Hugo! (22 page)

A couple of minutes after they arrived, at about 1:15 A.M., Pérez went
on the air. His hair was mussed. He was nervous. Speaking rapidly, he
told the Venezuelan people that a coup attempt had been launched —
but he remained in charge of the country. "The subversive antipatriotic
movement is being brought under control," the shocked president said.
"I ask all of you for confidence and faith in the democratic system . . .
Be confident. Democracy will win."

The message lasted just a few minutes, but the station kept repeating
it so the nation would see it as word of the revolt spread and people
turned on their televisions. It was about an hour after the rebels had first
attacked Miraflores. Pérez's claim that the rebellion was under control
was false. Major barracks around the country were under siege. Pitched
battles were raging at La Carlota and La Casona. Rebels were swarming
through Miraflores. The city of Maracaibo was under Bolivarian control.
The state governor was a prisoner in his own mansion.

But Pérez's appearance gave the impression he was in charge, shaky
as it was. It would soon help turn the tide in the government's favor by
demoralizing the rebels, whose chief objectives included capturing the
president. He would make more appearances as the night went on.

The man in charge of the rebellion nationwide, Hugo Chávez, had
missed the early action. By the time the battle broke out at Miraflores,
he was just arriving in Caracas. By his own account, he pulled in
somewhere between 12:30 and 1 A.M., initially with just a few fellow officers.
Chávez headed to the Museo Histórico Militar on a hilltop a mile
from Miraflores. He could see the palace from there. He expected to be
met by soldiers who were to leave Fort Tiuna about 10:30 P.M., take over
the museum, and install the
communications equipment he would use
to direct the rebellion.

But the soldiers had never left the fort because superiors had them
confined to the barracks. Instead of fellow rebels, machine-gun fire
greeted Chávez, as he recounted the story. Loyalist soldiers sent at the
last minute by the government were occupying the museum. When
Chávez arrived they had no idea who it was, so they opened fire. The
bullets barely missed Chávez, who — employing deception and some
quick thinking — shouted that he had come to reinforce the loyalist
troops amid reports of a possible social uprising. They fell for it, letting
Chávez and his colleagues in.

But it was the first sign for Chávez that something had gone wrong.
There were no rebel troops, no communications equipment, no way of
knowing what was going on in the rest of the country or even in the capital.
He was cut off. "I was almost a prisoner starting the operation . . .
We arrived to a vacuum. There was almost nothing, no one to back up,
no one to connect with. The page of Caracas was ripped out of the notebook.
Some fragments remained that we couldn't put back together or
connect. It was a terrible confusion."

Before long, the colonel in charge of the museum turned on the
television and saw Pérez talking, according to Chávez's account. The
president spoke of an elite paratrooper unit from Maracay leading the
rebellion. The colonel turned to Chávez suspiciously and confronted
him. Chávez's ruse was up. Yes, this is a coup d'état and you are surrounded,
Chávez told him. Hand over the weapons, because if you
don't, a massacre will start.

It was a lie, of course. The one who was surrounded was Chávez.
Luckily for him, Major Centeno, the commander who was supposedly
camping out at Carabobo Field that night with his troops, was pulling
up with two busloads of soldiers. He shouted out to Chávez. There are
my men, Chávez told the colonel. Hand over the weapons and put your
men under my command. The colonel relented, and Chávez won his
first small victory of the night. It was about 2 A.M.

Then he waited. Incommunicado and blind to what was happening
in most of Caracas and the country, he didn't think he had much
choice. In hindsight, his detractors accused him of lacking the courage
to attack the palace. Years later the defense minister, Ochoa Antich,
still contended Chávez could have emerged victorious if he had sent
his troops from the museum to help Blanco La Cruz and Rojas Suárez
at Miraflores. He believed they could have captured the country's symbolic
seat of power, prompted more barracks around the country to rise
up, and turned the tide of the revolt. "No one understands why Hugo
Chávez didn't attack," Ochoa stated. "He knew what was happening, he
could see it. He lacked personal courage to attack Miraflores." Others
speculated that Chávez didn't head to the palace because he was worried
Blanco La Cruz and Rojas Suárez planned to kill him as part of a
Bandera Roja plot.

