would have been enough to doom the coup.

That is, the larger than expected popular support for Chavez was perhaps one of the more important elements in the coup’s demise. Opposition supporters generally minimize the importance of this factor, downplaying the number of people went to the streets and the impact this had on Chavez’s return. However, it is unlikely that the military officers that were loyal to Chavez would have reacted as quickly and as decisively as they did if they had not seen the spontaneous demonstrations in support of Chavez. General Jorge Garcia Carneiro, who played an important role in securing Fort Tiuna, described the impression the demonstration made on him as follows:

“The morning of the 12th I believed that things were lost. I was truly submerged in a world of confusion, even though there was a little bit of hope because the day before the people had presented signs of rebellion. Once I saw the people, this multitude, ferociously demanding the presence of Chavez, of course this gives one more strength.”[37]

In effect, the opposition never seemed to consider it a possibility that Chavez supporters would reject the coup or that they would believe it was a coup. Given that opposition leaders and supporters receive most of their information from the private mass media and that this media was actively involved in creating the impression that Chavez had lost practically all popular support, it was no surprise that the opposition ended up believing its own propaganda machine. When the people did take to the streets, the generals could hardly have called out the troops to repress the demonstration, since this was precisely their claim to legitimacy: their refusal to repress a civilian demonstration.[38]

In effect, the opposition made the error of believing its own propaganda, that Chavez was a highly unpopular president. Although apparently scientific polls appeared to confirm this impression to the opposition, the pollsters had not yet become accustomed to a Venezuela in which the country’s poor had political preferences. That is, prior to Chavez, the main citizens who counted, because they voted, were from the middle class. However, three years into Chavez’s presidency, the country’s poor had awakened politically and had become a previously unrecognized political force. Pollsters and the media, thinking that their class was the only class that counted, failed to see that Chavez was still immensely popular among the poor, who would go to great risks in making sure that he would be returned to power.

Another important error on the part of the coup planners, which contributed to their failure, was that they did not exchange the Presidential Honor Guard. The honor guard was thus free to plot the re-taking of the presidential palace, which, for its tremendous symbolic value, represented a nearly fatal blow to the coup. Similarly, the coup organizers did not seem to have any contingency plans in place for how to react to General Raul Baduel’s efforts to bring Chavez back. The Maracay paratrooper regiment is one of the country’s best armed and trained forces and would have intimidated any other regiment if it had come to a real confrontation. The coup organizers seemed to believe that Baduel would not react if sufficient generals had already renounced Chavez as commander in chief.
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