In the eyes of much of the world, the year 1989 has come to stand for the fall of the Berlin Wall, the demise of Soviet-type societies, and the defeat of twentieth-century socialism. However, 1989 for many others, particularly in Spanish-speaking countries, is also associated with the beginning of the Latin American revolt against neoliberal shock therapy and the emergence in the years that followed of a “socialism for the 21st century.” This revolutionary turning point in Latin American (and world) history is known as the Caracazo or Sacudón (heavy riot), which erupted in Caracas, Venezuela on February 27, 1989, and quickly became “by far the most massive and severely repressed riot in the history of Latin America.”2
The Caracazo started in the early morning in the suburb of Guarenas in response to a 100 percent increase in transport fares. These transport hikes were part of a set of neoliberal shock policies introduced by the government of President Carlos Andrés Pérez. The object was to put Venezuela back in good standing with the IMF and international financial institutions, obtain their assistance in the servicing of its foreign debt, and provide “fresh money” for the oligarchy to rely on—all on the backs of millions of poor people. Outraged by the doubling of transport fares, the Caracas demonstrators hurled stones at the buses and overturned them. Motorcycle couriers joined in the protests, going from one part of the city to the other and spreading the message. Riots also broke out that same morning in nineteen other cities across the country.
By late afternoon in Caracas, public transport had come to a standstill. Hundreds of thousands of people were walking home and buses were burning. The protestors began to loot shops and supermarkets in order to obtain basic needs—food and clothing. That night, in what came to be known as “the day the poor came down from the hills,” the impoverished barrio-dwellers, joined in some instances by the police, engaged in a campaign of massive looting, first in the commercial center of Caracas and then in the privileged residential districts of the wealthy. From the standpoint of the majority of the Venezuelan poor, the looting was an act of social justice and retribution, an attempt to take back a little of what had been taken from them for decades—as they watched the oligarchy become ever richer, while they struggled to get enough merely to survive. (President Peréz’s ostentatious inauguration, only a few weeks before the announcement of the austerity program, was reported as “one of the grandest celebrations Latin America has ever known,” with a total of ten thousand invited guests attending, consuming 650,000 hors d’oeuvres, 209 sides of lamb, and twenty sides of beef—washing it all down with twelve hundred bottles of scotch, accompanied by immense quantities of champagne.)
In response to the widespread riot, President Pérez imposed martial law and a nighttime curfew. This was followed by a brutal repression of the population. Soldiers entered the barrios with orders to “reestablish order.” One soldier recounted that they were ordered to “shoot anything that moved, and shoot to kill.” One citizen recalled that the soldiers “didn’t say raise your arms or anything. But everything that appeared, they killed.” Hundreds, even thousands, of people were killed, with numbers of the dead ranging from 396 to 10,000, and with many thousands more wounded. The brutality of the retaliation stripped away any illusions about Venezuela’s fake democracy, and set in motion the struggle for a new society. As Richard Gott stated, it “marked the beginning of the end of Venezuela’s ancien régime.”3
http://monthlyreview.org/100701foster.php
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