But to Chávez, that had nothing to do with it. He had little idea
of what was happening on the ground and no contact with the rebels
at the palace. His principal mission, as he has told it, was to command
the entire operation nationwide from the museum and provide support
to the troops assaulting Miraflores if he could. Now, amid the confusion
and uncertainty, he needed to employ common sense and good
judgment.

Any action there . . . would have been like stopping in the middle
of this dark room, without knowing where the wall was, and
launch a coup, senselessly. Kill a few people and die, a senseless
and fratricidal fight. Any operation there would have been blind.
There was no information of any kind, there was no information
about what was happening below, absolutely nothing, not even
communication with our forces. The thing to do was wait for
events to develop . . . That is to say, to launch an attack with one
hundred men against a regiment is a suicidal thing, and without
knowing what was happening, it's craziness and they taught us not
to do crazy things.

So Chávez waited in the dark "for events to develop." At Miraflores
the shooting slowed. Hung Díaz negotiated with the rebels by radio to
try to get them to surrender. When he advised them that the president
had left the palace, they didn't believe it. So he told them to turn on the
television. When they did, their spirits sank. In the meantime the government
was regrouping. Ochoa Antich ordered troops and tanks from
Fort Tiuna and La Guaira on the Caribbean coast to reinforce loyalists
at the palace. They were set to arrive by 2:30 A.M.

Pérez's appearance on television shocked members of Venezuela's
political and business establishment. Many flocked to Venevisión to
support him. Some, including COPEI's Eduardo Fernández, went on the
air themselves. They denounced the coup and voiced their backing for
the unpopular but democratically elected president. At about 2:30 A.M.,
Pérez went on for a second time. This round was smoother. Instead of the
barren background shown the first time, someone moved a Venezuelan
flag next to the president. Accompanied by supporters who eventually
numbered two hundred, Pérez appeared more self-assured. The rebels
tried to "launch a coup to kill me," he said, but "I have counted on the
support of the entire nation."

Word of the shocking coup attempt was starting to spread around
the world. Two hours after initial reports of it were received in the
United States,
Assistant Secretary of State Bernard Aronson called
Pérez, "who offered assurances that loyalist troops would prevail." Still,
shortly before 2 A.M. (3 A.M. in Venezuela), Aronson called
Secretary
of State James Baker III, who awakened President Bush minutes later.
Bush called Pérez to express his support for Venezuelan democracy.

By about 2:45 A.M. the rebels at Miraflores surrendered. Pérez was
gone. Chávez was nowhere to be seen or heard from. Loyalist reinforcements
were descending on the palace. It was the first major crack of the
rebellion. About fifteen minutes later Pérez and his team left the television
station and returned to Miraflores. Ochoa Antich joined them
there. Pérez soon went on the air for a third time, transmitting live to
the nation from behind his desk. He assured the nation again that he
was in charge.

While the government had retaken Miraflores, in reality rebels
were still battling soldiers at La Casona and La Carlota. They also controlled
important barracks in Maracay, Valencia, and Maracaibo. And
the leader of the revolt, Chávez, was still on the loose. The first order of
business was getting him to surrender.

Ochoa Antich got the palace switchboard operator to put him
through to the Museo Histórico Militar. At about 4 A.M. he spoke to
Chávez. The insurrection is over, Ochoa told him. You've lost. You are
surrounded. We have recovered the palace. The president has spoken to
the nation. All you have left are a few units supporting you.

Chávez refused to concede. Instead, he asked Ochoa to come to the
museum to talk. It was a ruse — Chávez would try to kidnap him if
he came. Ochoa did not fall for it, so Chávez suggested they meet at a
halfway point. The defense minister rejected that, too. As they spoke,
another general,
Ramón Santeliz Ruíz, came into Pérez's office. Santeliz
was friendly with Chávez. Some even believed he was sympathetic to his
movement and had dabbled with groups such as ARMA. Ochoa figured
Santeliz could help mediate. He offered to send him to the museum.

When Santeliz arrived, Chávez learned for the first time details of
what was happening around the country. Santeliz told him rebels were
in control of Maracaibo, and that a column of tanks was on its way from
the city of Valencia. But Caracas was lost, and the media were lost.
Chávez told him he still wasn't going to surrender. Santeliz returned to
Miraflores with the message.

In reality, Chávez knew he was in trouble. Most of the troops in
Caracas — the nerve center of the operation — had failed to appear,
dealing a heavy blow to the rebellion.

I was like a tiger in a cage. I didn't know how to confront this,
how to direct it . . . In Caracas nearly three thousand or four thousand
men were committed, and of these barely five officers, two
lower-level officers and some fifty soldiers, in twelve tanks without
ammunition and without radios, left in a suicidal action against
Miraflores. That's why you see the image of the tank crashing
against the wall. It was the impotence of the man who made a
commitment and an oath and wants to fulfill it. And the tank goes
up the stairs, that's why one sees the figure of this tank arriving to
crash against Miraflores Palace, it's the dignity of the man, almost
like a desperate Kamikaze.

With the crucial operation in Caracas a failure, Chávez was by now
stalling for time. As dawn approached, he was hoping for two things
that might turn the tide: General Visconti and the air force arriving at
daylight, and the people of the slums rising up in revolt. But Visconti
never came. As for the civilians, they were an equal disappointment.

By Chávez's account, civilians especially from the Causa R Party
were to play an important role in the uprising. They were supposed to
show up at prearranged points and receive weapons from the rebels.
They were even given secret passwords. But in the end, according to
Chávez, few came. It left him bitter and distrustful.

We were working together on the popular component and the military
component of the military rebellion that we were planning.
A few days before it all came together, in a meeting of the national
directors, they decided to withdraw their support from the rebellion.
But the worst thing was they didn't tell us about their decision
although we had already committed to action, to plans of
combat. We had previously agreed that they would organize their
people to go to pre-arranged points where we were going to distribute
weapons, but only [Causa R congressman] Alí Rodríguez
was there waiting with a small group, trying in vain to fulfill their
responsibility. But as a party the Causa R didn't show up. They
publicly hung us out to dry . . .

Later, when they told me about the decision they had made,
I didn't want to believe it, because I was still new to politics and I
was a soldier, and for me, my word was my honor . . . The experience
made me lose my political virginity — if you will excuse the
expression — what with politics, and commitments, and broken
promises.

Some of the civilians including the Causa R's Pablo Medina have
told a different story, contending that Chávez and the others never
showed up with the weapons. Several months before the revolt, former
guerrilla leader Douglas Bravo met with Chávez in an attempt to resolve
their long-simmering differences and collaborate in the rebellion. The
meeting ended in failure, and their relationship broke off definitively.
Bravo argued that civilian action should precede military action but,
according to him, Chávez was not interested:

We met to talk about the plans for the uprising . . . We said that
first of all there should be a civil action, like the general strike
organized by the Patriotic Junta on January 23 [1958]. The military
action would come later. This was so that civil society should
have an active participation in the revolutionary movement. But
that was exactly what Chávez did not want. Absolutely not! Chávez
did not want civilians to participate as a concrete force. He wanted
civil society to applaud but not to participate, which is something
quite different . . . No one can give an opinion at his side . . . He
doesn't allow dissidence or a different opinion.

As Chávez debated what to do, back at Miraflores Palace a livid
Pérez considered bombing the museum to end the standoff. Some of
his aides suggested buzzing it first instead. At about 6 A.M., with dawn
breaking, Ochoa ordered several F-16s at the air base in Maracay to
fly over the Museo Histórico Militar. He wanted to send a clear message
to Chávez. Ochoa called him again. He informed him that fighter
jets were in the air, most of the rebellious barracks had surrendered,
and marines were on their way from the coast to Caracas to attack the
museum. It was going to be a bloodbath.